OpenStreetMap
When it comes to mapping, I think a large part of the struggle for it is my obsessive compulsive disorder. I’m writing this post because I think it’s unique and I haven’t stumbled across any other posts like this.
For starters, obsessive compulsive disorder is “a common, chronic, and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (“obsessions”) and/or behaviors (“compulsions”) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over”.
For me, that could mean asking questions like these when doing mapping:
“Do I need to put the city, post code, and state for each address I put in, regardless of whether I know the full address or not?”
“Do I always need to mark if the place is vegan, vegetarian, air conditioned, smoke free, etc.”?
“Do I need to perfectly realign the buildings using JOSM?”
The way things are right now, everybody has their own mapping style. For instance, some people may put a place’s post code and city, even if they don’t know the house number. Some people may put if a place is air conditioned or not.
The reality of the situation is that OSM is not used extensively in the US. So every time a POI is added to the map, it may not be extensively detailed. And even if it is, chances are unless there are some really dedicated mappers out there, that info will become obsolete within a few years because nobody will update the data.
When it comes to OSM, I started to work on the project because I felt it had potential. A potential to become something high quality and really detailed. The sad thing is, I focused so much on that level of detail (mainly with POIs), that I burned myself out on mapping. So I guess the question is, how much is too much detail?