OpenStreetMap relies on community updates, but some areas remains under mapped. What methods have you found effective in encouraging local contributors like incentives, mapping parties or workshops? Are there tools or tutorials that help onboard new mappers? Lets share ideas to boost engagement, Improve data quality, and make editing easier for the newcomers.
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It’s a necessary and interesting topic, but I think it needs to be a bit more specific or broken down into more detailed scenarios.
Obviously, the appropriate response can vary greatly depending on the situation.
For example, in regions with very few contributors, it may be necessary for contributors from other areas to intentionally step in and contribute.
On the other hand, in regions where there are a fair number of contributors but little actual contribution, it would be important to apply strategies tailored to that specific region in order to encourage participation.
If you could present some of the local situations you’re considering or have in mind, I think it would make it easier for others to come up with ideas that are more relevant and appropriate.
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Search results for "tutorials" - OpenStreetMap Wiki and Search results for "Starting guide" - OpenStreetMap Wiki finds some though maybe we should have page listing those
To be honest, the best way to just knuckle down and get to mapping.
I make a ton of accurate contributions and also use landuse to make the map beautiful on those that render effectively.
I’ve had people get interested after using apps like Organic Maps, seeing how the landuse tags behind the scenes make it look like real life, and then they wonder how it works and stumble into it.
Also, high quality edits motivate people who do contribute but do so sparingly. Just my 2 cents.
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Thank you to @Kevin_Mitnik for opening this thread. It indeed is an important and interesting question! I’d be very interested to hear what others have to say!
I was about to write exactly this! I think leading by example is the way to go. Once one actually sees on the map what a really well, thoughtfully and exhaustively (micro)mapped area can look like, it at least inspires me to strive for the same in my neck of the woods, one place at a time.
I also think that many, particularly new, mappers don’t necessarily go out of their way to scour the Wiki, or tutorials, for useful tags to be added. More often than not, mappers take their cues of tags that could be added from the data they handle and manipulate. Again, I think this is perfectly understandable. So one more reason to have well-mapped (local) areas as ‘showcases’ to exhibit what could be done elsewhere too!
On this note, someone suggested recently (in a post I couldn’t locate right now) that the landing page at osm.org have one ‘debug’ vector map lap-layer (alongside CyclOSM and the others) for mappers. The current ‘Map Data’ overlay is somewhat difficult and slow to use when you’re just interested to peak what tags some elements have, and don’t want to fire up an editor. Back when I joined OSM in 2008, we used to have an alternate ‘debug’ raster layer. Vector layers could show much more details (visualize more tags) at high zooms. Furthermore, they could more easily show all the tags an element has, with a e.g. a mouseover tooltip (again, at very high zoom levels), instead of using a cumbersome overlay (that explodes and zooms out if you happen to choose a large element).
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