Ramblers == freeloaders?

So Nick tries to interest walkers in free maps, and they're having none of it. If it's not completely complete, they won't touch the project.

Fair enough, they're users not contributors. Maybe they have no interest in recording their walks, sharing their notes, or updating the maps.

But let's look at the completeness problem. And to make it more interesting, let's use changes with respect to time, rather than looking at a snapshot.

Background information: OpenStreetmap has been a project for about 2-3 years now. This is London, from about 1.5 - 2 years ago:

The grey/purple is Landsat photography - OpenStreetMap's data is the white lines showing roads. Other areas were even worse. For an average town, there might only be one white line representing a road. People would visit the website and say "oh, there's nothing in my area" and never return.

Similar to what happens now, with countryside maps. But what happens when you look at the rate of change?



The same area today, after improvements in the rendering software, the editing software, some help from Yahoo's satellite, and a mapping party in the area.

(note: all images are Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 2.0 if you'd like to copy them)

A bit of enthusiasm from the locals, and projects like this go from nothing to complete very quickly. Someone just completed Cambridge pretty much on their own. The Isle of Wight was done in one weekend. Completed cities are springing up all over Europe on the OSM map. Just browse around to see some.

So what of the ramblers, and their whining that they won't touch anything that's less complete than an Ordnance Survey 1:50000 landranger?

It's just a waste really. People out in the countryside with a GPS and a digital camera, walking past features that could become part of the map and choosing not to record them.

But one thing I can tell them: when you finally do start using OSM, you'll kick yourself at the lost opportunities, at all the places you could have recorded but didn't. Looking at a blank map of somewhere you've walked and wishing you could see the footpath on it.

We know because we've all done the same.