If I am understanding correctly, the tag review_requested is to get feedback. So, if all of our changesets turn this on, then we (the app creators) have to manually respond to the comments posted by the larger OSM community about their concern on the automated changesets. Some of these concerns will require us to get in contact with the users who submitted the tree data in the first place. Is that right?
I think it would be good for a stepped approach.
- a user takes a picture.
- app uses the GPS position to open a sat image (prefsrrably one that has been shown to be somewhat well aligned in the area). Then the user has to manually adjust the marker.
you might still have an error if the trunk base and the crown are shifted but much less than just GPS from photo. And of course sat image alignment is important as it is for all editor uses
The review_requested is just a flag on the changeset. Your changes still get into the database immediately. I just raises awareness for volunteers who wanna help out with difficult changes or new people being unsure of their changes.
review_requested on every of your changeset would be waaaay too much for volunteers to handle. But people will probably still have an eye on your automated changes and you’ll have to respond to questions and changeset comments that come up
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Ok. So if we do not use the review_requested flag on each of our changesets, we are still thinking of other ways to verify. We were mostly relying on volunteers who have the ability to review help us in this process. We were thinking of having users go into OSM and see if their tree was mapped accordingly once they have the changeset number and node number. Are there any other ways to ensure proper verification, as we have not created an internal team designated to that task?
We are exactly following the stepped approach mentioned. I might have confused you with saying Imagery Base map, but that means a satellite Imagery map being used as the base map, and the pins, i.e. the markers are moved around to change the location to exactly where the point occurred.
Can you say exactly what you mean here? If you mean go to openstreetmap.org to check, you will immediately get users tell you their tree “isn’t on the map”. This is because map tiles presented there take a while to update: see here.
I’m keen to be as positive as possible here: we need to make editing the map easy, and the community needs to be an open one.
At the same time, if the above is what you meant, the tile refresh issue is very, very basic OSM knowledge: it’s most novice users’ first question. I’m wondering if you would all benefit from several weeks editing the map yourselves, so you get a sense of how it works? OSM appears to be a major pillar of the project, and your profiles appear not to show much experience (I may be missing something, of course).
My question for the leader of this project is why this is not the case. As @rainerU said earlier, OSM users are not here to QA a project funded by a US government department.
You can see on this thread the level of commitment to helping you get it right, and my experience suggests you can expect the same level of support going forward if you proceed thoughtfully and carefully. But the fastest way to rile the community is to encourage a lot of people who don’t know what they’re doing to make a lot of low-quality edits.
My view, as a mapper all too aware of my own limitations, is that you really should not roll out this project before running it on a small scale under close scrutiny. You should validate the initial edits yourselves, and seek the views of the community on the quality of your validation. Apart from anything else, this would help build confidence in the project among the community whom you hope will support it.
Getting trees in the map is a great idea. Like all great ideas it’s the execution that counts!
Typically automated and / or organised edits are hash-tagged.
eg,
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Yes, tile refresh is a issue for sure that would need to be solve in some way.
However sending an app user a message to see the results of their work a few days later is a good idea to keep more contributors, and not only trees.
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But what would that link show?
Would it show the 1 tree that that particular user has added, or would it show the Changeset with 14 trees added? From what’s been said about the planned upload process, I’m thinking the batch of 14 trees?
& will those trees be in “reasonably” close proximity, or could that one CS span worldwide?
One thing that hasn’t been touched upon yet is the “[plantnet] to help with the plant identification part” thing. What does that mean exactly? Does it mean “Human provides the tree location, plantnet tags the species afterwards?” or does it mean that the users get suggestions from plantnet to choose from? What happens if they are unsure about the suggestions? Will there only be a tree node with no species tagged, or a tree node with an unchecked machine guess added? 90% accuracy doesn’t seem all that good, that’s wrong data for 1 in 10 objects!
An OSM map, like the we once looked for after our first contributions and get us addicted!
Hello all. I want to emphasize that we are testing in a sandbox still and will not deploy our edits until we have fully tested all of our changes. As for the question I posted, I believe it was misinterpreted. I was mainly asking if anyone knew of any other validation services external to OSM. I also want to say I have experience in OSM; I am communicating from a separate developer account as per the OSM guidelines, so my history there is not accounting for my existing friends or past changes. We are also working on a vertification process as per requests. Someone also mentioned taking a picture at the bark to get better GPS (I am aware canopies sometimes interfere signals). To solve this issue, we will ask our users to take two photos: one of the full tree and one at the base. The base photo coordinates will be used for mapping into OSM. The users will also have the choice to manually change the GPS point on the imagery basemap if needed. We will also ensure no duplicates are added into OSM. We have the ability to also only allow input from users which have minimum horizontal accuracy. All of our edits will be hash-tagged and labeled as bot=yes. We may also send an email to our users later where they can see their tree and make changes if needed. The images will be of the full tree. Every individual tree attached to each tree node will have a link to the image. Again, we are still figuring out our verification process.
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The main concern about data duplication is not related to the user uploading the same tree twice, it is directly related to the user not uploading an existing tree in OSM.
Regarding the correct position of a tree, there are several ways to achieve a minimum precision of location.
However, the project is quite ambitious and you should be ready for a storm of comments as soon as you misplace a tree or mislabel a species.
Have you studied the equivalence of current TAG’s of tree species in OSM against what was found in https://identify.plantnet.org/?
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I understand your duplication concern. Our method of ensuring no duplicate trees are added into OSM is to find trees that are in OSM that are near any tree we want to upload. If the OSM tree is too close, our data is not added into OSM. As for the species name, we have compared the two. OSM species documentation Key:species - OpenStreetMap Wiki lists common mistakes that we will keep in mind. We are also aware that some species are already common in OSM, such as Platanus x acerifolia, and we will add species in a manner similar to those examples. We are hoping to have a verification team that can ensure the trees are added correctly into OSM to avoid the swarm of comments you mentioned. Of course, if a tree is missed and comments do come, we will try to fix it immediately.
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Sorry, another couple of questions for you, particularly in regard to trees being close together.
How are you working Tag:natural=tree_row - OpenStreetMap Wiki , & wooded / forested areas Tag:natural=wood - OpenStreetMap Wiki ?
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We were not necessarily planning on using these tags. We will request users to only take pictures of trees that are standalone, not part of forests or a group of trees in a row. If a user does happen to send these in, then our verification team can use the two tags you mentioned. The main use, we believe, for our app is for mapping trees in your community/subdivision or near you, not necessarily ones that are part of many trees in a forest or wooded area.
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Thanks: this is good, and I had inferred as much. Are you also planning to live test in a limited area before you go “worldwide”?
What I meant was that you should choose just one city, or national park, or whatever, and have a dozen or so authentic contributors (not your developers) doing “live” edits for a while. Those first edits should be reviewed by yourselves, and then your work peer-reviewed by the community, before rolling this out wider. Honestly, it’s the “worldwide” thing that makes me most nervous: it connotes an app unleashed into the wild, and no way of spotting the damage it’s doing before it’s too late. imo the app needs to learn to walk before it can run: OSM doesn’t suit people who move fast and break things. 
Thanks for your clarifications in the rest of that post, too. Especially, I didn’t realise the norm was to use a developer account.
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That’s pretty much what the iD editor does - if you link to a changeset at osm.org you get a bounding box; link to a node and you get that node as an orange dot.
Given that you know the details of the tree just added you don’t need to go to osm.org to show that Whatever in-app map library you’re using would surely be able to show whatever you like as an overlay.
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