OpenStreetMap
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
Discussion
Comment from SomeoneElse on 28 February 2022 at 10:26
Have you tried communicating with the people who are organising the HOT projects or with the mappers themselves?
Comment from arnalielsewhere on 1 March 2022 at 03:12
Hi Alessandro, Immaculate Mwanja has recently posted about the project in the hot mailing list: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/2022-February/015767.html
You can direct messages to her.
HOT Quality Control/Assurance WG is also drafting the Project Escalation Process. Rule of thumb is to communicate with the Project Creator (you can see this in the “Coordination” section of the Project Page), and/or message the mailing lists: hot@openstreetmap.org / dataquality@hotosm.org.
Comment from UNGSC-DTLM-Ale_Zena on 1 March 2022 at 08:12
Many thanks Arnalie for having pointed to the talk.
Anyway, it should be crystal clear that in extremely dense areas is needed an expert hand; from the different images used in the years (with different shifts), to the difficulty - for the iD user, the majority in these projects - to not join together roads with buildings. I’m also wondering what goals, the HOT task creators, want reach. I mean, in the central part of Mogadishu we pushed a lot the building mapping, leaving just the tiniest and the difficult to recognize as buildings. When they get the data, don’t realize are horrible?
When, at the end of 2018, we started the UN Mappers project we accepted to engage the OSM community and all the potential issues. But sometimes is still very frustrating (and I started to contribute to OSM in 2007, so I got used to almost any kind of damage).
We are going to do our monthly internal database update, and we will patch the area avoiding to update Mogadishu.
I hope who will read this comment will agree with me: - we don’t need this kind of contributions - spot the issues in very dense areas is difficult and a waste of time - inexperienced users should be training a bit starting with simple tasks - inexperienced users don’t get anything back from this: no a minimum expertise in visual recognition; no topology knowledge, … - these bad data make some people frustrated making them stop to help the HOT tasks
Sorry for my rumble.
And, finally, I left you all with a good news: we are keen to see you all at State of the Map 2022 in Firenze (Florence, Italy)
Alessandro
Comment from Stereo on 1 March 2022 at 19:23
Salve Alessandro,
OSM has organised editing policies that address community complaints like yours. Would you like the Data Working Group to have a look at the situation here?
Happy mapping,
Guillaume
Comment from pnorman on 2 March 2022 at 22:25
Unfortunately I tried contacting them back in January without reply, asking for information required by the OEG.
Comment from Immaculate Mwanja on 14 March 2022 at 11:02
Hi all,
I would like to let you know that we have seen all your comments in the OSM diary and mailing list. @simoa and I are working on refining the OEG and will share it with you all in this diary and in the mailing list.
@pnorman, I apologize because I’d missed your request for the OEG, but we will share it with you this week.
Thank you all for your patience and I hope we will resolve these issues together.
Thanks, Imma
Comment from Immaculate Mwanja on 16 March 2022 at 15:10
hello all, as promised 2 days ago, please find the OEG for this project explaining all the activities that are being and will be conducted. We have also included it in the activities section of the guidelines.
We are still refining this and will appreciate your comments and feedback as well.
Thanks
Imma
Comment from rab on 18 March 2022 at 20:34
So after the OEGs and according to recent activities, the base map is now in an acceptable state?
Comment from UNGSC-DTLM-Ale_Zena on 21 March 2022 at 15:51
@rab For the time being it’s still a huge mess.
Here few examples:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1033975735 (perhaps a big mosquee) it’s misaligned. In Dec 2021 there was this building https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/949004805 but it was moved and after deleted.
Many blocks of buildings was shifted, and many buildings deleted. But, while the buildings were shifted, roads weren’t (excluding some primary or secondary roads with 90 degrees bends).
This (6 or 7 floors) building https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1030048071 , before the mass deletion, was this one https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/949013794 but the 21 of February was moved in the middle of the block.
