Online Collaboration Creates 'Map-Making For the Masses'

The Science Daily site has up a piece on the effect user-generated content can have on map-making. Scientists are appreciative of the data enthusiastic mappers can provide, updating maps on changes in local geographic information. "Goodchild's paper looks at volunteered geographic information as a special case of the more general Web phenomenon of user-generated content. It covers what motivates large numbers of individuals (often with little formal qualifications) to take part, what technology allows them to do so, how accurate the results are and what volunteered geographic information can add to more conventional sources of such information."

Re:Formal qualifications..

[raised eyebrow]

Would you trust someone to update a map if they can't use the right there?

Yes I do and so do most other map users: they just don't know it. Ordnance Survey, for example, does not require formal qualifications of a very large fraction of their map editors rather than the ability to edit the map to meet their other cartographic standards, as a dyslexic colleague of mine happily found. It's inevitable some map editors will be illiterate and also that simple mistakes will be made, as in any other occupation. This is what QA is for :o)