Introducing MapRoulette 3
Posted by mvexel on 6 July 2018 in English. Last updated on 26 October 2022.This and future diary posts also appear on my blog.
MapRoulette lets anyone contribute to OpenStreetMap by fixing small mistakes on the map. It works like a roulette wheel: once you select something you want to work on, MapRoulette will give you a random task to work on. Once you fix it, you return to MapRoulette for the next task. Do as few or as many as you like. Be careful, people have been known to get hooked on it!
Since 2013, MapRoulette has been used by thousands of mappers to complete well over 1.5 million small tasks to improve OpenStreetMap. We have put all the feedback we have received and lessons we learned into the latest version: MapRoulette v3.
In a series of posts, I will highlight some great new features of this new version. This is the first post. Enjoy!
Filters
I heard from some mappers that they couldn’t find anything interesting to work on. We spent a lot of time making that easier, by adding different filters.
Location
You can quickly narrow down the list of available Challenges by zooming and panning the map, and selecting ‘Within Map Bounds’ or ‘Intersecting Map Bounds’ from the ‘Location’ dropdown menu. ‘Within Map Bounds’ will only show you Challenges that only have tasks within the current map view. ‘Intersecting Map Bounds’ will also show you Challenges that have some, but not all, their Tasks in the current map view. Additionally, you can narrow down the list to Challenges near your current location. This requires allowing browser access to your location.
Categories
Challenges are now grouped into Categories, like ‘Roads / Pedestrian / Cycleways’, or ‘Buildings’. You can filter the list of available Challenges by selecting a Category from the ‘Work on’ dropdown menu.
Text
You can enter any text in the search box, and MapRoulette will only show you the Challenges that have a name or description containing that text.
You can clear any filters you have set with using ‘Clear Filters’.
Stay tuned for future posts about the all new MapRoulette 3! I hope you will give it a(nother) try and let me know what you think.
Discussion
Comment from mvexel on 6 July 2018 at 22:05
A couple of minor corrections are in order:
Comment from DeBigC on 8 July 2018 at 21:26
I like it and I want to test it out. Your post is a great intro for me. Thanks!
OSM seems to me to always hook two types of mappers. One group are location focused, and another are “thing” focused, or if I say it another way thematic.
Good to see the tool now cater for both. Can’t wait to start hopping around fixing stuff.