Problematic access changes by Microsoft mappers in the UK

Communities United Kingdom
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I recently came across this edit which seemed unlikely given the location (in England) and previous tags. Further investigation revealed that it was part of a Maproulette “challenge” which seems have resulted in some problematical changes. There are problems with the Maproulette side of things (see here for that) but obviously the situation is now that in among the genuine fixes there are significant errors that have been introduced. I’ve commented on a few - of the 5 or so that I’ve looked at only one was “definitely sensible and OK” - two were obvious errors and two were questionable.

In most cases I suspect that further investigation is needed - it might be a chat about service roads vs tracks (there are no clues in the changeset comments why these changes were made, just “Reclassification” which is unhelpful).

A list of changesets and mappers is here**. If it would help to provide lists for individual counties or other areas, I can (but manually, so let me know which).

There is no discussion of these changes in the wiki, but there is a link to a Microsoft site, which also does not say much.

** "select id,user_name from osm_changeset where created_at > '20240101' and tags -> 'comment' LIKE '%mpr.lt/c/48118/%' order by id asc;" on a ChangesetMD database. Where people have used slight variations of that changeset comment they won’t be listed here; there are more to look for.

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Here is another problem one created by the same user. There are only 13 of those. Some changes OK, some very likely not. I’ve commented on 5 of the iffy ones.

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Dear Andy,

For this MapRoulette challenge, each task was thoroughly investigated through multiple steps. Initially, we reviewed aerial imagery, OS OpenMap Local (October 2022), and Public Rights of Way layers in JOSM, followed by Mapillary where coverage was available. If we determined that the classification needed adjustment and there were no apparent issues, we proceeded with the necessary changes. However, in cases where the sources did not provide sufficient certainty, we typically reached out to the users who initially classified the tracks or to an active mapper in the area over messages. The community has been very active and responsive, allowing us to implement a significant number of changes based on their feedback.

We were following these guidelines throughout the process:

Access provisions in the United Kingdom - OpenStreetMap Wiki

Tag:designation=public_bridleway - OpenStreetMap Wiki

Further guidance on tagging Public Rights of Way in the United Kingdom - OpenStreetMap Wiki

OSM tags for routing/Access restrictions - OpenStreetMap Wiki

However, you have identified some changesets that warrant further discussion. We will conduct a round of quality checks on all edits of our team made during this MapRoulette challenge and would be happy to discuss this further with you afterward if that is agreeable.

Best regards,

Aleksandar Matejevic

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Thanks. You have 2717 changesets to review; when do you believe you’ll be able to post back here after doing that?

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I will get back to you ASAP, cannot promise but targeting EOW, depends on the findings.

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For info, we’ve had feedback from someone local to one of the changes here that one of these changes was definitely wrong.

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In early July, I had a couple of messages from Microsoft mappers asking if I could help with access tagging on a couple of highway sections I’d edited. Hopefully they can be encouraged to do that more often, although preferably via changeset comments.

On of them was a local modal filter, which I was happy to tweak to reflect both the traffic order and the available imagery.

I think the other was one where I had just added the PRoW ref and said something along the lines of “sorry, that needs someone to visit the site and check”.

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Thanks Andy. It’s been nearly a month since @Aleksandar_Matejevic said he’d get back to you. Has he?

Shall I go ahead and just correct this example?

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I don’t believe so (I’d have expected an answer back here rather than a private message (which I don’t believe I’ve had)) @Aleksandar_Matejevic - any thoughts on when you may be able to finish your review?

Yes, I think that makes sense. I fixed the original one I found. Just 2715 to go :slight_smile: .

For completeness, this original problem edit never had a DWG ticket for it, because it was just something I happened to see, not a complain as such. However, I’ve had a look at there was a DWG ticket raised for some of these changes - (“Ticket#2024070710000241”). Despite that ticket being closed, some of the changes flagged there do look wrong. I’ll comment on a couple of changesets and point the Microsoft mappers here.

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Hi all, sorry for the delay in response.

I have checked all changesets and have caught ~30 that may have incorrect change. I would like it if someone could jump in and comment on them.

Changeset

152790835

152796345

152798576

152804415

152890833

152571381

152573725

152574160

152575622

152577560

152581422

152582699

152582742

152615766

152624357

152880338

152581075

152581337

152618700

152629958

152630303

152631032

152661196

152667182

152795771

152804068

152879739

152891885

152894013

152894881

153395589

However, most of the changes seem to be correct. What I have seen is that a lot of roads near our edits were tagged, same as we did that. No one complained so we took that into consideration while making the changes.

The biggest problem I noticed is caused because of one premise, that tracks and driveways are put in the same category. Why? Track is a minor land access road like a farm or forest track and driveway is service road leading to the residential house. Are these not the same? It seems like if someone sees a gravel road that defines that as a track, while it is just unpaved service road.

Can someone go over these noted changesets so we can have better picture, and if you have found some examples, I would be more than happy to go over discussion and make some clear guidelines and then, if needed, change some of the edits made by our team.

Thanks

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For completeness see also my comments on https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/152948369 (which you haven’t mentioned). I can see what the Microsoft editor was trying to do there, but I don’t think that they got the balance right.

