Most MapRoulette tasks are designed to be easy to fix, but a lot depends on the person who designed the Challenge you are working on, and the data that is available to fix the task. For example, there may not be good enough quality aerial imagery available at the task location, making it impossible to see the situation on the ground. It happens! No big deal. MapRoulette has a few different ways to move forward. This post explains each of them.

Before you even click ‘Edit’ to start editing the task in iD or JOSM, you already have a couple of options:

  • Skip: if you would like to skip this task for whatever reason. The task will remain in the pool for other mappers to resolve.
  • Not an Issue: sometimes you can already see from the map layers in MapRoulette that the problem described in the task instructions does not exist on the OSM map. Clicking ‘Not an Issue’ tells MapRoulette that the task should not be served to other mappers.

After you click ‘Edit’, the task area will be loaded in you editor of choice. The choices for completion of the task change to the following:

  • I fixed it!: if you feel that you improved OSM according to the task instructions, this lets MapRoulette know that the task is fixed. It won’t be served to other mappers, and you get 5 Leaderboard points!
  • Too hard / Can’t see: If you tried to solve the task in the OSM editor, but you could not complete it for whatever reason, select this option. Perhaps it turned out to be harder than you thought? No worries, perhaps someone else can still solve it. So after clicking Too Hard / Can’t See, MapRoulette will still serve the task to others.
  • Already Fixed: Because a lot of people edit OSM without using MapRoulette (can you believe it? :D), whatever the issue was may already have been solved by another mapper. If you find that this is the case, you can select Already Fixed and MapRoulette will not serve the task to anyone else.
  • Not An Issue: This is the same as above.

Whatever you decide, don’t worry about skipping tasks or marking them as too hard! This is valuable information for your fellow mapper who created the challenge.