Even if you're not a cartographer, when you first see a map there's almost always a gut feel for whether you like a map or whether you don't. Critiquing a map is a deeply subjective thing. You may not know why you like a map but you can tell whether the map's cartography works or it doesn't work, for you at least.

The image at the top of this post is a great example of what I mean by this. It's a map of Berlin on the inside of an umbrella. Which is a great idea and this map is one I'm very fond of, both because of the time I spent in Berlin and because it was a present from one of my old HERE Maps team. But as a map, it's far from pleasing to me; I love what's being mapped, I just think it needs a better cartographer.

So much of what appears on today's digital maps is crowdsourced. Whether it's a totally crowdsourced map such as OpenStreetMaps' or a more focused effort such as HERE's Map Creator or Google's Map Maker, the so called wisdom of the crowd is an integral part of so many maps. But what would happen if you tried to crowdsource the critiquing of maps rather than the map itself?

When I was a lot younger than I am now I learned the address of where I was growing up. More about that in a moment. First I want to mention what I didn't learn.

I didn't learn that I was at TQ 23210 65789. Nor did I learn that I lived at 51.377792, -0.23107184. In just the same way that you probably pointed your browser at www.vicchi.org rather than 91.146.108.26, because letters and words are easier to remember than numbers, I didn't learn the OS grid reference or the latitude and longitude of my home.

Instead I learned the address. I learned I lived at 45 Ebbisham Road in Worcester Park in London's suburbs. Later, when I learned a bit more about the place I lived in I used to say my full address was 45 Ebbisham Road, Worcester Park, Surrey, KT4 8ND, United Kingdom.

It puzzled me that I knew I lived in England and England was a country but not part of my address. It also puzzled me that I knew I lived in the London Borough of Kingston upon Thames but that also wasn't part of my address.

Little did I know that I was being puzzled by the vague and capricious nature of addressing rules and that years later I'd try to work around these rules as part of my job.