"AI-Based Country Scale Road Import"

These sound great and make powerful editing features that were only available in JOSM more accessible to mappers. Looking forward to a publicly usable fork.

Again FB shows that they are not interested in cooperation with the community. Instead of presenting their ideas and working together with the community on improving the tooling they speak about creating their own toys and a fork.

Besides that:
When will the existing mess be cleaned up? Does Facebook expect the community to clean up after them?
I’m tempted to immediately revert uploads done by RVR007 and others. Removal of rice-field tracks are no big loss.

Duplicates for example in those changesets:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/46112980
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/46117993

The number of duplicate geometry skyrocketed from non-existent to 10.000 Duplicated in 2017 thanks to technically bad executed Facebook imports.

Given that it’s likely that most of these errors were introduced by Facebook, it would be good to see a response by e.g. Drishtie about this here.

Further up this thread I said:

and that still stands. There are a number of tools around that can “revert everything that hasn’t been since touched by another mapper (e.g. to correct it)”. In this case it’s not quite as straightforward as it might be because non-import accounts used for other mapping activities have been used for the import.

Although I’d be normally very happy for a person who made a buggy import to revert it themselves, given the lack of technical competence demonstrated by Facebook so far I’d personally be somewhat concerned if they did the revert on their own without anyone else checking it. If Drishtie or someone else at Facebook wants to do the revert, then it’s best that they say so here before doing so. If someone from this forum wants to do it, great - but probably best to say so here first to avoid duplication. If not, the DWG can clean up the data (which as I understand it was all imported by mistake), and if I do it I’ll say so here first.

Best Regards,
Andy (DWG)

For those not on the imports mailing list, Facebook have posted to it about this import: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/imports/2017-March/004840.html

Hello Andy and Stephan,

Thank-you for your feedback. We are looking into duplicate geometry and will make sure to fix that example you shared and any others we find.

Best,
Drishtie Patel

Hey Stephan – That is useful info. I am wondering how you created this chart? (Could be useful for other mappers).

Also agreed that this should be cleaned up. If you can supply the data (as OSM or GeoJSON) I can make a MapRoulette challenge from it.

Perhaps as a community we can figure out how to help FB do better?

@Stephan I’d also be interested in seeing where you came up with those numbers.

From what I can tell from OSM Inspector, Thailand has barely any issues with duplicate ways (only about 10 ways have issues out of the entire country - in my opinion that’s pretty darn good!).
https://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/

Out of those 10 ways that have issues only 1 of them is from Facebook and another is from yourself @stephank, you don’t validate before pushing your edits?
http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/474870936

Stephane, next time you try to use a fancy outdated graph to threaten a revert, please try to actually look at the OSM data before you speak.

bye

@Stephan: Have you also considered the cause of the increase duplicate nodes from PokemonGo vandalism.

I was able to find this changeset which was flagged as “Overlapping Highways” (clearly not a Facebook edit).
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/45552933

@Denis: way 474870936 was one of the tagging fixes for Balthus. It fixes only tags. If there had been duplicates before they had not been touched by this. Was not the scope of fixing the tags.

The statistic comes from Osmose checks.

Check for yourself.
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/?source=5832&item=1230&class=5

I opened the first five nodes on the list:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4689300837
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4689300837
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4691069588
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4691069588
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4691071904

Don’t try to blame pokemon users. These mentioned changes all have “#nsroadimport #thailand” listed in the comment. This clearly points towards Facebook.

Again: It is Facebook doing imports. So it’s Facebook to prove they are executing this in a technically correct way. We have enough examples indicating this is not the case!

And don’t try to switch topic. Yes, there are other bad edits in the database. But here we are discussion about those caused by Facebook.

Facebook, you still did not tell use what user names you are using for the import. Why? What do you want to hide?

Could it be that this user also belongs to you? His patterns match what you are doing…

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Tanavut

Maybe you also forgot to mention that this user is also editing for you?

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/konhin121

What else?

Hello Stephan,

Thank you for your feedback. Based on our analysis, we found that out of the 5919 duplicate geometries shown in the Osmose tool, Facebook mappers added 35. We appreciate your time in helping us flag this issue. We have taken steps to correct this in our workflow to ensure that we prevent this in the future.

As noted on our wiki, these are our mappers with links to their profiles and names. All of our edits go through one of these accounts.

Jaclyn (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/VLD001) - VLD001
Annie (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/VLD002) - VLD002
Alexandra (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/VLD003) - VLD003
Sheffield (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/VLD004) - VLD004
Mei (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/VLD005) - VLD005
Joseph (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/VLD006) - VLD006
Kurt (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/VLD007) - VLD007
Pablo https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/VLD008)) VLD008
Goerge (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/RVR001) - RVR001
Jeff (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/RVR002) - RVR002
David (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/RVR003) - RVR003
Yunzhi (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/RVR004) - RVR004
Adrian (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/RVR005) - RVR005
Stefani (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/RVR006) - RVR006
Mohamed (https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/RVR007) - RVR007

The following changeset comments are also built into the tools so any edit we make by default will contain #nsroadimport #thailand.

