[Talk-at] Missing Maps mapathon, November 7th at Austrian Red Cross!

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 11/04/2016 02:45 PM, Martin Noblecourt wrote:
> Sorry for the late warning (and for posting in English!): the mapping
> NGO CartONG, the Austrian Red Cross and Doctors without Borders-Austria
> are organizing a *Missing Maps mapathon **next Monday from 3 to 6PM at
> the ARC HQ in Vienna*.
> 
> The aim of the Missing Maps Project is to map the most crisis-prone
> parts of the developing world. With your help we can directly improve
> the lives of some of the planet’s most vulnerable people. Mapathons are
> a great opportunity to get new people to discover OpenStreetMap, 

I think Mapathons are a terrible way to introduce new people to
OpenStreetMap. They don't help OpenStreetMap, and most importantly, they
don't help the "vulnerable people" that the organizers keep banging on
about.

Quality mapping requires good on-the-ground knowledge, but these
so-called "Mapathons" are mostly organised with armchair mapping in
mind. Newcomers are given the impression that they can pick up the
necessary training in a couple hours and already help save lives in
areas they have never set foot in. This lead to poor results - as
illustrated by Pierre Beland just a few minutes ago here

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/hot/2016-November/012673.html

but still we hear of "Mapathons" all over the place where people are
given an entirely wrong picture of what OpenStreetMap is about and are
misled into thinking that you can do good with a couple hours of tracing
buildings.

This is not the kind outreach that will make OpenStreetMap a better map,
this is just using OpenStreetMap for show.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"