I’m really bored. Sorry if I’m starting a post this way, but a lot of inexperienced people are working in the very crowded are of Mogadishu with the result to get an horrific outcome.

We worked for maybe a couple of months to draw roads, communication towers and buildings (sometimes counting their floors, when the satellite images allow us to do it).

They are (trying to) mapping buildings, for some HOT projects #mogadishu-swm where it’s supposed to be an urban project related to the waste collection. But, inexperienced users, not used to interpretate satellite images nor having some common sense (if you see a large road going straight, why make two 90° bends to put a totally displaced building?), are severely degraded the previous efforts to have a decently accurate map.

I don’t share any picture, but as just a few examples I’ll give you the coordinates.

These are buildings shifted many meters from the existing ones, with the roads deformed: 2.0441091, 45.3154313 2.03717, 45.3523181

Here you can see the masterpiece: 2.0439412, 45.35413 https://osm.org/go/yAR0QC5~F?m=

Here another very personal interpretation of wrecked buses mapped as buildings 2.0447408, 45.3558223

I was wondering: if someone have (and is still doing) to map buildings, it means someone else are going to use these data. Don’t they realize those contributions are horribles?

I’m not going to waste my time trying to fix that disaster, I’m now busy to fix a lot of landuse relation in DR Congo and Central African Republic damaged or erased by other HOT projects.

Alessandro a.k.a. UNGSC-DTLM-Ale_Zena a.k.a. Ale_Zena_IT

In this changeset https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/116307070

a mass deletion of ways was done https://simon04.dev.openstreetmap.org/whodidit/?zoom=12&lat=5.4938&lon=20.84162&layers=BTT&age=1%20month

And instead 9 - I say just 9 (nine) - building were added

Thank you so much https://tasks.hotosm.org/projects/8391 Oh, lately I discovered that the landuse relations affected were more, spanning till to Bambari.

Please #MissingMaps when you’re going to work in a very dense mapped area, write few piece of advice; working in the middle of nowhere or in Bambari province does a lot of difference.

Yet another mess in Mogadishu.

The city was extensively mapped; buildings are very dense, though not every single building was added yet.

But someone opened H.O.T. tasks asking (to work in a extremely dense area) for Beginner Mapper.

Is this good for OpenStreetMap? NO, definitely

Is it good for OpenStreetMap map a soccer field 103 x 60 m (with the goals clearly visibles) as a building? NO, definitely

Who’d validate this https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1013314708 103 x 60m building?

Yet another big issue with a user mapping with Maps.Me In Bamako (Mali) this user https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/seydoukone mapped 3000 POIs, all with the office=government tag. You can left comment to his/her changeset, but Maps.Me doesn’t implement any messaging system. So, what can we do? Erase all the POI is not a good idea, because the user add pharmacies, fuel, etc. The only way is make pressure on the Maps.Me developers I think

Starting to add roads and other features in Somalia, around Baidoa (Baydhabo بيدوا), I often come across with long ways that have “attribution: Mart Roumen; FAO-SWALIM; Madmappers-SOM-2008-01’”. Most of them are not more visible through many satellite imageries, sometimes cross water or residential areas regardless of any feature on the ground.

I know Somalia and other territories can change very quickly but it looked me strange that so many areas changed dramatically. So, when I have no evidence of them I delete them.