Very often, yes. It’s pretty common for things to be used for a mixture of agricultual and residential access, and picking the best tag often requires asking “what is this most used for”.

However, while in some cases you may be able to use OS OpenData as part of the story (e.g. for service/track vs residential in the change I linked above), often it’ll need a survey. What I don’t understand are (a) why “Road reclassification project - GBR” was created in the first place and (b) why Microsoft mappers are spending time trying to remotely edit these issues.

Based on what I’ve seen, I suspect that the quality of OSM data would go up rather than down if all Microsoft’s edits to this task were reverted.

My first question (in I suspect each and every case) would be “what change did you actually make and why did you make it?”. The comment on the first changeset was “Reclassification of the roads in GB #MSFTOpenMaps mpr.lt/c/48118/t/229419004” - that comment adds no value whatsoever.

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Ok, now I get where our paths diverge. I do not think that driveway and tracks are equal. Track should be used for accessing agricultural fields, usually not accessiblee for regular vehicles. Driveway is approach to someone house and it can be used by cars. Having surface=unpaved, gravel, etc. or smothness tag, access tag will allow or prevent routing engine to navigate over that road.

To answer why MR task was created: We have performed analysis and found out there there is a fair amount of navigable roads that are not connected to any navigable road (so just a connection to path, footway, bridleway, track, steps…). After we have pulled out all these examples it was then sent to crowdsourcing platform for humans to validate if these segments should be connected to main network or they should be changed to non navigable road. Next step was done by our editorial team, all possitive valued segments were then investigated by our team and then classification was changed, either to upgrade it to service, residential, or to lower the classification to track, footway etc. The comment left was the same so we could track the changes (I agree that it was not the best solution but mistake is made, will not do it in a future).

In cases where situations were unclear, we have been contacting local users, and in most of the cases upgrade was approved. The change was made in 51%, then 39% were correctly classified and where there was no response form the community, we marked these as Cant Complete, which was 5% of the task. The community was very responsive and helpfull.

For the example you have sent and commented that you will block all Microsoft accounts, I do not see the issue. Can you explain why you find this to be so disturbing? It is 9.4m log segment that connects that household driveway to main road. I agree that motor_vehicle tag should be added, but I kindly ask you to explain the issue and why is that making OSM worst, so I can try to understand the proportion of impact that our changes made.

Also, I do not object reverting all changesets, we can even do it if that is agreed with the community, we want good cooperation with both DWG and communities all around the world.

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Except there’s a problem there: tracks can also be used to access people’s houses and are also often very much easily accessible to cars.

For example take way 109560825 and the short other way linking it to the main road network. From a public rights of way perspective it is a bridleway and it is also a track used to access agricultural fields. Furthermore there are half a dozen houses up it and a service entrance to a golf course.

  1. Track used for agricultural access
  2. Bridleway
  3. Access route for multiple houses
  4. Service access for golf course

How should it be tagged? At the moment it’s tagged highway=service with appropriate access tags for the bridleway and vehicles of the houses, golf course and agricultural users.

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For what it’s worth, I’ve always found the “all agricultural roads are tracks” argument to be pretty arbitrary and a very European mentality.

Most tracktype=grade1 and probably grade2 are items we would not hesitate to call a service road if it were for any industrial or commericial use. Unless that industry is agriculture or forestry and then it’s suddenly a track again.

Why is this service=driveway tagged as a track? Oh, because it’s going to allotments. Really?

Can’t these just be duck tagged as to whether they look like they’ve been planned or not as happens in most of the rest of the world?

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I don’t think that a canonical “driveway” and “track” are equal either - just that in the real world things are often a mix of both. It’s true that service roads are more likely to be accessible by regular cars than agricultural tracks, but again that’s not a hard and fast rule (the OSM wiki has an example paved track on it partly I suspect for that reason).

In England and Wales, what do you think is a “navigable road”? In the absence of explicit access tags, you’ve got exactly the same default access rights on a service road as on an agricultural track (none). If you’re delivering a parcel (for example) then in a sense you’re “invited to access” a property. In the absence of surface, smoothness etc. I can understand why a router would prefer a service road to an agricultural track, but that’s based on customary usage and likely vehicle appropriateness, not legal right of access.

Yes - and thanks for that. An example which benefited from this approach was here. There, there is a clear mismatch between on the ground data (although the signage isn’t great) and OS OpenData (that shows a change between 2016 and 2024, but still doesn’t match signage). The resulting “best guess” was only possible based on survey; there’s no way that some random MapRoulette user with no familiarity with the local area (or perhaps even the country) could do that.

To be clear, the first part of the sentence that I wrote that you omitted was “in the event of no action by Microsoft”.

Would you complain if 9.4m of your private driveway leading up to your house was changed to be a public road? I certainly would!

A good first step for Microsoft here would be to revisit all the changeset comments that are of the form "Reclassification of the roads in GB #MSFTOpenMaps mpr.lt/c/48118/t/229418319 " and add a disussion comment saying what they changed and why., and based on what evidence (which imagery or other sources did they look at, for example).