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MapRoulette Documentation

website·Indexed 35 days ago

https://learn.maproulette.org/en-US/

Guides and tutorials for using MapRoulette to create and manage mapping challenges for OpenStreetMap. Covers creating challenges via Overpass or GeoJSON, managing teams and projects, styling task features, using the Rapid Editor, and utilizing mustache-tag replacement and Markdown for instructions.

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What's inside MapRoulette

  1. Overview of MapRoulette Dashboard widgets

    The MapRoulette dashboard is a customizable layout of widgets used to track progress and discover work. Available widgets include:

    • Main Dashboard Widget: Displays current points, leaderboard status, and links to active or recommended challenges.
    • Follow: Tracks other users' activity.
    • Challenge Highlights: Shows admin-featured, high-demand challenges.
    • Popular Challenges: Shows challenges with high recent community activity.
    • Tracked Tasks: Shows tasks the user has explicitly chosen to track.
    • Your Recent Contributions: Displays a history of the user's own recent challenge contributions.

  2. Overview of Cooperative Challenges

    Cooperative Challenges allow in-progress (uncommitted) mapping work to be packaged with tasks. When a mapper edits the task, the in-progress work is automatically loaded into their editor for verification and completion.

    Key Constraints:

    • Currently, JOSM is the only supported editor for Cooperative Challenges.
    • The general workflow (Edit -> Perform work in editor -> Upload/Commit to OSM -> Mark as Finished in MapRoulette) remains the same as normal tasks.

  3. Use Markdown for text styling in MapRoulette

    MapRoulette supports a variant of Markdown inspired by GitHub-flavored Markdown (GFM) for styling long-form text. It can be used in areas such as task comments, challenge descriptions, and challenge instructions. Note that unlike standard GFM, MapRoulette does not support raw HTML.

  4. Use Mapillary image integration for task verification

    MapRoulette integrates the native Mapillary viewer widgets to display image locations relevant to a task's location. This allows users to zoom in on imagery and navigate through Mapillary sequences using 'next' and 'previous' controls to verify geographic features.

  5. Organize challenges using Virtual Projects

    Virtual Projects allow you to create ad-hoc groupings of disparate Challenges without moving them from their original standard projects. Unlike standard projects, a single challenge can be a member of multiple virtual projects.

    Key Constraints:

    • You cannot create new challenges directly within a virtual project; challenges must be created in a standard project first and then added to the virtual project.
    • To add a challenge to a virtual project, you must either have the challenge be publicly visible or have at least read access to the challenge's standard parent project.

  6. Assign user roles and privileges for MapRoulette projects

    Project managers can be assigned one of three roles to control their level of access to the project and its challenges:

    • Read: Can view the project overview page and the challenges associated with the project.
    • Write: Can assist with managing existing challenges and updating their statuses.
    • Admin: Has full access to manage, edit, or delete the project. Admins can also remove other managers or modify their privileges.

  7. Manage MapRoulette notification preferences

    MapRoulette allows users to configure how they are notified about specific system and task events. Notifications are accessible via the Inbox in the user dropdown menu. Preferences are managed in User Settings, where users can assign one of four notification levels to different event types:

    • Ignore: No notification is generated.
    • Receive but do not email: Notification appears in the MapRoulette Inbox only.
    • Receive and email immediately: Notification appears in the Inbox and an email is sent immediately to the address in the User Profile.
    • Receive and email daily: Notification appears in the Inbox and is included in a daily email digest sent to the User Profile address.

    Note: MapRoulette does not currently require email validation; ensure the email address in your User Profile is correct to receive alerts.

  8. Understand the purpose of MapRoulette (MR) Tags

    MapRoulette Tags (MR Tags) are used for custom filtering and grouping tasks within a specific challenge. Unlike standard OpenStreetMap tags, MR Tags are exclusive to MapRoulette; they are not visible in other editors and do not affect the underlying map data. They are typically used by challenge managers to track task-specific metadata (e.g., marking a task as bad-imagery to identify areas lacking high-quality imagery for later analysis).

  9. Use Tag Fix Tasks to apply OSM changes directly

    Tag Fix Tasks in MapRoulette allow users to apply suggested tag changes to OpenStreetMap (OSM) directly from the MapRoulette interface. Instead of loading data into an external editor like JOSM or iD, users are presented with a suggested fix and can click 'YES' to apply the change to OSM immediately. If 'NO' is clicked, no change is made and the user is moved to a new task.

    In the task interface, a blue ➕ indicates a proposed new tag. Users can choose to view only the changes or see all tags for the object.

  11. Use mustache tags and short codes in Challenge Instructions

    MapRoulette supports mustache-tag replacement and specific short codes (square bracket notation) within Challenge Instructions to create dynamic content and interactive form fields. Note that the older notation using three curly braces for form fields is deprecated and should be replaced with square bracket short codes.

  12. Volunteer as a reviewer in MapRoulette

    Experienced mappers can volunteer to review tasks by enabling the reviewer option in their User Settings. Once enabled, a new item appears in the user drop-down menu that links to the review queue, where tasks can be sorted, filtered, and added to a personal review list.