Hello, again,
Here, as promised are some actions that our team will take to be responsive to your feedback (as well as that of other OSM communities) so as to avoid causing any more issues.
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Community concerns about the “quality check” challenges had been relayed but had not been addressed in a timely manner. Now, they are being addressed. Actions include:
a. Based on community feedback from OSM communities, we are pausing organised editing of most of our quality checks globally.
b. We will be making improvements to our data analysis, editing and quality control processes for our quality checks based on community inputs. When we do resume, we will share a detailed description of our methods for community feedback before we initiate the regular organised editing cycle in any country.
c. We will also improve the instructions that we give to mappers, with community inputs.
d. We will add an additional quality control to the regular organised editing process. We will notify, as per the guidelines and then, after the two weeks have passed, we will do a “pilot” group of edits on which we will do 100% quality testing. At that time, we will notify the community of the results as a means to prompt any additional feedback and consultation. -
We do not use Cyient to do organised editing in OSM. Cyient editors work on TomTom’s map platform.
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To the concern about outsourced editing and whether or not TomTom is invested in the local community, I would like to propose an idea: Would members of the NL OSM community be willing to give an extra level of training to a small group of NL-based TomTom map editors? This would help us provide an additional level of skill and local knowledge to the supervision of TomTom organised editing. We are discussing projects like this in other countries, and since TomTom HQ is in NL I can’t think of a better location for such a pilot project. Please email the osm@tomtom.com address if this idea has appeal.
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To the concern about MapMetrics (ie the ‘heatmap’ tool.) We have done quite a bit of development on this tool, as well as our centerlines tool, RoadRunner. We would happily work with your community to train you on how to benefit from these tools. Here again, please email osm@tomtom.com if you are interested, and we will set something up.
I understand that you doubt the sincerity of my communications, but nonetheless it is real. Our team will continue to work to earn your trust for the good of the map and the mapmaking community.
Best wishes,
Courtney