Squashing bugs

Squashing bugs

Today I spent a good deal of time addressing bugs in Florida reported mapdust.com MapDust is a great tool for crowd-sourcing the location of problems, and providing the tools for cartographers to address them. There are a number of issues with MapDust. There is no ability to have a back-and-forth dialogue with the person who reported the issue. Lots of bugs do not contain sufficient information to know what issue the reporter may have been wanting resolved. Sometimes a scan of the area with the Bing aerial imagery where the bug report was filed will show where there could be improvements made. In those scenerios I just do cleanup of the area and then close the bug.

I have cleared out all bugs in the Florida Panhandle, and did spent most of my efforts today in South-West Florida. There where lots of very useful bug reports in the Fort Meyers and Naples area, so I addressed every single one of them. I would like to see a day where Floridas bug count was at zero.

I think having a fast turn-around time for bug resolution will help with the perception that OSM is a good source for mapping data, and that its open nature empowers problems to be resolved quicker than proprietary mappers can provide.

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