Why is a Community Maps Program update inconsistent among basemaps?

[Joshua-Young]

Back in March my organization submitted several layers through the Community Maps Program. On the World Topographic Map everything looks great. However, on the other Esri basemaps it appears that our building footprints and landuse were used but everything else was ignored.

So right now the only basemap my users can use is the World Topographic Map because it is the only basemap that has accurate information. All the other Esri basemaps still use out-of-date or incorrect information.

My question is, was this a glitch in the update process or will our Community Maps Program submissions only apply to the World Topographic Map?

[ShaneMatthews]

This is a great opportunity to speak about the new vector tiles and how they can be customized to include the community-based map layers you desire. In addition to being customizable, the vector tiles are updated more frequently and outperform the raster tiles on high-resolution displays.

All the styles can display all the contributor data.  Some may need custom filters, but the process is very easy…

• Make a copy of the style(s) they want in their account. 
• Edit the JSON:  find/replace ["!in", "Viz", 3] to be ["!in", "Viz", 2]. 
  This makes roads, admin lines and ferries show community data.
  The other community data is either in the tile set by default or is using the correct filter.
• Update item(s) with new JSON.
• Use new custom layer or add custom layer to own web map. 

The ArcGIS Blog is a great resource these days and very organized. I am including a filtered search you can bookmark for all the latest information in Vector Basemaps. I recommend perusing through.

[Joshua-Young]

Shane,

Thank you for your response. I tried your steps late yesterday and they worked great. However, I am still puzzled why community content is displayed by default on the World Topographic Map but hidden on all the other basemaps.

Also, the steps you provided only work for vector tile basemaps. What about the old raster tile basemaps that are still the only basemaps supported in some of Esri's products?

Joshua

[Anonymous User]

Do these steps need to be completed by every user for every instance where Community Content is available?  As an end-user of base maps, I've assumed the data would be consistent across ALL of the base maps for community content.  It seems the authoritative-provider data would be most accurate and relevant - why would ESRI continue to push out their older data that may be incorrect?

[Joshua-Young]

After following Shane's steps, it looks like you have to make those changes to every vector basemap that Esri has. The problem with Shane's "answer" is there are still Esri products that only work with the raster basemaps and you are stuck with the incorrect content. We were starting to switch from our basemaps to Esri's because we thought we could ensure Esri's would be basemaps would be up-to-date with us participating in the Community Maps program. Now that we know that are contributions are largely ignored we are re-evaluating that decision.

[Joshua-Young]

So the answer is apparently Esri only uses Community Maps content in the World Topographic map and that our content not showing up in other basemaps is by design.

Shane's response is helpful for forcing Esri's vector basemaps to show the Community Maps content but cannot be applied to the older raster basemaps (which some Esri products are still forced to use). If Esri will not use the Community Maps content in the default Esri basemaps, I would at least like to see an Esri group that has all the Esri vector basemaps setup to show the Community Maps content by default so every organization that participates in the program does not have to manually configure them on their own.

Hopefully the Esri vector and raster basemaps will show Community Maps content in the future, because right now I fail to see the benefit of taking the time to participate in the Community Maps program if those submissions are largely ignored.

[SethSarakaitis · Accepted solution]

Hello everyone,

These are some great comments and suggestions for the evolution of the Community Maps Program.  Hearing your feedback helps us to improve our processes and make changes for a better experience!

It is true that the ArcGIS basemaps, both Raster and Vector have different design decisions for the data sources, particularly the Roads and the City boundaries.  This may appear as if data from our contributors is being ignored, but actually we are purposefully setting some of our basemaps to using the Commercial data instead of our Community data.  The primary reason is to keep the ArcGIS routing overlay services, which use the Commercial data, in sync with the basemap. 

We appreciate your feedback that this situation can cause a disconnection between the basemaps.  I particularly liked your idea of creating some vector basemap styles in a group specifically for the commercial and community layers beyond just the World Topographic style. The JSON editing option mentioned above by Shane is a great way to accomplish this.

Thanks for working with us as we continue to evolve our service and thanks again for the ideas!

Seth Sarakaitis

Esri Inc. Community Maps Program Manager