Map Improvement Proposal 16 (MIP-16)

5/28/2024 UPDATE — After considering feedback from the Hivemapper community, we have decided to complete the regionization of the world, but in a more gradual rollout than proposed. Regions would be added over 4 weeks, rather than two, with the first regions created for the reward week of May 27, which will be issued on June 5.

SUMMARY — In this proposal, called MIP-16, we propose completing the regionization of nearly all populated areas of the world for a more accurate long-term measure of Global Map Progress. Region boundaries have been completed for all countries around the world and we propose deploying them over 2 weeks if this proposal is finalized.

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We designed the Hivemapper Network to release rewards using a metric called Global Map Progress, which measures how many areas of the world have the coverage, activity and resilience needed to satisfy the needs of building the world’s freshest map.

In the early days of the network, not all regions of the world were included in the Global Map Progress metric. In retrospect, this was a mistake. This proposal would complete regionization of nearly all populated areas of the world for a more accurate measure of Global Map Progress.

(The exceptions are China, Russia and North Korea, which will not be regionized in order to reinforce that map contributors must understand local laws regarding map data collection and should avoid taking any actions that would put their personal safety and security at risk.)

Region boundaries have now been completed for all other countries around the world and we propose deploying them over a two-week period if this proposal is finalized. As of this writing, there are 2,447 defined regions. Once we complete regionization, we expect to have roughly 2,800 regions in total, although this number may fluctuate if boundaries are adjusted (as with Europe and the United States) to better meet the expectations of map data customers.

There are two main motivations for this proposal:

1. Making steady progress toward regionization of the entire world. The entire world will need to be placed in regions sooner or later. Failing to include the less active areas of the world is misleading and postpones the inevitable to the detriment of future contributors.
2. Ensure all areas are fairly rewarded for their contributions, without waiting for region creation. We continue to hear would-be contributors who decide not to map because they lack confidence their contributions will be rewarded. We have also observed some contributors start mapping and immediately stop due to unsatisfying rewards when mapping outside of defined regions. Completing regionization sends a clear signal that all mapping will be fairly rewarded.

We welcome input on the pace of regionization and other changes that could help achieve the desired outcome of full global regionization.

Feedback on the proposal

The comment period was 7 days, running from Friday, May 18, 2024 through Friday, May 25, 2024.

Several contributors asked how the proposed change would affect Global Map Progress, and thus HONEY rewards.

If the MIP-16 proposal had been in effect for the rewards week of May 13, 2024 (issued on May 22, 2024) then Global Map Progress would have been 0.274 instead of 0.344. That is a 20 percent reduction, all else equal.

Several contributors raised concern, more broadly, about falling rewards as a result of recent proposals.

We want to stress that fair rewards are essential to the Hivemapper Network’s innovative approach to mapmaking. Our achievements as a community are impossible without dedicated contributors, and we are committed to ensuring that rewards remain satisfactory as contributing to the network becomes easier and more reliable than ever. In the past we have implemented several special reward programs to ensure this is the case, and we will continue to do so.

Thank you for all your thoughtful feedback as we continue to iterate on the design of the Hivemapper Network in order to build the world’s freshest map, together.