Hi, we are TomTom - let's exchange ideas

All,

I see your comments, here and in the changesets, and I have good inputs from Frederik Ramm in the UK. **I am taking action.
**
Please note that Frederik and DWG have rightly asked us to stop this type of edit and perform an analysis, as well as to propose a plan for future action. And, he is asking us to fix the edits. Please give me enough time to be thoughtful and rigorous in the analysis so that I can come back to you with a thoroughly comprehensive approach. And, please allow us time to correct the edits. Our goal is always to improve the map and abide by rules, and we will do everything necessary to answer all of your concerns. My aim is to make all corrections and provide a follow-up analysis by the end of the day on Friday (tomorrow.)

Here is what Frederik asked me for re: the UK:

Is this suitable for you, as well? If so, we can prepare one that addresses the general concerns, as well as NL specific concerns.

Our goal is to be a helpful and trusted editor, and your feedback is essential to our improvement. Thank you for sharing it.

Courtney

Thanks Courtney, we will await your analysis.

Your colleague MarjanVan promised improvements with regards to these maproulette challenges as well, but it seems not much has come of that given this recent spate of misguided editing. It’s a shame that we keep getting back to the point where we must guide mappers acting on TomTom’s sometimes flawed data analyses, and spend time fixing errors introduced. It doesn’t seem necessary, and it can be prevented by coming to the community before launching another maproulette challenge.

By the way, do you outrank MarjanVan or are you subordinate to her in the company? What are your roles exactly, just community managers or more? It’s all a bit vague from our vantage point, and whenever we press for answers about specifics regarding TomTom’s source data for their analyses (like your heatmap tool), we get evasive answers. This does unfortunately seem to have soured some of our community’s mappers attitudes towards cooperation with TomTom — understandably, I might add — and that may be hard to redress.

You have had feedback about a month ago: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/122888545
How did you improve based on that?

Please take my following observations into consideration

  • Dutch-specific imagery isn’t used (AHN, BGT, PDOK Quick Ortho, traffic sign map)

  • Imagery being used doesn’t seem to be analysed. For example, a track is converted to a path where it is clearly visible that motor vehicles are present or have driven

  • Dutch-specific (traffic) regulations and the philosophy behind the design of our public space

  • Apparently the history of objects hasn’t been investigated

  • Consequently, the previous editor(s) aren’t consulted

  • As a consequence, no proper feedback loop with progressive learning takes place

  • The possibility of false positives on your todo-list seems not to be taken into account

  • Several editors do edits all over the world. Suggestion is limiting one’s activity to a specific region where he or she is able to gain specific knowledge about local standards, quirks and curiosities

I can’t help but get the impression that you have outsourced work to a densely populated developing country in Asia where quantity is more rewarded than quality. Believe me, I’ve been sent there myself to manage projects and this morning I got a very similiar feeling of desparation.

I am a OSM-volunteer, was busy inspecting a huge amount of TomTom edits this morning and it felt like work (I am a professional quality assurance engineer as well). The only difference is I didn’t send an invoice for my work.

Gezien recentere edits met soortgelijke fouten levert dat niets op. Ze blijven komen …
En het antwoord van courtiney geeft me ook niet veel vertrouwen.

Er wordt door deze mapper nu wel e.e.a. verbeterd

https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/melody_Tej/history#map=3/32.42/-34.62

Hi, again,

A few basics, to be followed by specific plan of action tomorrow, or, latest, Monday (I need to take enough time to ensure this doesn’t happen again.)

  1. Marjan reports to me. Please, out of consideration for another human being, I ask that you refrain from attributing harsh motives or behaviors to her. All criticism and frustration is valid. All feedback is welcome. But there are comments in this forum over time that are not respectful to Marjan as a person. Let’s keep community values in mind for all persons.

  2. I affirm your frustration and your concerns. In particular I affirm that turnaround time on solutions has been slow. We are not, actually, a very large, outsourced, corporate team, and we do have ordinary human limitations. This doesn’t excuse the inconvenience or issues, but it is hopefully useful context. I take every bit of feedback that we got today seriously and will make sure that the sincere, hardworking group of people with whom I work take the feedback and turn it into short term and long term solutions.

  3. Everyone who works on this team is committed to mapmaking as both an art and a science and does this work for the joy of it. Please give us time to learn and grow as I actually believe we have a very great deal in common. I will be in touch as soon as I can with specific answers and actions.

A quick additional question: re “heatmap tool.” Can you tell me what you mean? Do you mean MapMetrics? I want to get more information for you in any way that is relevant and useful, but I am not actually sure to what you refer here?

Dear Courtiney,

I do not like your ( teams ) behavior at all, and the way you formulate your answers. Despite your acclaimed backing by a major routing company the way you edit OSM is like any beginner. And it borders on vandalism when you behave like the well-known armchair mapper: changing classifications based on images without local knowledge.
But when confronted with criticism the response is slow and strange: it seems that your stand is that your team has something important to add to OSM and the world should be gratefull and accept your errors.
Let me bust your dream: you additions do not add to the value of OSM at all. Quite the opposite I’d say.

The fact that you seem ( or claim: no prove there ) to be employed by TomTom does not exempt you from the general rules and guidelines for OSM contribution. Nor does it make you an expert in mapping. Your disregard towards local mappers does evoke strong comments, and rightfully so.

In the end it boils down to this: you’re bashing in on a community of volunteers, behave like you know best, add error to error in editing and do not even apologize for your behavior/errors.

