Please spell out the name in full. So Road rather than Rd.

You appear to be mapping buildings already in OSM. I'm deleting duplicates.

Please use avenue rather than ave.

Thanks John

120 untagged buildings using JOSM?

Use the buildings_tool plugin please.

This building was mapped in dec 2022 you appear to have mapped it over the top in January 2023. In other words duplicating it?

highway=residential was correct. road=yes is not an accepted value.

osm.wiki/Highway_Tag_Africa

Try JOSM buildings_tool it adds the correct tag rather than leaving them untagged. I've corrected a few of your untagged buildings today,

It helps if you add a tag of building=yes. Try JOSM buildings_tool its faster.

You seem have to have uploaded 140 duplicate buildings. Possibly you've uploaded the same data twice? I'm quietly zapping them by the way.

You appear to be mapping buildings twice. Once a very narrow building inside another. Have you tried the buildings_tool plugin in JOSM? It might cut a few errors. JOSM can be run from USB stick.

Out of curiosity which userid do you map under?

From memory that particular way was untagged. On inspection I think I copied the tags from a nearby way.

The JOSM validation clean up is short hand for loading it into JOSM then individually inspecting each problem. I seem to recall deleting about a thousand duplicate buildings in Burkina Faso. So yes I'm cleaning up from imagery rather than being boots on the ground and inspecting each leaf to see which species it is but on the whole I think the map is cleaner afterwards. If you have a concern that the hedge has been incorrectly tagged then I suggest you revert the change set so it becomes untagged once more. John

You'veused highway=service alley=service on a highway connecting two settlements rather than highway=unclassified that I might expect according to the African highway wiki. Any special reason for the tags?

Are you suggesting it's not worth trying to correct the map?

I note that Zambia is trying to conduct a census based in part on buildings in OSM. I think I deleted a couple of thousand duplicate buildings and added in a couple of hundred untagged ways in Zambia in the last couple of weeks hopefully before they sent the census guys out.

It would be nice to have accurate mapping with on the ground mappers who knew what they were doing but we don't with HOT and instant mappers around. At least I can mop up some of the worse mapping and quite a few people depend on building counts for things like how many vaccines do we need.

It isn't ideal but it better than nowt.

Cheerio John

The process isn't perfect. I run through the untagged ways that JOSM throws up with todo list. These are mainly HOT mapped. Then I go through them one at a time visually. If they duplicate an existing building they get deleted, I use Bing as a background and most of the time they are present in Bing. Bing imagery can be three years out of date. However HOT does use other sources and one local mapper has commented that often a village will move so the buildings are no longer there. On balance I think the map is better with them tagged but if you are quite certain they no longer exist then I'm happy if you revert the changeset. John

No just me going through the map adding tags to untagged ways manually. From memory they were highways. I don't just demolish duplicate buildings although I have done quite a few recently.

These are really odd shaped buildings?

It's not ideal, there are so many that to really check which building is the more accurate takes time. Determine which imagery is the most up to date and which is best aligned. More time than to map the building using the buildings_tool plugin from JOSM.

I used to do validation on HOT projects but there is so many imperfections and buildings really are quicker to map than correct that I gave up. These days I do clean up on the enamel bucket scale rather than the test tube scale.

Most NGOs and people like census or delivery people want to know roughly where a building is and how many there are. Multiply the number of buildings by say six and you have a rough estimate of population. Having an incorrect number of buildings is a pain in the neck.

So yes it isn't perfect but neither is HOT mapping and I think it's worth doing even if I don't make a change set comment on each building I intend to delete before deleting.

The process is to load a block of the database into JOSM so typically it will be 24 hours out of date but not more than 56 hours. Then I run a script which identifies buildings with more than 50% overlap.

These get loaded into a JOSM Todo list and individually inspected. One of the two buildings is then normally deleted. It's not perfect but I've added in some hundred or so untagged buildings and deleted more than a couple of thousand duplicate buildings in Zambia.
I note that they are trying to do a census using building data from OSM so this is to try and clean up Zambia or as much as I can before they start.

I'm not deleting buildings that do not appear in Bing only ones that overlap usually by 90% another building. Some have been uploaded twice, some have been mapped twice by the same mapper. Most are HOT mapped.

Hopefully that will reassure you.

There are untagged ways in here with lots of relationships on bus stops. Any chance of them getting cleaned up?