How to deal with "Lone Ranger Mappers"?

Maybe it helps to describe my experience as a former Lone Range Mapper…

I made my first edits in 2016 after maps.me sent us on the Transcindrel tertiary road in Romania (photo of a better part of it), which turned out to be a dirt track through the mountains. We met some lumberjacks that managed to make it clear that this road is impassible for our “robust wheels” Nissan Primera, so we turned back (loosing the rear bumper while turning, and having to tye it to the car with string that the lumberjacks gave us). Since then I’ve been very interested in tagging tracks with smoothness :grinning:


I’ve been adding hiking paths and tracks, using the guidance that the wiki pages offer. These are easily accessible through iD. iD also linked to the Bulgarian community forum, but this has never been very active since 2016 so didn’t lead me to the worldwide community. I think that moving to the new Community Forum has been a very good move because now all forums are visible to the user, which I think will lead to much more involvement from new mappers. It was only 2 months ago I found out about it because it was linked to by @Mateusz_Konieczny :pray: in one of his posts on the StreetComplete Github. I’ve been much more active posting there since I started using SC when corona came. My doctor recommended me to walk a lot every day, and SC gives me the destinations to walk to.
My main surprise when getting to know this community is how much it values their freedom of expression to “enter anything they wish” to the map. I think a major quality criterion for a map is reliability, and for this consistency of mapping is crucial. I think much more emphasis should be given to consistency of mapping, so every mapper should feel it is their duty to follow the consensus as documented in the wiki. The wiki should not describe mapping practices, but prescribe them after consensus is reached about it. If there is no consensus on how to map something, this means that some mappers will consider the activities of other mappers as “wrong”, leading to wrong data (in their eyes). I think we all agree that wrong data is worse than no data, so we should stop mapping until we have consensus about how to map, and then all of us should follow that consensus.

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(while I’m quite approving of your personal and inspiring story, here is why I think the second part of your post has many unaddressed problems)

Some would argue that this ATYL policy is the primary (if not only) reason why OSM succeeded, while countless others have failed. If one has to wait for some bureaucracy to approve a tag for use, it is bound to create horrible friction (and probably destroy much of the community in process).

Have you ever seen how it works in practice? e.g. look at RfC: Highway=Scramble - even after a months of discussions, no consensus have been reached. This is not isolated example by any means, just one of the more recent examples. And it is unlikely to be solved in this year either. How long do you think should be expected to wait until the thing that they want to mapped is “approved” and thus become possible to use (in such “prescribed-tags only” scenario), before they give up and move elsewhere?

I think a major quality criterion for a map is reliability, and for this consistency of mapping is crucial.

This I would agree with. (that is why I am vehement opponent of proposals attempting changing wiki definition once a tag is in widespread use; unless extremely well laid plain with strong understanding of enormity of the task is laid out first and followed methodically)

It does not however imply that the only possible solution is to have some authority approve what tags may be used, and what does may not be used. I would argue that such a “cure” would in fact be much worse than the original “poison”.

I think much more emphasis should be given to consistency of mapping, so every mapper should feel it is their duty to follow the consensus as documented in the wiki.

That would IMHO only be possible if wiki is forbidden to ever be changed once it was created (i.e. if it stopped being a wiki). Otherwise, you’d always have situations where some mappers use one definition, and some another (as they never heard of updated definition) - it is (again IMHO) impossible education problem to solve (finding all mappers and re-educating them, as well all old versions of tools using previous definition, all online and offline tutorials, videos, etc, and re-writing them to avoid new users being taught obsolete facts etc.)

The wiki should not describe mapping practices, but prescribe them

That is eternal “prescription or description” disagreement. It seems to be no easy consensus about it in any other part of human activities, so I see little hope consensus would be reached about it here.

