My MapRoulette co-contributors and I are working on the next major version of MapRoulette. We would really appreciate your input and ideas. Below is my first question. I will add to this thread with more questions over time.
I don’t have a “release date” for the new version yet (almost certainly not this year), and in the meantime the current version will still be actively maintained.
Lastly, I would like this thread to be constructive. I am aware that MapRoulette is not without criticism and controversy. Fortunately, we already have a separate thread for that, so please head there if that’s what you came here for.
Discovery
One of the things I really want to accomplish is an easier way for mappers to find a task they are interested in quickly. This is especially important if you are new to MapRoulette and / or new to OSM.
Right now we have filters and a map you can explore, but I think there is room for improvement.
I am not saying MR must have this too, but I do believe these are good examples of how to create an immediate path for users to pick something that interests them.
If you’ve used MapRoulette, I am sure you have ideas about how to make it easier for mappers to find a task that suits their interests and experience level! I would love to hear them.
One thing that would be useful is a unified map view. Right now, if I zoom in on Spokane in the “browse challenges” map, I get a list of 23 challenges and a bunch of bubbles on the map with numbers in them, but there’s no indication of how many local items any of these tasks has. If l click on a challenge to find out more, I get kicked out to the global view and have to zoom in again to find local details; if I then click “Go Back”, there’s a significant pause while the overview map re-loads and re-zooms-in.
What would be nice is a quick way to see that, for example, “Fix Road Name Gaps” has only one task in Spokane County.
I’ll second that, I’m mostly interested in editing in my country (Sweden) and preferably in parts of Sweden I’m familiar with. So a map of all tasks, with filtering based on challenge etc., would be much appreciated.
As an example, I’ve built a tool that shows deviations between OSM and various Swedish governmental sources, which focuses on a map view with all deviations and filters for categories etc.: BästaJävlaKartan
Maybe an idea could be to let users tag a challenge as “global” or “country specific”, and people could look for specific countries only.
Also could be possibile to show what users participated in a specific challenge? This would allow the owner (and others?) to easier validate the edits, understand if the challenge is popular or active etc.
It will be good if you can add the possibility of edit and start the challenge directly in Vespucci. Vespucci is the best and most complete OSM editor for android, it will improve a lot the usage of Map Roulette via smartphone. Thanks
Hi, can a challenge be ignored so that it doesn’t appear in the “Find challenges” list and also not on the map?
If yes, I’d like to know how. And if no I’d like to welcome such feature very much. :)