Where these buildings https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1033975772 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1016975453 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1017800962 have been seen on the images?
This road https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/28752372 has been drawn using Yahoo imagery :-O (yes, yahoo imagery, read the changeset’s comment https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/116653197 ), and in the same changeset check how many buildings have been deleted.
Beside that road you can see this one https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/28752259 how it was shaped.
And not far, please check this building https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1015961842 (originally was this one https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/942712706 , deleted) On the images, at its South you can see a road, but to make room for this misaligned thing, the existing one https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/128415480 was deleted
Where, on the satellite images, do you see these building https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1034436860 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1016146112 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1016146083 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1023251370 ?
How these two buildings https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1015324791 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1015324790 have been drawn that way (while this one https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/942879417 was deleted)?
Trying to recover that jungle of building seems to me an impossible challenge. IMHO a rollback to October/November 2021 would be the less painful action.
Comment from rab on 21 March 2022 at 17:49
Almost all taller buildings are systematically drawn incorrectly.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1027323449 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1027323447
This should not happen in organized mapping activities.
Here is my favourite drawn after maxar:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1023272183 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1023823687 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1023271915
Also interesting these swimming pools https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1013164476 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1013117076
But if there is a willingness to fix such problems, I would not recommend a rollback. There are local mappers involved, so it still can be turned into something useful. HOT promised some time ago not to leave such problems to the OSM community.
Comment from Immaculate Mwanja on 23 March 2022 at 11:07
Thank you both, and thank you very much @rab for your constructive suggestions. The plan right now is to fix the errors that have been pointed out by doing two things:
Since our plan is empowering YouthMappers in different communities, we are reaching out to the global validators community to train the YMs in Mogadishu on how to make perfect edits so that when they map other areas, some of these errors will be avoided.
We are working with experienced mappers from Kenya and Uganda who are going to work on fixing the errors as well.
Comment from UNGSC-DTLM-Ale_Zena on 5 April 2022 at 07:38
After more than one Month (almost) nothing happened in the central part of Mogadishu (I mean the are among - rougly - Warshahada 21 Oktoobar, the airport, the old harbour) to recover from the “stampede” mapping.
I could say, citing George Orwell’s Animal farm “All cities are equal, but some cities are less equal than other” Try to imagine what huge fuss if that ….(thing)…. happens in an European city. But it happened instead in the poor Mogadishu. So: so what!
Today I checked again on WhoDidIt, what I’ve seen activities just from rab https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/rab (thanks so much, rab) and I, and few minor KeepRight fixes. It remain deformed streets and hundreds misaligned or bad rotated buildings. In that urban jungle those bad things will remain buried out there for years.
Too many words, too few actions.
Comment from UNGSC-DTLM-Ale_Zena on 6 April 2022 at 21:12
From time to time I go to Mogadishu trying to recover the huge mess.
This one is the weirdest thing I’ve seen in almost 15 years of mapping. Please go here 2.0237316, 45.2996601 and 130m away 2.0248249, 45.2999086 Are two tall buildings: the first one was transformed in 19 smaller buildings; the second was more lucky, it was transformed in just 3 or 4
For the time being no actions are taken by the managers of the HOT tasks. Unfortunately no actions as well from the DWG
Comment from edvac on 7 April 2022 at 01:21
Dear UNGSC_DTLM-Ale_Zena:
You have contacted the DWG [Ticket#2022031410000051] and I took it.
I left a message to the managers of these Organized Editing HOT activities - see the bottom of this page - , and also an OSM message to Immaculate Mwanja asking what their plans and timing are to revert these poor edits. Still waiting for their answer.
On the contrary to your paid mapping in Mogadishu, at the DWG we are all volunteers: 19 users having hundreds of issues of all kinds to solve every week, worldwide.
Please be more considerate before claiming we aren’t taking action at the DWG.
Best regards,
Rafael Avila Coya, on behalf of the DWG, OSMF.