About a year ago, we launched a mapping campaign at the request from [_Visit Flanders_ (Toerisme Vlaanderen)](https://toerismevlaanderen.be/pin-je-punt). This mapping campaign is focussed on some touristical POI, such as charging stations for ebikes, benches, picnic tables, public toilets and playgrounds. FOr this, a [custom mapcomplete theme was created](https://mapcomplete.org/toerisme_vlaanderen). (For a full explanation, see the last paragraph)
A part of the campaign involved a guided import. The agency had many datasets lying around (e.g. about benches or picnic tables) which they wanted to have imported in OSM. As doing a data import is hard and the data was sometimes outdated, we opted for a crowdsourced approach: for every possible feature, a map note was created containing a friendly explanation, information links, the tags to create and instructions to open MapComplete.
When opened in mapcomplete, the user would be prompted to `import` the point or to mark it as `not found` or `duplicate`. All of these actions close the note with a small message on what the chosen action was.
Most map notes are closed by now, but the central question in this analysis today is: _should remaining map notes be closed in batch, or do we leave them open for longer_? Note that input of the local community will be gathered as well - this article will mostly serve as a point to start the discussion.
Various datasets were provided to upload - which were converted into notes. In the table below, you'll find a breakdown by topic, the date when they were uploaded, the number of notes created and how much of those notes were already closed and the top contributors for the category.
In this table, I'm not including if the feature has been added to OpenStreetMap, has been marked as not existing anymore or marked as being a duplicate.
Most of those notes have been opened by a [dedicated account](https://openstreetmap.org/user/Toerisme%20Vlaanderen%20-%20Pin%20je%20punt), except for two imports which accidentally did not use this account (noted in the table below).
| Feature type (source) | date | Number of features | Handled | Handled percentage | Contributor (closed notes) |
How did the notes evolve over time? Are trends visible?
The following graph shows the number of open notes for this campaign over time. The blueish line shows the total amount of Open Notes, which sharply jumps upwards when a new dataset was added.
Other lines represent the amount of notes closed by an individual contributor. As is visible, A127 and Eebie have done a tremendous amount of work, whereas around 20 other contributors have contributed a modest amount of points.
Another interesting graph is how much of the features got imported and how much got refused. As it turns out, 53% of all features got imported. Note that, if the point gets added by using mapcomplete, the note will be closed with the message 'imported'. As many contributors used other editors, I'm checking for other keywords as well to mark them as 'imported', 'duplicate' or 'not_found'. Of course, humans are messy and the keyword-based approach is incomplete and inexact. 13% of closed notes could not be matched automatically.
About 6% of the points were marked as 'could not be found'. Some of the manually closed notes indicate that the area has changed and the feature (often a bench) is removed. As such, this is a good indicator or the staleness of the source dataset.
The fact that 6% of the features to import turned out not to exist anymore, this is a good argument for not blindly importing data into OSM! But this also poses that we should _maintain_ the map and that features such as benches should be checked regularly. Ideally, the municipality administration would integrate updating OSM into their flow...
At last, even though no notes were created if a similar feature was already in OSM, about 10% of the notes was rejected as being a duplicate. This is partly because one dataset of benches turned out to also contain picnic tables - good for 168 'duplicate' entries, yet duplicates are quite common in other datasets too.
In total, **2921** notes have been created, of which **78%** has been handled - that are 2301 that have been reviewed and imported (or closed with an indication that they cannot/should not be imported). Excluding the later benches of Oostende, only 7% (!) remains open.
That is a huge effort, of which I would like to thank all involved. Especially **A127** who closed **684** notes and **Eebie** who handled **474** notes - your work is amazing!
The work of A127 is amazing by the sheer volume of the work, but I want to give Eebie an extra thanks as he took it upon himself to search for the _toilets_. These were notoriously hard to find and to survey, as het often tried to use the actual toilet in social facilities, group nursing homes or administrative centers. These were often closed or unaware that they were listed as having a public toilet; at other times, those toilets were marked >100m away from the actual location.
## Differences between the datasets
The response on the datasets and the imports varied heavily by the type of the feature.
The **benches and picnic tables** are relatively straightforward. Visiting the place - physically or virtually with aerial imagery or Mapillary - suffices to decide if the feature still exists. As such, those tasks got handled relatively quickly. Only where no Mapillary and no aerial imagery are available, the map notes remain.
The other datasets proved to be harder. The **playgrounds** often needed some local knowledge - e.g. a playground might only be accessible to the members of the local youth organisation; or the administration eagerly labeled a patch of grass where kids could play some football as a proper playground. Some of them are hard to do remotely.
The hardest dataset to handle are the **toilets**, especially toilets in municipality buildings and social facilities. They cannot be seen on aerial imagery by definition, neither is Mapillary available. Furthermore, these facilities are often subject to opening hours and the rules about use by the public might change. In other words, a survey is necessary for pretty much every feature to import.
For the second complaint, you can use [this mapcomplete theme which shows notes and allows to filter them or create a new note](https://mapcomplete.org/notes.html#filters).
I don't agree with the first complaint as well, as the OpenStreetMap-website only shows a limited number of notes too. This can be easily seen by zooming out when the notes are open; you can see them disappear: https://imgur.com/a/PkwRe0h
In hindsight, the guided import was a success. By creating thousands of notes, the process was very discoverable and many people helped out, including two 'hero importers', but there are social limits to the amount of notes that can be created like this. For small datasets (<100pointsinasinglecity),Iwouldbetemptedtocreatethiskindofnotesagain.Forbiggerdatasets(especiallyif>500 points), I'd probably opt to use MapRoulette to store the data and to mark it as 'done', as not to pollute the notes too much with such an import.
As there still is some activity on the notes, there is no reason to close them. On the other hand, there isn't _much_ activity anymore. As usual with this type of project, the last 10% is also the hardest to do and will probably take a long time before being handled. At the same time, there are only 79 notes remaining from the earliest import, so they don't bother many people. (The benches-dataset of Oostende still has 334 open notes, about one third of the dataset.)
Please, [discuss this on this forum thread]( https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/should-the-import-notes-of-the-pin-je-punt-campaign-be-closed/9408). Remarks about the methodology or other musings are welcome here of course.
