No-Edit-History Points by Feature Type
Now that we’ve had a few challenges highlighting points with no edit history, we wanted to provide you with an update on how many of these points are left, where they’re located, and what feature types they consist of.
Points with No Edit History
As a recap, there are many points on the map that have no edit history. These are points that were edited prior to the launch of our current web application (i.e., prior to August 1, 2016). You can identify these points by clicking on them and then selecting “View History” at the bottom of the editing window. For points without an edit history, a dialog box will appear in the lower righthand corner that says, “This point has not been edited.” Since a lot may have changed in the almost seven years since these points were last edited, we’re encouraging volunteers to reverify these points regardless of their border color.
Where are they??
These no-edit-history points can be difficult to locate just by panning around in the web editor, so we thought we’d help by creating a few maps showing where these points are and what feature types they cover.
Many of the states with higher concentrations of no-edit-history points were targeted during some of TNMCorps’ very first mapping challenges, circa 2014 – 2016.
No Edit History by Feature Type
The images below show all of the no-edit-history points broken out by feature type. If you use the handy filters that are built into the web app’s edit panel in conjunction with the maps below, you can filter points by feature type and edit status to find these no-edit-history points.
- All Schools: Points with no edit history are clustered around major cities. Schools can be prone to frequent changes, so it’s especially important that these points are researched and reverified.
- Fire Stations: Points with no edit history are clustered in states along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts along with a few inland states (e.g., Utah, South Dakota, West Virginia, etc.). Fire stations also tend to evolve over time as the economy causes tax revenues to ebb and flow, so it’s important that these points are reverified from time to time.
- Law Enforcement: Points with no edit history are concentrated in Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina, all of which are states that participated in some of TNMCorps’ earliest mapping challenges from 2014 and 2015. Law Enforcement entities don’t evolve as frequently as schools or fire stations, but still should be reverified to catch any potential changes.
- Prison / Correctional Facility: Prisons are another feature that was targeted by earlier challenges, so points are concentrated in these earlier challenge states (i.e., Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina). Prisons don’t change near as much as some of the other feature types, so these should be pretty straight forward to research and reverify.
- Hospital / Medical Center: Like prisons, hospitals don’t change as much as some of the other feature types. Perhaps the most frequent change these points will see is in naming conventions.
- Ambulance Service: Ambulance and EMS stations frequently close, open, or move so this is an important feature to reverify.
- Cemeteries: Cemeteries are much less likely to change as some of the other feature types, therefore, we’re asking standard editors to focus on other points with no edit history before cemeteries. For our peer reviewers and advanced editors, we ask that you check the edited (green) points.
- Post Office: Post offices may see moderate change as facilities relocate to handle additional capacity and in response to USPS restructuring, fluctuating populations, etc.
- City / Town Halls: There aren’t any city/town halls without an edit history since we started collecting these features after the launch of our current application.