The Life of the Party: Impact of Social Mapping in OpenStreetMap

Abstract

OpenStreetMap has grown rapidly into an exemplary geowiki, where contributors collectively build an open map of the world. Official ‘mapping party’ events are organized on a regular basis to invite users to socialize, map and to engage new-comers locally. Here, we measure the direct and indirect impact of mapping parties on user contributions in both the short and long terms. We question whether this social mapping is a cause for users to become highly committed through a social bond, or is an effect of the mappers’ need to find a common social ground. We show that mapping parties have distinct effects on different types of users, with a more profound direct impact on weaker contributors and a longer term effect on heavy contributors.