Etienne Cherdlu makes an interesting couple of perhaps tounge-in-cheek points against what the OS recently told The Guardian.
>From Thursday’s Guardian article:
“We make an average of 5,000 changes to our large-scale data every day,” said an OS spokesperson. “It’s not about mapping the Isle of Wight once – it’s about continuing to map it … It is expensive to collect detailed, accurate information on the ever-changing world to the level of detail our customers require.”
>From an OSM spokesperson:
“This month we made an average of 6,567 (Note 1) changes to our large scale-data every work day” said an OSM spokesperson. “It’s not about mapping the Isle of Wight once – it’s about continuing to map it … and using enthusiastic and passionate volunteer surveyors we are collecting more information every day with 1,864 registered volunteers than the Ordnance Survey manages to do with a paid full time workforce of 1,490.”
Yes, definitely tongue-in-cheek.
I have no idea what an “edit” is defined to be in either of the two quotes but that probably doesn’t really matter. I agree with Ed (http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2006-May/004023.html) that this kind of measure is not especially useful.
The serious point is that collabative projects like this can very easily build enough momentum to outperform large commercial organisations (eg Wikipedia vs Encyclopeadia Britannica) and even small government agencies.
It would be really great if OS could one day embrace or endorse our efforts.
Etienne