The New York Times looks at user contributions to online maps, starting with Google, with its Map Maker program covering 140 countries and its recent opening of its U.S. maps. “People have been contributing information to digital maps for some time, building displays of crime statistics or apartment rentals. Now they are creating and editing the underlying maps of streets, highways, rivers and coastlines.” Not that OpenStreetMap and WikiMapia are left out of the discussion. (Note the not-disinterested response from Tele Atlas that such maps cannot be relied upon.) Thanks to Jim Peets for the link; also via Maps-L.