Status quo in OSM seems to be descriptive approach - that way (at least) things can be documented, and data consumers can chose to avoid using tags that are too vague/ambiguous/problematic.
The onus is thus on proponent of the new method to convince others why status quo should be changed (and be forewarned that it is likely no easy task at all!)

after consensus is reached about it

And here we come to the crux of the problem, reaching consensus. I don’t have hard numbers, but it seems to me that number of wiki editors (even if combined with number of active tagging ML and forum users) is orders of magnitude less than number of map editors. So, even if that small minority were to agree on something, that would not represent the consensus of mapper (which are the only thing that matters, one might argue). And very often, even that small minority disagrees. Quote heavily, in many cases.

How would that be handled? Depending of all mappers to follow tagging proposals/suggestions? Ain’t gonna happen judging by the history, and assuming “well its their problem then” would just be enforcing current state when anyone can (and does! as most wiki editors will inform you) rewrite the wiki according to their will without any consultation with other wiki editors (much less this community forum, or, gods forbid, the majority of mappers - we don’t even have a way to attempt to do the latter!). So doing that would not help with decreasing (much less getting rid of!) that ambiguity that troubles you (and all of us).

Sure, there might be technical measures to try to enforce it and solve “low participation problem” - system might be set up which would for example disable editing capabilities of all mappers who did not read and vote on all tag proposals. That would be even more horrible and lead to massive loss of users who lack the time and will to be involved in such infinite time-sink with low reward-ratio. (especially take into account that with disabling ATYL policy, the number of proposals would rise exponentially)

If there is no consensus on how to map something, this means that some mappers will consider the activities of other mappers as “wrong”, leading to wrong data (in their eyes). I think we all agree that wrong data is worse than no data

Not really. If there are e.g. two ways how tag is being used, it creates ambiguity, and not “make data gwrong”. Depending on the specifics of that ambiguity, that tag might still have some (reduced) use (e.g. sport=hockey). Only in cases when the ambiguity is extreme (much rarer), then that tag can only be considered “burned” (and documented as deprecated for such reason).

Another more common thing that happens in ATYL (i.e. without someone “prescribed allowed tags”) it that there are multiple tags to describe the same (or very similar) thing. That is much less of a problem (just a minor one-time annoyance for data consumers to set up aliases).

Also note that even if only well-documented tags were allowed to be used, it would not solve the problem. Many are are least somewhat subjective (like the smoothness tag you mention, and have dedicated a lot of - appreciated! - time on), and so people can still mistag things (i.e. tag in a way that mismatches current wiki definition). The fact that meanings changed across the time practically guarantees that - some people will still use older definitions (as mappers don’t usually go read a wiki every day - they will usually read it just the first time until they understand it, and afterwards use if “from head” without re-referencing it again)

so we should stop mapping until we have consensus about how to map, and then all of us should follow that consensus

So, basically, you suggest that we should make OSM read-only immediately, and leave it in that state for indefinite future (I’m trying hard to avoid saying “forever” here)? :smiley:


TL;DR – It is extremely hard problem. Yes, I (obviously) agree that everybody agreeing on exact meaning on tags is best outcome. I however disagree that either having “central committee” prescribe the meanings of tags, or allowing few hundreds of wiki editor to mold a world in their image is a good idea. (even if they could all agree, which I find doubtful).
IMHO, the best we could hope to do is to is to document how things are used, and suggest better ways if current usage is problematic, and try to convince users to use more complicated and tiresome proposal process so unclear definition could be caught early enough so they can be fixed, before they become problems. But I’d dare not outright forbid ATYL, as it would lead to loss of much of community, I’m afraid, which would be much worse than the original problem (ambiguity of some tags).

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As this world is one of variety and imperfection, there can be many little variations in mapping practices between countries and not uncommonly between regions. One set of users may very likely view the practices of the other as ‘wrong’. These disputes are sometimes only settled after a long while of vigorous debate, which is not unhealthy. Therefore, people may as well enter some data in the meanwhile which might be corrected via bot or by hand later after a standard is firmly established.

