Questions & Answers - Curious Cases of Corporations in OpenStreetMap

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Curious Cases of Corporations in OpenStreetMap Abstract in the proceedings of the SotM 2020 Academic Track: https://zenodo.org/record/3923050 Full proceedings of the SotM 2020 Academic Track: https://zenodo.org/communities/sotm-2020

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  1. [ANSWERED] If mapper A maps a way, and corporate mapper B cuts the way in two, do you count those ways as created/last edited by A or B? - Guillaume Rischard
  2. [ANSWERED] HOT has done for-pay mapping, and has employed people, why did you not look at that?
  3. [ANSWERED] With the Grab/Singapore editing, are all those restrictions actually necessary? One common problem in the past is companies adding unneeded turn restriction relations e.g. no_right_turn into a no-entry oneway road. –Andy Allan
    1. Almost all of them seem to be no_u_turn: https://taginfo.geofabrik.de/asia/malaysia-singapore-brunei/keys/restriction#values which seems to be used for a continuous centerline on a road (counter-example: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/9041006 )
  4. [ANSWERED] Have you looked at size of mapping teams per company, and how that has changed? Rather than looking at edits per company. – Gregory.
  5. [ANSWERED] How likely do you think it is that these hyper-niche mappers will stay around to map more things outside of their narrow interests? do you have any data that shows they have any rates of retention? –corey
    1. thanks!
  6. [ANSWERED] Some corporate mappers are mapping part time for a company and also do volunteer mapping on their own. The changesets are generally differentiated by the presence of a changset hashtag if the mapper uses the same OSM user account. Do you account for this difference of mapping behavior? (Example: Kaart)  – Eugene
  7. [ANSWERED] Do you think it’s feasable to look at “displacement” of volunteer mappers? Questions like: does a heavily corporate-mapped area have a higher tendency to loose other mappers? Or do they shift their attention? Or does the (hopefully) increased data quality bring more people who are interested? – Joost
  8. [ANSWERED] Anything you are willing to say about Google on the topic of corporate mapping? I know it might not be relevant. – Anonymous
  9. [ANSWERED] Do you have statistics/sources on where the corporations’ paid mappers are based, geographically? –Tobias
    1. Lyft had an OSM mapping office in Seattle, I’m not sure if it’s still open.
  10. [ANSWERED] What about outsourced mapping companies, like, GlobalLogic? – Eugene
  11. Question? – Name

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  • Your globe looks really cool +3
  • HERE Maps hire data digitization companies to populate OSM for them, periodically importing this data into their own platform
  • There was also a map roulette challenge for tesla parking aisles

Boy I sure hope they use perfectly aligned imagery…. else those parking lanes will end up down here. -jidanni

  • Maybe they used gps traces instead of imagery.
    • GPS bound to be even worse!!! Unless they got something better gear than we home mappers have.
  • All I know is with imagery +-5 meters offset, any such mapping will just do more damage than good.  OK, so they are certainly not using iD or cellphone GPS traces. OK, so ask them to share their secret tools. -jidanni
  • Great talk and so important to have this discussion. Looking to our own community - the challenge for us could be to strenghten mappers, editors and validators at all levels - ‘remote’ and ‘local’. perhaps rather than lament the ‘niche’ mapping of corporations - lets take responsibility, do our bit and find ways to benefit from all the communities in OSM:)  Anni (rosymaps) +1
  • Nice to see someone is presenting the 3 years in a row :) – Anonymous :)+1
  • This research has so much potential! OSM should really get on board with these researchers. +3 +2 +1
  • Don’t let Google put their address database on the map! Else all my friends will be sent to the wrong side of town. -jidanni P.S., you can’t get a word in edgewise to Google.
  • OK, whatever view of WGS84 they are using will now become OSMs, due to their amount of edits. So expect everybody’s “craft” edits will have to all move over to align with them. So I sure hope they are not misaligned. -jidanni
  • I’m saying all this corporate editing is great… if it is perfectly aligned.
  • Won’t OSM end up with twos of things— wouldn’t it be faster for companies to just add a new (second) road, rather than check for an existing road, and edit or at least delete it first?
    • response: then they would just make their own map? thats why OSM exists as a data b (shared)ase