Via TidBITS (and Michael Tsai)
Unfortunately, it’s all too common for mapping services to rely on obsolete or incorrect data. In the On The Go Map map at the top of the article, you’ll see Plantations Rd in the lower-left corner. When I sent a map proposing a running course to my contact at Cornell, she pointed out that that road had been renamed Arboretum Rd. as part of an overall name change from “Cornell Plantations” to “Cornell Botanic Gardens.” It turns out that On The Go Map uses data from OpenStreetMap, a free and editable map of the world, so I created an account, logged in, and left a note asking for a fix.
I wanted to thank Adam for writing this. I don’t often get to read experiences in map making from amateurs / hobbyists very often. Seriously. Working full time at a digital mapping company means I’m always thinking about and engineering solutions to the really tough problems and since I’m not building customer facing products, I lose sight of how someone, a runner, may develop a method to making, annotating, publishing and correcting maps.