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Ahhh that is an, extremely, good feedback ratio. The expected value is 0 (zero).

Simon

PS: 12’000 welcome messages
PPS: this part of the discussion is not new, see for example SimonPoole's Diary | 3 years of welcome messages, more than 3400 of them | OpenStreetMap, SimonPoole's Diary | Better late than never ... welcome mail #10'000 | OpenStreetMap and various maps.me related discussions, for example SimonPoole's Diary | OpenStreetMap Community Statistics Revisited | OpenStreetMap

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I think this regionalism is part of the strength of OSM and the ability for regions to apply tags appropriate for their use makes the data feel more like their own.

I also don’t think there are a large number of lone ranger mappers so, if they are having a small impact, we can just put up with them. Sorta like sand in your sandal while you are at the beach. You ignore the minor annoyance to enjoy the entire beach.

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highway=scramble is especially tricky as it is not only a new tag but attempt to deprecate use of widely used highway=path in some specific cases, making it extremely hard to achieve.

But in general, I agree with


and discovering such issues earlier than later is a very good thing (but handling it properly is often tricky and hard to do)

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Yep, that’s how it is … :rofl:.

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I agree to most of what you pointed out as usually and I would not see any reason to skip the policy of ATYL at all - in fact most mappers like to see the fruit of their work on carto asap and this is a reasonable motivation to use established tags instead of any “I know better values”.

Nevertheless it would well be possible to combine the advantages of the “open” system with some kind of moderation and create tagging rules at least for the most common keys which are “prescriptive” which would not mean that nevertheless any mapper could no longer use his “I know better values” as long as they are aware that their work would not find much attention of renderers or routers.

Some kind of moderation of wiki documented main tags would create a lot of benefit for all mappers. for newbies by giving them clear guidelines instead of ambiguous “some mapers do so but others do soso and again you could think about using … instead”, and for experienced mappers by saving them lots of valuable time wasted debating the same issue again and again and again …

Edit: Btw. coincidentially there is another topic dealing with the spongy wiki tagging recommandations here. Is it amenity=dentist or healthcare=dentist or even both of these tags to be on the safe side … it’s your choice … :rofl:

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Hmmm, maybe? Or perhaps we understand term “prescriptive” differently?

  • To me, it means that only tags which are prescribed/allowed are accepted into OSM database. I.e. it would be enforced - so if you e.g. tried to enter unknown (or deprecated) tag combination into JOSM and click upload, you’d be greeted with an “Error trying to set unapproved value”, and OSM database would remain unchanged. (and I thus find it bad idea, for all the reasons explained earlier).

  • If you mean some “much lighter” meaning of “prescriptive” like “we should suggest in wiki to users to use some tags and avoid others, but still allow them to upload whatever they want”, that would work, but isn’t that what we’re doing already? Each tag in a wiki has:

    • a “Status” field indicating it’s status, i.e. how well accepted it is
    • more problematic tags have much more visible banners like {{Deprecated}}, like e.g. sport=diving.
    • We also show how the tag will be rendered (or not) in Carto. Perhaps {{ValueDescription}} template could be modified to more prominently mark the missing osmcarto-rendering= parameter? Would that help?

    But anyway, if the users still have free will and can decide to ignore those suggestions, I’d call that approach “descriptive”.

  • if you mean “somewhat stronger than just good docs, but still allowing users to upload whatever they like” like e.g. having JOSM / iD / Vespucci / … validators throw a visible warning to users, that can be (and is) done today already (at least for JOSM I’ve seen it throw yellow triangle on suspicious preset configuration, and it’s validator warn about dubious tagging practices on upload).
    If something is missing today in such checks, it can be suggested to respective editor author in their own issue trackers to warn about Deprecated features, so one should feel free to open issues there.

would not mean that nevertheless any mapper could no longer use his “I know better values” as long as they are aware that their work would not find much attention of renderers or routers.

