Road Mapper reflections Version 1

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi fellow Road Mappers,

We are now a about halfway through the TORM campaign where some of us are drawing missing roads in rural areas in select countries.

It is actually both fun and easy to do. It takes a ton of mouse click and a lot of time.

But it is not really difficult, so I often have time to reflect a bit while drawing Road Mapper roads.

Below I will share some of my thoughts with the hope that some of my fellow TORM participants will do the same.

Thought 1
I often think about how the people living in the challenge areas will react once they see the roads I have drawn. Will they be surprised, thankful or only focus on the envitable errors I drew.

Thought 2
How many wheel tracks are not really roads?

Thought 3
Often I draw roads leading to tiny villages with only a few houses. Some are simple round huts. Are people or animals living in them? I would love to visit and meet the people I drew roads for.

Thought 4
I often find huge circular fields and other fields that are surrounded by simple dirt roads. I wish I could ask the locals if it is helpful to add such dirt roads to Maps. I doubt these roads are used for anything but farm machinery.

Thought 5
Why are some Road Mappers drawing really bad roads? I have seen plenty road systems that are consistently drawn 10-15 meters off. And roads drawn where there are absolutely no visible road. And some clicks too often to add very unnecessary nodes even on completely straight road sections where only need 2 clicks are needed.

Thought 6
How precisely should we draw the roads? With many clicks on winding roads and only 2 nodes for straight sections.

Thought 7
Why are we doing this? Are we basically training an AI to find roads in satellite and arial photos?

Thought 8
Is it helpful to remove or redraw/adjust roads when they are badly drawn?

Thought 9
Will we ever run out of roads to draw?

Thought 10
I wish Google would enggage with us to discuss and exemplify what proper roads are. And how we can identify railroads, animal tracks, water streams, fences between fields etc that are not proper roads.

These are 10 reflections I come across repeatedly.

Please share some of your thoughts running in your brain while drawing Road Mapper roads.

Cheers

[tony_b]

@MortenCopenhagen

Thought 9
Will we ever run out of roads to draw?

I’ve thought about this before @MortenCopenhagen, and I know some LGs have written about completing total challenge areas, with screenshots to show. Those countries are no longer displayed for us. My assumption is that if any of the current batch of 10 countries are completed, other countries will take their place as needed.

[NileshNag]

@MortenCopenhagen Are you a mind reader?
I’ve recently joined TORM and I literally have all those thoughts. Thank you for sharing these!

Thought 5
Why are some Road Mappers drawing really bad roads? I have seen plenty road systems that are consistently drawn 10-15 meters off. And roads drawn where there are absolutely no visible road. And some clicks too often to add very unnecessary nodes even on completely straight road sections where only need 2 clicks are needed.

Thought 8
Is it helpful to remove or redraw/adjust roads when they are badly drawn?

I seriously don’t know WHY a road is drawn from above a few houses in a village where there is not even a walking trail present/visible. I have corrected so many roads by fellow mappers. It is best to zoom in to the last bit, then completely observe the area and possible additions and only then draw wherever it can be helpful.

Secondly, I understand distinguishing a road and a water body sometimes can be challenging, but if we cannot make anything out of it or add something helpful, it’s better to skip the challenge.

Thought 10
I wish Google would enggage with us to discuss and exemplify what proper roads are. And how we can identify railroads, animal tracks, water streams, fences between fields etc that are not proper roads.

Yes, I definitely second you on this one. It would be a huge learning point for everyone and would immensely help with the improvements made by us on Maps.

[Lukas_B]

Hi @MortenCopenhagen, great thoughts as mentioned before. Getting more direction from an official source would save us some troubles.
I am wondering about the fifth thought…

@MortenCopenhagen

Thought 5
Why are some Road Mappers drawing really bad roads? I have seen plenty road systems that are consistently drawn 10-15 meters off. And roads drawn where there are absolutely no visible road. And some clicks too often to add very unnecessary nodes even on completely straight road sections where only need 2 clicks are needed.

Could these roads be from before roadmapper or from the regular, easily accessible road editor? Since we can see roads that are off by tens of meters even in roadmapper inaccesible countries.
All the best.

[WilfriedB]

@Lukas_B

@MortenCopenhagen

Why are some Road Mappers drawing really bad roads? …

Could these roads be from before roadmapper

I believe having read an explanation quite a while ago either by @ErmesT or @MarcoDavoli saying before Road Mapper or Road edit in Maps existed, it has been done by an older automated system trying to interpret lower quality satellite images.

