OpenStreetMap
I was bigging up OSM at the Society of Cartographers conference last week. Today I got an email from a delegate saying "yeh, you say that - but my village has no detail at all". Indeed, Ashley Heath (nr Market Drayton) had just the cross roads. So just now I have added all the roads that are clearly visible on the NPE layer (tagged as highway=road), and a couple of footpaths (highway=path). I will shortly end the person a Walking Papers geo-rectified printout and ask them to collaborate by adding in the newer roads and adding road names etc, (which I will edit happily). Is anyone local able to verify stuff on the ground - the roads need classifying for instance. Most are probably residential/unclassified, but might be tracks, etc. I see that user:pepperm added the local pub this very day. Perhaps you could contact me (have sent a personal msg too). It would be good to show the power of the crowd in this kind of scenario.
STEVE
Discussion
Comment from Richard on 15 September 2009 at 09:43
That looks better. Have to wean you off using "highway=road" though - in this sort of area it's almost certainly going to be highway=unclassified, and it's much more useful to have a 95% guess (which someone can come and correct in the 5% case) than such an unspecific tag!
Comment from Mappo on 16 September 2009 at 11:05
I'd suggest a bit of reverse psychology is in order. Instead of the message being "OSM is perfect and already finished" which clearly it isn't, you can spin it as "OSM only has a few untouched spots available in the UK, this is your last chance to get the satisfaction of being the first one to sketch out a blank area".
You're still emphasising progress, but finding a blank spot is seen as a good thing. From comments here and elsewhere there are a variety of things that drive contributors but one strong motivation is "filling in the gaps". Maybe it's better to leave these for the newbies to get them started?