If they’re ever taken a look at the wiki, they’re probably quite aware that such tag will not be rendered or used for routing or anything (especially if they made it up via ATYL and didn’t even document it - it should be pretty obvious that nothing will be using it unless you write that tool yourself or convince others to do it!)

Some kind of moderation of wiki documented main tags would create a lot of benefit for all mappers for newbies by giving them clear guidelines instead of ambiguous “some mapers do so but others do soso and again you could think about using … instead”,

You mean, something like Map features - OpenStreetMap Wiki?
It is linked at the top on main page of the wiki.osm.org, but perhaps it could be made even more prominent somehow? Any ideas?

Also, I’d be wary of some moderation team having such power to decide what is right and what is wrong. Because, it would likely either have to work on:

  • “random/round-robin” principle (i.e. request goes to random moderator, and s/he is the sole dictator who decides the fate of the tag; which would likely results in either riots, or people resubmitting their tag suggestion ad infinitum until they reach “better” moderator), or

  • “committee consensus” principle (meaning many things would never ever get a decision, and the tensions would rise. E.g. best I could accomplish with Pedestrian lanes was to document myriad of possible ways how it is mapped currently - and each of those methods has both proponents and vehement opposition. I have no illusions that any kind of representative moderation committee would fare much better)

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But, what is the Welcome tool ??

https://welcome.osm.be/

(and welcome to the forum by the way :wink:)

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Somewhat related, there’s also the “Welcome Mat”, which is designed for organisations.

(confusing, yes, but not as confusing as the four different “communities” here, here. here and here)

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OpenStreetMap is just communityception :smiley:

Lol yes. Instead of turtles it’s various social media platforms all the way down. Take your pick

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You forgot all local osm Facebook groups!

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I guess I’m a Lone Ranger Mapper myself. I’m learning how you people will deal with me in the future. Who watches the Watchmen?

Now, for the real part of my comment, I think “lone ranger mappers” occupy a niche in the OSM community. They will always be around, they will always be under the radar, they don’t want to have interactions with the lousy community, but they contribute data. I would like to ask everyone to leave them alone as long as they don’t become spammers. I know it takes effort, but it’s something I won’t discuss. That’s a hill I will die on.

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Are you? Words have a way of picking up different meanings to different people. In this case, “Lone Ranger Mapper” was specifically defined in the beginning of this thread as:

Your profile says you’ve been around for more than a decade, so I’d be hesitant to attribute “beginner” label to yourself. Also, you seem to respond to communication attempts (both here in the forum, as well as in changeset comments), so that too would disqualify you from that definition.

Perhaps you used some other definition of those words, and not the one intended by original poster?

Sure. I don’t think anybody suggested to do otherwise? Was there a heated battle here and I missed it :slight_smile:? Why would anybody need to die on any hill? Perhaps there is misunderstanding who “them” are?

they don’t want to have interactions with the lousy community, but they contribute data

There is generally no problem with mapper not wanting to interact with (lousy or not) community by talking to them as long as they only contribute useful information to the map.

The problem however arises when someone contributes data that is not useful (e.g. it is incorrect, or is spam, or is from illegal sources etc.) and they refuse to communicate when the community attempts to contact them and ask them to change their behaviour. Would you agree that such situation would be problematic?

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I think extreme kindness and persistence is one way that worked for me. For example “Thank you for deleting all the benches in this park! It’s a valuable contribution. Did the town administration remove them recently? Here’s a wiki page about benches. Have a nice day!”

That way in the 99.9% cases where the mapper tried to help, they are greeted with matching good energy, and I think they will respond better than if there is even a hint of anger.

Although my example is a bit passive aggressive, i should work on that.

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Only with spammers and people who infringe copyright. I will take the “not useful” information any time instead of no participation/information at all :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:.

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My experience has been similar to yours. Communicate in good faith and the same good attitude will be returned in kind.

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