(survey has ended as of May 2022 – thanks for feedback!)
The above link goes to a 2 minute survey, with option to take an extra 5 minutes for extended answers.
Please consider sharing your feedback with us as we analyze the current state of Mapillary and look to build a future roadmap that support user needs!
And of course, you can add extra comments here in this topic, too.
Filled in the questionnaire, think it took more than 5 minutes for the extended version ; not sure why I was to log in to Facebook to continue after having declined to give my email in order to b e contacted?
I cannot see that it asks to login to Facebook at all. Anyway, it’s me viewing the responses and I am deleting everything after extracting to a document, so no login info/FB username/email info will be associated.
Let me know how long you think the second half took! I timed myself but perhaps am too fast.
better tools, better tools, better tools,
I agree with @allen
For example now: in the Mapillary desktop uploader: there is no way to simply delete a specific image (or disable it from being uploaded). Sometimes I took a little pause but forgot to turn off the camera and so there’s a cluster of images that shouldn’t be uploaded, but I have to manually go find those files. Delete them and then rescan all the images again
I thought it was just a way of occupying an intern.
I would love to participate in the survey, however the facebook.com domain is blocked on my network (for some obvious reasons), so I am out of luck, even for just reading the questions. 
Well, since I have not been able to even read the questions I am not sure what it is all about. So, my feelings about it are mixed. Nevertheless, I am genuinely happy that Mapillary conducts a survey at all—because imho given Mapillary’s apparent bad shape and dysfunctional state, it is indeed badly needed—I am a bit displeased about the way it is done. Often enough, surveys tend to be most revealing in the way you ask questions and in what questions you do not ask. So, for one, I would rather like to see it front and center on the Mapillary web page rather than in the backstage area of a forum. May it be due to branding or just for the sake of technical reasons, like domain accessibility. For two, this survey might also be something for the blog too. The blog gives room to talk and explain what it is all about in the first place. Unfortunately, the blog is dead.
But, I do not want to just complain here. I would like to also provide some constructive criticism. Hence, since I am unable to participate in the survey due to technical reasons my extra comment here goes like this:
My biggest gripe with Mapillary currently and for the foreseeable future by far is the fact that Mapillary’s parent entity (in other words, the decision makers and hoster) are unsuited to run this kind of crowd sourced endeavor. Indeed, they are the owners and sponsors to run all of this. However, there is an indisputable and indissoluble conflict of interest between the sponsor and the community here, especially given the sponsor’s history record. So, like I have mentioned before; Mapillary is a great idea and has been built into an outstanding service over the years but it is flawed in its legal and governing structure (now). Mapillary should have been transformed or should transform into some form of foundation or association with elected members from the community and sponsors to govern its fate and operations. Otherwise, I feel like it is doomed to fail sooner or later.
Lack of proper tools or disregard for ISV’s to seriously work together to mitigate this issue or to create a functioning ecosystem around Mapillary. I am not sure why this is exactly but to me as an outside observer this appears to be in part due to lack of manpower. There may be also other, perhaps more pressing, reasons for that.
@GITNE ,
Glad to see you back, wondered what caused many of your contributions to forum threads to go missing.
On the survey : there is usually a line of thinking behind a survey, some plan for the way forward, but here we had a fair number of open answer boxes, and a catch-all ‘any other points?’ box at the end.
Met als immer vriendelijke groet,
tbf, as much as I would have liked to see a foundation or something like that… it’s simply not possible with the absolute insanity of data they need to store.
While I am also not a big fan of Facebook/Meta. They do some great things for the open source community at times, including for example their excellent compression algorithm that is currently unmatched. And the React framework that many app/website developers use.
Only if I am in the intern 
Thanks! And remember, many of us are the original Mapillary team and really want to make OSM, Mapillary, and mapping in general as good as possible. Meta gives us a place to work on that with great support. Personally I was an OSM contributor and a Mapillary contributor before I ever worked for Mapillary and now Meta, so like others on the team have strong roots in the community and the spirit of the project, hoping to keep it moving the best direction.
And God knows I was one.
And God knows I was one.
tbf, as much as I would have liked to see a foundation or something like that… it’s simply not possible with the absolute insanity of data they need to store.
I would not share this level of pessimism. It is definitely possible and feasible, both in legal as well as technical terms. Sure, the amount of pure storage space required is impressive, yet far from being on the edge of technical feasibility. You can easily find public and private entities, like government departments, ministries, universities, or research institutions who have to deal with very comparable or even larger quantities of data on a daily basis and run their own data centers. Sometimes these types of entities are required by law to operate their own physically separate data centers, so they do. So, imho this is no argument, except for cost. Besides, that hypothetical foundation we are talking here about would probably be better off to look for a data center service only provider, which do exist, like DigitalOcean, GoDaddy, or Strato to name a few. My point here is that FB is more than just a hoster. FB has a vested interest in collecting all sorts of data, processing it (that is, to peek into it), and then to monetize it. This has been FB’s business model ever since. Traditional data center service providers do not monetize their customer’s data, they monetize their service.
However, there is even a bigger threat to Mapillary as a service than FB’s appetite for spying: being arbitrarily shutdown without recourse.
Do you mean the whole service, or just the user ?
I know the feeling in both cases.
Everything can be destroyed.
While obv I don’t know. I have always suspected that Mapillary was (unfortunately) not really much of a profitable company. Hence why they had to sell to Facebook.
Storing imagery, even on cheap storage platforms like Backblaze B2 still costs a sht ton, and that’s not even including the cost every time someone accesses the data.
Having to monitize that seems tricky (to get enough money atleast).
Mapillary competitor Grab(Kartaview) has a use for it to improve their own GrabMaps product. But Mapillary’s customers would have mainly been self driving car companies probably, but I think they were just a bit too early for those to have a real customer base to work with.
Mapillary could have potentially had a revenue source where they work with gov’s. Gov’s often need streetview data, but tend to do it either internally or local companies that do it. But the problem was that Mapillary didn’t really have a government facing initiative much. Mapillary doesn’t employ people to capture, they just have the platform. Someone else must have been commisioned to do it.
And the government’s that did learn about Mapillary, just did it themselves: Oostrozebeke als eerste volledige gemeente 360° op Mapillary – WVI GISCO
West-Flanders region in Belgium bought a gopro 360, captured footage themselves and uploaded it to Mapillary. Great for open usage of course, but from Mapillary’s perspective, they wouldn’t have many any money.
@chrisbeddow I am curious, is there any chance we are going to see survey results any time soon? You know, might be a good blog post to revive the dead blog. 