Thank-you.

Best,
Drishtie

Thanks Drishtie.

During the initial tidy-up there were people using other accounts for changesets with “#nsroadimport #thailand” tags but I guess that this was just accidental in the hurry to fix the data.

With regard to the “new mappers” behind e.g. https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/472343677/history and https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/472279193/history , it just looks like a common-or-garden geography class project to me. It ticks all the usual boxes - uploads only buildings, first time users using JOSM, very few changesets each, all changesets done within a few days (i.e. when they move on to the next part of their geography course).

Maybe someone in this forum knows a geography class somewhere who it might be, maybe not. It can be useful to find out as these classes tend to run periodically with new students each time.

Best Regards,

Andy

Hello Drishtie,

Thanks for providing the list of user accounts used for your edits. I changed your wiki page so that a search for the username actually finds it. I missed it because the search did not catch it due to the name not mentioned.

So you are saying that Facebook is not involved in the recent addition of over 20.000 building footprints in the south of Thailand, right? It simply matched from a timeline and geographical point of view the areas you said you are working on.

But ok, let’s assume it is a different party. In that case the source of the duplicates are indeed not related you your edits. They come from these building footprints which uploads duplicate geometry and also point different outlines on top of each others.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/7.68799/100.37925

As Andy asked already: Does anyone knows details about who is responsible to setting up tasks for mappers to draw building outlines on a large scale?

Stephan

Thank you for the clarification Andy.

Stephan, I can confirm that Facebook was not involved in the recent addition of over 20.000 building footprints in the south of Thailand. We are only working on roads. :slight_smile:

Best,
Drishtie

Lying with graphs/data is very easy to do, this graph created by osmose[0] would better represent if someone has done a “poor import” by showing an increase of overlapping highways (usually caused by importing data twice or overlapping existing OSM data with imported data). By eliminating the “no-road” data you don’t see any spikes that would indicate a poor import in Thailand.

[0] http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/?country=thailand&item=1070

  • To preview the graph, at the very top click on “graph”

It may not all be facebook(there might be some):
I have the same spike in Canada in Jan/Feb:
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_alberta&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_british_columbia&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_manitoba&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_new_brunswick&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_newfoundland_and_labrador&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_northwest_territories&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_nova_scotia&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_quebec&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_ontario&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_nunavut&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_prince_edward_island&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_saskatchewan&item=1230
http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr/en/errors/graph.png?country=canada_yukon&item=1230
Most likely explanation is that they added a new method of calculating “Duplicate geometry”, my guessing is that they added “Duplicated node without tag”
Cause I doubt anyone is extensively importing CanVEC(most of the issues seem to be from that) in all provinces/territories, so blindly(without fixing errors).

That graphic does not tell 100% the truth if you look into the spike as they changed the metric in which it’s evaluated mid-way(very flawed way of doing it) and would explain the massive spike…

Strange. A few years ago I found such strange edits in the Ijen volcano area in Indonesia. Also overlapping buildings created by users editing at the same time.

Drishtie said it was not Facebook, so let’s believe it.
It most likely is some sort of mapping party/tasking manager related stuff with a very defined area activity and a very limited focus on what to map. I don’t see any of the users involved in the duplicate buildings mapping somewhere else. If we are not getting response we might simply clean up the duplicates and move on with daily business. Most of the building footprints mapped there are fine. Just some don’t match buildings/overlap or are not rectangular at all.

Hello Drishtie and Facebook team,

We had a mapper meeting in Chiang Mai yesterday and spoke about how to deal with your AI-assisted mapping.

We acknowledge that this might speed up completing the road network. As you are keen to try this new technology we think it is better you do it in a controlled environment here in Thailand where mappers are around to check your contributions instead of having it done somewhere in Africa.

Saying that, we had been quite unhappy about your way of interacting with the community.
We ask you to interact with the OSM community in a much more open way than done previously.
We understand that it might be difficult for you to achieve this in a large company with Facebook not being used to interact with Open Source communities. Still we are confident that you will find a way to bring the interaction with the community to a satisfying level.

To proceed with your assisted import we are fine to run another test-drive together with your team.
We have set up some conditions that we believe makes it easier for all of us to run such a test.

  1. We ask you to define an area in Thailand where you plan to import. This area has to be communicated to us and agreed on beforehand.
    We also ask that you choose an area having high-resolution Bing imagery available. As we don’t get access to the DigitalGlobe imagery you are using we want to have a way to verify the accuracy of your work.

  2. We ask you to restrict the import to higher road classes. So don’t import agricultural and rice-field tracks.

  3. We also ask you to only import roads where your algorithm has a high confidence level of the geometry and classification.

After we (Facebook and the community) agreed on a test area you do the import. You will give us feedback on the progress and we will review your edits and give feedback regarding the quality.
In the case of a positive outcome we will jointly discuss on how to scale this up.

We believe the process outlined above is a feasible approach considering the wishes and concerns of all involved parties. Still it only reflects a fraction of the mappers active in Thailand.
We publicly post it and explicitly ask for others not been part of the meeting for comments or suggestions on the proceeding.