[maptime]

Speaking from experience, it's more often bored cartographers trying to inject some fun into mundane activities.

I used to try and write my initials.

Quite often it devolves into a game of seeing what you can get past the reviewers

[Aachen]

Interesting perspective. As an OSM contributor, I've never had this thought. You presumably spend up to 8 hours a day mapping, all week long (depending on the week perhaps), which I can totally imagine gets old. I only map when I feel like it and not when I'm bored

And on OSM we don't have boss fights in the shape of reviewers. That does sound like a fun challenge :P