So who the crap are Kaart ?

Hot on the heels of the other Corporate vandals, I now see a bunch of cavalier mappers going under the banner of Kaart… fancy website … and the usual “lets change things for the sake of it” attitude.
Just sent this to one of their “local mappers” … based in Utah !!

https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/54780910
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/54780909

So, keep an eye open for more road changes in our area … ahhh, its getting so tedious now.

Oh, yes there is more … I see the small Jed Yod-Chang Kiang road has been made Tertiary. For Gods sake, its a small Soi with barely enough room for one car to pass in places. Why have these jokers seen fit to make it Tertiary ?
And where it exits north onto the CM.4307, its about 2 mts wide there. I know, I live next to it !
And we have a new secondary road originating from Maya Mall … not a Trunk_link which would at least make a modicum of sense …and it starts from an arbitrary point … the rationale is blatantly random.
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/666272203
I guess they just like to see pretty colors or something.

So instead of spending my next 2 days inputting the valuable data I gathered in Mae Hong Son province, I shall have to waste my time undoing every change these children have created in Chiang Mai. We know from experience that DWG reverts just cause more problems than it’s worth… manual changes are more reliable.

Kaart - trace forests and lakes by all means, but please don’t vandalise our road status after other locals have created it, at least not without checking first.

Goddamn it, here we go again! Another round with KAART jokers this time.
The problem with OpenStreetMap is that it’s too open. The strength of OSM is that it’s open.
How to resolve these two characteristics? Anyone can come in and screw things up, whether intentionally or through ignorance, and we’re left to fix things.

I share your frustration, Russ.

Hello Russ,

I can feel your frustration.

Could you please share the links to the changeset discussions? I couldn’t find it on the kaart change.

First action on a suspicious change should be a changeset comment. These are public and we can point to a larger damage done vy paid or directed mappers.

Private messsges are exactly that. They don’t count.

You can use osmcha to systematically monitor changes.

For the record, Nathan did respond with an an apology and and an offer to fix. Im hoping through him, the rest of the Kaart team get our feedback … doubtful.
PS: still coming across Grab “invented streets” … guess they never fixed as promised !

Our team at Kaart is steadily seeking to improve OSM data in Chiang Mai, Thailand. In regards to this feature https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/54780910, our editors appropriately carried the classification of the intersecting road through to the other side of the dual carriageway. This feature does not exhibit physical channelization nor does it function as a slip road/ramp connecting the through lane of a carriageway to another road. Furthermore, this feature contains the name of that intersecting road, which is worth noting as the OSM Wiki page on links states that links normally do not contain names. For more information on links, please see the OSM Wiki page which can be found here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_link.

While I appreciate your feedback, the Wiki page you reference seems quite clear to me, and while U-turn is not mentioned specifically, they do describe :

Canal Road (Hwy 121) is a dual carriageway physically separated by a canal. The physically channelized turning lanes (or U-turns) are all tagged as links. This is convention throughout Thailand … if you do not agree, please state your reasons on our forum, and allow us to comment. If we support your interpretation, I trust you will assist us in changing every other instance in the country. Trawling the Thai map, I accept you may find other links incorrectly tagged, but this would be down to new users, or very old data.

Furthermore, the table https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Link_roads_between_different_highways_types seems quite clear, in that the connection between two primary roads takes the primary_link tag. We adopt this convention in Thailand, and hope that others who are not local, respect our established conventions.

Yes, the way you highlight here does carry a street name, which I agree, is not appropriate, and will be removed.

However, while on the subject of 2 Chiang Rai Road, just why did your organisation change it from Unclassified to Residential, given the fact its bounded on one side by the University and the other by predominantly copy & coffee shops ? Its a significant connecting road which to some, they might argue as deserving Tertiary status, rather than a downgrade as Nathan saw fit.

The point is Kaart, we welcome improvements to the Thai map, but we bitterly resent organisations just coming in and changing existing data, when we have already determined the tagging for a particular way. OSM is about respecting others work, and I encourage you to view the history of a way before making significant changes, and if the determination was made by a longstanding and experienced local mapper, please have the courtesy to contact him first.

Just left this changeset comment about another piece of Kaart legendary editing …

On the other side, the road is tagged as a tertiary farther south to road #107 - I do not know if that’s appropriate according to “ground truth”, but at least this part is consistent.
If one opts for tertiary, I’d use that tag also for the section to the junction with #1096, as you mentioned.

By the way, at the junction at the current northern end of the “tertiary”, shouldn’t the roads to the right and to the left (Samoeng Old road) be “unclassified” instead of “residential”? That route seems to have some “collector” character for the residential areas there.

Bernhard,
Yes of course the Samoeng Old Road should have been left as Unclassified. That was yet another Kaart edit where they have completely gone against our Wiki.
When I get a free weekend, I’ll go about some mass reverts of the changes they have made over here. I’m already noticing more and more instances of where my Garmin does some crazy routing thanks to their tagging changes.
If they really are bored, then I wish they would trace cornfields in Kansas, rather than play around with the Thai map, undoing years of our hard work.

To those who find entertainment in the Grab & Kaart efforts, I just posted this changeset comment …
It refers to Way https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/136605132/history

Just found a road in Phayao that I mapped with source=GPS and added Mapillary links. Kaart user changes it to unpaved.

FB are at it again, too. This time in Burma, where they mapped village streets as the default, i.e. paved. There isn’t a paved road for miles and you can clearly see that on Bing.

Add to that the BS buildings mapped by some malaria team and I’m starting to feel sick. I had just started mapping again, having stopped because of the FB disaster. But this is it, I’m out of here for good.

Farewell.

Please use the changeset comments to complain about such mapping issues and not private messages. We need public records to show the scale of the problem when dealing with corporate/directed mappers.
Please add links to the comments to the threads when discussing the issue.