[WilfriedB]

Interesting thoughts @MortenCopenhagen

I have to admit, I briefly looked into Road Mapper about two years ago and wasn’t attracted to add roads only based on satellite images, for areas I never saw and never will. Once in a while, I do add roads (rarely), bike or walking paths in Maps, which I know they do exist in reality, accepting all the frustration of rarely accepted, pending, rejected.

[Lukas_B]

Hi @WilfriedB, yes! That’s exactly what I thought.

[MarcoDavoli]

Ciao Morten and hello to all TORM enthusiasts,

I’m sure that many of us, after hours or days of adding roads, have had your exact same thoughts. I am among those, and like you, while editing, I was thinking the same thing, and this is my reply:

@MortenCopenhagen

how the people living in the challenge areas will react once they see the roads I have drawn

I think the vast majority do not have a computer or even use Google Maps or any other “tech” tool. A small village in the desert…

@MortenCopenhagen

How many wheel tracks are not really roads?

More difficult… what is a road? We are used to driving on a paved road, sometimes on a dirt road, but in many areas, roads are also a small path that gives you a direction to a place. With a normal car, you cannot drive on it. If at the end of that “path/trail” there is a small village? To me, it is a road.

If I am not wrong, in many other map editors (Waze, Mapillary, OpenStreetMap…), you can add specific types of roads. Here, we have a really limited choice.

@MortenCopenhagen

I would love to visit and meet the people I drew roads for.

Call me and I’ll pack my things…

@MortenCopenhagen

Why are some Road Mappers drawing really bad roads?

I do not want to think or believe that road mappers or ROADERS are doing such bad drawings. I’m convinced that they are wrong interpretations of the satellite view. Sure, you’ve seen a complete “road grid” offset by meters from the actual road. It happens really often.

@MortenCopenhagen

How precisely should we draw the roads?

I keep trying to do my best. Zoom in and draw in the middle. On TORM, I draw long roads when possible; on TRAC, usually short ones. To my knowledge, a very long road has minor chances of being approved.

@MortenCopenhagen

Why are we doing this?

Eheheh. What a deep and difficult question. Because it’s more challenging than clicking and posting a dish of spaghetti. Because here you can discuss and share ideas, and here you can see villages and take a virtual tour of the world.

@MortenCopenhagen

Is it helpful to remove or redraw/adjust roads when they are badly drawn?

Well, here we can open a long discussion that in years has never led to anything. Yes, no, I did it and it works, I tried but it never happens… and so on. This is the reality of group discussions. Absolutely no idea. Sorry to be so direct, but we only have conjectures. I know that you CMs have reported many ideas/problems etc. many times, but did anyone ever reply with a specific answer? To give you an answer: I keep deleting terrible roads, I keep reporting what I see (if it’s really messy), and I keep not receiving any reply or any fix (yes, because I also keep checking).

@MortenCopenhagen

Will we ever run out of roads to draw?

No.

@MortenCopenhagen

I wish Google would enggage with us to discuss and exemplify what proper roads are.

You replied to your own question!

Thanks for this great exercise. I do appreciate it. Ciao,

Marco

@MortenCopenhagen

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi @MarcoDavoli

Thanks for responding.

This was an experimental post. I have never posted unfiltered thoughts like this before.

I have known you for some time now, so nothing much surprised me in your response.

But I would like to make two comments:

@MarcoDavoli

@MortenCopenhagen

Will we ever run out of roads to draw?

No.

I believe, and probably also hope, that AI will soon learn to do the trivial task of drawing roads in remote areas. I expect the AI to be able to do it more consistently and correctly than we can.
With that in mind, I believe drawing roads in Road Mapper will end someday.

Regarding redrawing/adjusting existing roads on Road Mapper, I share your thoughts, but I wish Google would reflect on its poor communication with Road Mappers. We can spend several minutes re-aligning roads, yet we submit a challenge with 0 kilometers.

This signals that realigning roads has little to no value.

All the best

UPDATE

Here is an example of what I tried to explain above.

I opened this challenge:

Who drew this road so carelessly, without any precision?

I worked on it, and this is the result:

Yet, this is the number of km’s I earned!

Come on, Google!