Take a look at your last point:

‘For the joy of it’ would imply you don’t get paid. I strongly doubt that. ‘time to learn and grow’ is something everyone is entitled to, but do that before you start editing on a large scale. ‘I will be in touch as soon as I can with specific answers and actions’ sounds like you feel somehow entitled to do what you do. You are not. Your position is no other than that of any other volunteer.

From my personal point of view: we do not need TT and I would advise DWG to block any of your edits.

Which?

De hyperlink naar dit losse draadje zet ik maar even bij https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=868859#p868859

Deze edits wellicht toch gerelateerd zijn aan Tomtom. Dan kan dat draadje afgesloten worden.

Hello, again,

Here, as promised are some actions that our team will take to be responsive to your feedback (as well as that of other OSM communities) so as to avoid causing any more issues.

  1. Community concerns about the “quality check” challenges had been relayed but had not been addressed in a timely manner. Now, they are being addressed. Actions include:
    a. Based on community feedback from OSM communities, we are pausing organised editing of most of our quality checks globally.
    b. We will be making improvements to our data analysis, editing and quality control processes for our quality checks based on community inputs. When we do resume, we will share a detailed description of our methods for community feedback before we initiate the regular organised editing cycle in any country.
    c. We will also improve the instructions that we give to mappers, with community inputs.
    d. We will add an additional quality control to the regular organised editing process. We will notify, as per the guidelines and then, after the two weeks have passed, we will do a “pilot” group of edits on which we will do 100% quality testing. At that time, we will notify the community of the results as a means to prompt any additional feedback and consultation.

  2. We do not use Cyient to do organised editing in OSM. Cyient editors work on TomTom’s map platform.

  3. To the concern about outsourced editing and whether or not TomTom is invested in the local community, I would like to propose an idea: Would members of the NL OSM community be willing to give an extra level of training to a small group of NL-based TomTom map editors? This would help us provide an additional level of skill and local knowledge to the supervision of TomTom organised editing. We are discussing projects like this in other countries, and since TomTom HQ is in NL I can’t think of a better location for such a pilot project. Please email the osm@tomtom.com address if this idea has appeal.

  4. To the concern about MapMetrics (ie the ‘heatmap’ tool.) We have done quite a bit of development on this tool, as well as our centerlines tool, RoadRunner. We would happily work with your community to train you on how to benefit from these tools. Here again, please email osm@tomtom.com if you are interested, and we will set something up.

I understand that you doubt the sincerity of my communications, but nonetheless it is real. Our team will continue to work to earn your trust for the good of the map and the mapmaking community.

Best wishes,

Courtney

So let’s translate this manager-speak into real world language:

TomTom wants to use OSM data as a map source for their own commercial benefit, comes bashing in to the community, expects the community of volunteers to teach them how to do things without payment and than states we should be happy with such a great improvement. You must not only be living in another world but in a completely different universe. OSM volunteers are not unpayed software testers or teachers to a commercial party.

As for Cyient editors: you should tell them, because they do edit OSM directly, not only TomToms platform.

Now let’s at least give you a direction on how you should have approached this:

Thousands of dedicated volunteers have provided you with a dataset far superior to any dataset TT ever has been able to access.
The database is free for download. After downloading the database TomTom could have created their own environement to test and edit as much as they want. In fact: this is how other free and/or paid routing software works. No one edits the OSM database for their personal gain or use.

I’d not assume that, it’s not a good starting point for negotiating a fee :wink:
Let’s hope the attention that the DWG is giving to the work of TomTom now will provide the improvement so badly needed.

I think investing in editing skills of the Tomtom crew would prove very beneficial. In hindsight, this should have been the first step. This will prevent the volunteers from having to deal with extra work.

In theory, having extra manpower could be very helpful to the project and the community. Although it does feel a bit strange to have a voluntary group of mappers and those who do it for a paid job. I guess as long as it is not OpenStreetMap who pays the salaries that is still okay. But the problem to this point is that in practice this is not lowering the work load for volunteer but increasing it.

Assuming that Tomtom would gladly pay for the service (to either the community or the person(s) offering the training, I think it is a good idea. Similar to what we delivered to a few fire brigades.

Good that Tomtom takes things aboard.

Another suggestion would be to have the mappers based in the Netherlands join our Openstreetmaptreffen (the online get-together of the Dutch community), so that we could get to know each other a bit better.
A real-life meeting would even be better, I’d say. Things usually go better over a cup of coffee (or tea).

And the questionable TomTom Edits continue… Changing highways to unlogical values when looking at the context, like changing a footway to residential even when all connecting highways are footways

https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=124756148
https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=124755781
https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=124755991
https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=124756043
https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=124551672
https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=124432053
https://overpass-api.de/achavi/?changeset=124430586

DWG?

Wellicht heeft niet iedereen de instructies ontvangen? https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Chap_oga/history#map=3/27.15/16.03

Na een beperkte steekproef in de voorgeschiedenis van de betrokken wegen/paden heb ik de indruk dat hier juist eerdere bewerkingen teruggedraaid worden. De ‘schade’ van eerdere bewerkingen wordt juist hersteld. Daarbij worden ook correcties die mij terecht lijken teruggedraaid.

Mijn indruk niet dat er zonder besef van de kritiek op dezelfde manier doorgewerkt wordt, en nieuwe insctructies niet aangekomen zijn. De beschrijving van de wijzigingen had dit wel duidelijk mogen maken: “reverting earlier changes” oid.

Mogelijk dat eerdere zaken hersteld worden, maar dan nog blijft mijn twijfel over het resultaat staan.