Hallo,

I have been monitoring POI development for Europe and Germany for fun. I use the POI exports provided by cloudmade and count some selected POI's and look at the development over time. Unfortunately, cloudmade does not provide any POI exports for Europe anymore, so new data only contains German POI development. Interestingly, there is a trend of fewer and fewer POI additions recently. It could be possible that the German community gets tired of mapping, but I don't think that this is the case. I hope my stats don't have errors, but is it possible that most POIs in well mapped areas have been mapped and we are seeing a saturation effect? This would be great news and indicates that OSM reaches a new level of maturity.

the graph:
osm.wiki/File:OSM_DE_Europe_stats.png

Random POI's monitored:

Cafe
Pub
Restaurant
Fast Food Restaurant
Beer Garden
Parking
Fuel
Hospital
Veterinary
Pharmacy
Attraction
Playground
Zoo
Cinema
Fountain
Picnic Spot
Nature reserve
Common
Hotel
Hostel
Guest House
ATM
Bank
Taxi
Commercial
Soccer
Swimming
Gymnastics
Sports Center
Pitch
Skateboard
Rowing
Table_tennis
Tennis
Multi sport
Equestrian
Golf
Shooting
Archery
Climbing
Boules
Soccer
Camp site
View point
Peak
Car rental
Tower
Museum
Spring