[MortenCopenhagen]

Hi @Lukas_B and @WilfriedB

I’m not sure I understand your point above. The approval rate is low (or very low) for roads drawn in the Road Editor on Google Maps. But this discussion is about ROAD MAPPER.

Here is a recent screenshot showing the results of my Road Mapper efforts in the current TORM campaign.

1145 * 100 percent / 1342 = 85 % approvals. This is not bad. And I expect this to rise to close to 100%.

Were you guys mixing up Road Mapper and Road Editor results?

Maybe choosing the new challenge, South Africa, was a lucky strike.

[Lukas_B]

Hi @MortenCopenhagen,

what I meant is that the roads that get suggested for editing on road mapper, might not only be from road mapper edits, but also from road editor edits. That is my speculation. Would be nice to know if its true.

[MortenCopenhagen]

Thanks for the clarification. My guess is that the road mapper challenges are mainly from very remote rural areas unlikely touched in the Road Editor. But I could easily be wrong.

Another much more likely explanation is new and/or less precisely aligned satellite images. This can easily explain why roads or road networks are pushed over be 10-15 meters.

[Lukas_B]

Regarding the 0 meters after updating a road - I came to the conclusion that it must be negative and therefore we only get “0” after editing.

And I hope this doesnt come across as bad, but I did in fact try to teach AI do draw roads on roadmapper. I tried in about 10 instances. While it immediately had the spirit to go draw, the errors that it creates are very hard to navigate. I didnt want to continue (since it does take an enourmous amount of credits) and of course you cannot suggest these edits as well (must be from a human).
Althought you could probably get to about 99% of good roads, it is painful to get to that point. Im sure it would be no problem for Google as a whole to set this up and turn things around! As in - people would check AI’s edits - opposite of what is happening now.

[MarcoDavoli]

Morten,

to me it sound a great experiment!

@MortenCopenhagen

@MarcoDavoli

@MortenCopenhagen

Will we ever run out of roads to draw?

No.

I believe, and probably also hope, that AI will soon

NO is the final of my personal long thought about it.
I’m sure that AI will be able to “edit roads” in a future but how far is this future? Or before this future arrive we will have something different to google maps? A new version that we are not yet able to image?

I do remember the presentation we saw in Dublin made by David K and I saw a really big problem : in many intersection with bridges some roads are passing up one lane and under the second lane. Really difficult that AI will solve this

The question is when AI can solve this → look at the image

or worst →

this mean that if you ask for directions you have this:

I’m sure that a human support (that could be driving a google car in the rural areas of Gambia or editing roads on a computer or… leave as they are) will be needed for a long time.

@MortenCopenhagen

Here is an example of what I tried to explain above.

I do know what you were saying. After 142.489 added roads…

and you are doing really great! In the top 5 and also for KMs Average.

Thanks for your time.

Ciao

[ErmesT]

Grazie per il tag, @WilfriedB
Post estremamente interessante, @MortenCopenhagen .
Rispondo in italiano, perché il concetto non è semplice da esprimere, e soprattutto su in punto specifico, lo spostamento di molte strade rispetto alle immagini satellitari.
Credo che per comprenderlo dobbiamo fare un passo indietro, e definire il concetto di mappe: rappresentazioni grafiche del territorio.
Le mappe nascono per rappresentare percorsi, strada, villaggi. Con l’avvento del digitale le mappe hanno iniziato ad appoggiarsi sulle immagini satellitari, ed è qui che nata Google Maps.
Tuttavia le immagini satellitari non sono costanti, si evolvono, e talvolta sono un po’ disallineate, anche di qualche decina di metri. Per cui è abbastanza normale trovare strade spostate. Io ne ho scoperte molte, e in alcuni casi, all’inizio del Road editor, ho lavorato parecchio per spostarle e fare comparire di nuovo Street View.
Inoltre, da Map Maker in poi, Google ha acquisito le strade in molti modi:

• utilizzando cartografie esistenti.
• provando ad acquisire automaticamente le strade dalle immagini satellitari, poi abbandonato.
• acquisendo i percorsi in base alla posizione GPS dei veicoli, come citato anche da @shaileno .
• si tratta di acquisizioni anche non recenti, per cui è difficile affermare che si tratta di strade acquisite con Road Mapper.

