[talk-ch] Mapbox mapping activity [Ticket#2022041410000184]

[Andy Townsend]

Hello,

Andy Townsend from OSM's Data Working Group here.  We were cc:ed on 
http://lists.openstreetmap.ch/pipermail/talk-ch/2022-April/011470.html 
and I've picked it up because I've been involved with a couple of 
related tickets elsewhere.  Sorry about the out-of thread message; I've 
just joined this list to reply.

Mapbox have been creating these "projects" country by country at 
https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/issues and what's happened in each 
country has been broadly similar:

  * Mapbox say that they will "resolve some issues" in that country, but
    don't say what they will fix or how they detected them.
  * The community in that country asks questions and gets only vague
    handwavy answers (e.g.
    https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-ie/2022-April/003016.html
    ).
  * The DWG then gets complaints about poor editing in that country and
    has to try and deal with the mappers concerned (see e.g.
    https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/del_account/blocks ).
  * The local community and/or the DWG then has to go through a "bucket
    and shovel" exercise to tidy up.

It makes no sense for Mapbox to take this approach in every country - it 
just creates extra work for everyone.

A much better approach would be what (eventually, after much badgering 
by the local community) happened in the UK.  At 
https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/issues/387#issuecomment-1015316614 
Mapbox published their list of "detected problems".  What then happened 
in the UK was that the local communityfixed a large number of the issues 
(where there were genuine issues), and Mapbox's "mappers" didn't need to 
do anything - something of a win/win for everyone.  I suspect that the 
Swiss OSM community is even better qualified than the UK one for that 
approach to work here too.

Looking outside of Switzerland, I'm now worried about where there hasn't 
been feedback on issues at https://github.com/mapbox/mapping/issues/ , 
but that's offitopic for this list.

Best Regards,

Andy (from the DWG)

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