Corporate editors in OpenStreetMap: Investigating co‐editing patterns

Abstract

Traditionally, OpenStreetMap (OSM) has been recognized as a volunteered geographic information (VGI) project. In recent years, many corporations have enlisted teams of mappers to edit data on OSM. These teams of corporate editors (CEs) can quickly edit large swaths of data using a variety of methods. Consequently, there are new tensions over possible community bifurcations where editing and map stewardship disagreements may occur between the CEs and non‐CEs. To characterize CE and non‐CE editing interactions, we focused on six locations with varied types of corporate editing activity. We created six temporal (2015–2020) editing networks for each location, resulting in 36 total networks. We found a continual increase in the number of editors, with more growth in places with CEs. There was significant co‐editing between the two groups, with CEs showing more in‐group editing patterns, both in terms of number of edits and time between edits. We conclude that currently the CE and the non‐CE communities continue to co‐exist and co‐produce open geospatial data in apparent harmony, even though the size of the CE community and volume of contributions have grown significantly. Finally, we discuss implications for OSM as a VGI project in light of our corporate editing trends.