Sinceramente mi auguro che le nostre strade servano ad istruire la IA, ma per Road Mapper è stato dichiarato ufficialmente che questo non accade, mentre sono quasi certo che il Road editor è usato anche per questo scopo

[tony_b]

@MortenCopenhagen

Who drew this road so carelessly, without any precision?

I worked on it, and this is the result:

@MortenCopenhagen

Yet, this is the number of km’s I earned!

Maybe that’s why Road Mapper is not part of the Google Maps points system. It seems we’re a special group who’ve been chosen to responsibly fix what needs fixing, without looking for reward or recognition. Of course, that also means the ones who’re doing a poor job of it, do not deserve their place in the group.

[tony_b]

@ErmesT

However, satellite imagery isn’t constant; it evolves, and sometimes it’s slightly out of alignment, even by a few dozen meters. So it’s quite common to find roads that have moved.

I’ve often thought this. When I see a whole long road off a bit to the East or West, it seems like it may have been correct and then the satellite shifted. I’ve also known some local roads not visible on the map when I wanted to draw them, then some months later the satellite imagery appears.

[WilfriedB]

@MortenCopenhagen

I’m not sure I understand your point above.

@MortenCopenhagen, @Lukas_B was referring to my statement “… before Road Mapper or Road edit in Maps existed, it has been done by an older automated system trying to interpret lower quality satellite images.”

[ErmesT]

@tony_b

When I see a whole long road off a bit to the East or West, it seems like it may have been correct and then the satellite shifted.

Exactly, @tony_b
Long time ago I wrote a post about shifted roads: Correct Road Shapes in Google Maps - "Follow the Blue Line"

[khmansour1]

@MortenCopenhagen

Often I draw roads leading to tiny villages with only a few houses. Some are simple round huts. Are people or animals living in them? I would love to visit and meet the people I drew roads for.

In fact according to a documentaries round one for people, animals are living in open squares sourounded by some dry planetes with thorn.

@MortenCopenhagen

Why are some Road Mappers drawing really bad roads

I think the main reason is not zooming to the maximim.

@MortenCopenhagen

add very unnecessary nodes

Lack of experiance

@MortenCopenhagen

How precisely should we draw the roads? With many clicks on winding roads and only 2 nodes for straight sections.

exaclty

@MortenCopenhagen

Why are we doing this

Because it would be imposible to drow it in google maps lots of shadow and trees. sometimes I have to zoomout to see the whole path and predict it as its not obvious from satlite view.

@MortenCopenhagen

s it helpful to remove or redraw/adjust roads when they are badly drawn

@MortenCopenhagen

s it helpful to remove or redraw/adjust roads when they are badly drawn

sometimes if the correction will not take time and if its 90% correct otherwize I leave it in the hope that google will remove the user (I don’t think they will).

@MortenCopenhagen

Will we ever run out of roads to draw

Yes, it happens before and google remove the country.

@MortenCopenhagen

I wish Google would enggage with us to discuss and exemplify what proper roads are. And how we can identify railroads, animal tracks, water streams, fences between fields etc that are not proper roads.

in fact we know better than google. in addition google will never listen to us if she listen she will solve the approval problem in google maps!

Here are my thoughts:

1. The Approval Timeline: I often wonder about the math behind our contributions—how many minutes, hours, days, or months would it actually take for a single kilometer of mapped road to get approved if we were mapping directly on Google Maps?
2. Nostalgia & Opportunity: I genuinely regret not completing my home country back during the Map Maker days. Now, looking at Road Mapper, I fear we will look back years from now and regret not mapping these countries while this tool is still around.
3. Quality Control: Google approves mappers to participate in Road Mapper, but do they actively follow up and remove bad actors or low-quality contributors?
4. Advanced Tracing Techniques: How many of us rely on @MarcoDavoli’s instructional videos and Google Earth’s historical imagery to uncover hidden paths, distinguish dry riverbeds from actual roads, or evaluate terrain slopes before drawing?
5. Mastering the Craft: After countless hours analyzing satellite imagery, I genuinely feel like a master at detecting hidden road paths beneath dense canopies and challenging terrain.
6. Community Knowledge Sharing: Why doesn’t the TORM campaign organize regular technical syncs or webinars where experienced mappers can share drawing techniques and workflows?
7. The Power of Tools: Thinking back to how difficult it used to be to gather participant data manually… having dedicated tools like Marco’s website has completely transformed how we collaborate and track our progress!