@1 I think the main goal is simply to display OpenStreetMap node density. Nothing more and nothing less. For mappers it's kinda interesting. He did't want to make a map where the most active mappers are.
But if it's the same as a population map, what good is it?
If I had asked you about nodes density before you saw this picture, your guess would probably use the population density. If your guess remains the same after seeing the picture, it didn't give you any useful information.
I think this is gorgeous, and the process of making a visualization is interesting, but I'm questioning the usefulness of the information portrayed.
But it isn't just a population map. You can see where users have imported data (e.g. the parts of Canada that are lit up in small squares is CANVEC data) and you can see the relative brightness of the map in Europe vs. United States -- even in areas of higher population density the US is dimmer than most of Europe because there are more mappers there.
I hadn't noticed the small squares before. I stand corrected in that front, that is useful.
But on the Europe vs USA case note how you are automatically adjusting for population. Because of this you can only interpret data for places you know the demographics, and even that is error prone.
It does give you information on which parts of the
world are more active in the project: the 3 biggest
economic regions are the more mapped regions.
That's exactly what the grandparent said, and I tried to rebut in the second paragraph. It might be a communication problem, but I feel like you didn't read my reply to his message.
Besides, does everything need to be useful ?
That's also explained in my reply above, third paragraph. It doesn't have to be useful, I'm not advocating the removal of this webpage from the internet, or preventing people from creating more visualizations like this. What I'm saying is that visualizations usually portray useful information, but I'm arguing that this one does not. That's all.
<rant>
This thread is making me sad. I feel like I made a valuable contribution, a little negative maybe, but useful nonetheless. I pointed out subtle but important problems, gave suggestions on how to fix them. I applauded the visual graphics.
Then I'm flooded with downvotes and replies that, from my point of view, are not correct. The only one I felt that helped change my mind a little was the CANVEC data squares, but all the others felt like communication failures. If I feel like you didn't read the message you're replying to, one of us made a terrible mistake.
This whole affair bummed me out so much that I'm considering logging out and not contributing anymore.
I've experienced the downvote piling on before, it's definitely irritating to make a good faith effort and then have a bunch of people express their disagreement with clicks.
I do think that most of the replies are simply politely disagreeing with you, not missing the point you made. You mention the CanVec imports, another issue with the adjustment for population density is that OSM activity around the globe is not uniform; it's no doubt changed since this posting, but it gives an idea:
The activity is substantially higher in some countries, per population, and also per area.
There are a lot of other imported data sets that aren't terribly connected to population. The U.S. would look dramatically different without the TIGER road import, and the import of node heavy NHD data doesn't particularly follow a population distribution, in addition to not being completed. For example, if you look here:
But there's no connection between that dividing line and population density, it's from however the source data was split up (probably separate watersheds).
I agree the replies are in good faith, and I'm happy people took the time to respond to me. But somehow the good faith makes things frustrating. Trolls can be ignored, downvoted and banned, but communication problems are complicated. If we have a discussion and nobody changes their mind, something's wrong.
They did precisely what I was advocating: adjust for population and area (though a little coarse). And it makes the data much more insightful: look at that bright Greenland, or Brazil lagging behind the rest of the continent. That's not visible on OP's map.
And I stand corrected on the import information. I hadn't thought of that. So the information on the map is not useless, but it could be much better.
It's a visualization of different data though, counting the number of users making a change each day.
I see what you are saying about being more interested in a visualization that tried to account for some regional variances (and it's a fair point about Mercator distorting things), but I guess the thing people are taking issue with is the statement that it would be better, when it would probably be different enough to not even invite comparison.
(What I mean with that last bit is that "here's the nodes" maps simply and directly back to the database, whereas any normalization is going to involve picking some basis for the normalization and figuring out how to apply that basis and so on.)
or Brazil lagging behind the rest of the continent.
Except that when it comes to map data it they aren't lacking behind and that's exactly what is shown on OP's map. Adjusting for mappers would remove the essence of OP's map: How much has been mapped in a certain area.
If you could track every car and make a map showing how dense traffic is at a certain time you would not adjust for population either, because that would just distort you data.
but it could be much better.
I disagree. Every adjustment you make I would have to consider in addition when interpreting the map. For example then I would have to know if Netherlands or Germany is more densely populated or has more contributors to figure out which one has more map data. Right now I just look on the map, see which one is bright and know it has more nodes.
