If people all map different and separate regions then theres no incentive to be in any particular region. For me the interest is in having an area mapped more fully than we could do so alone. Gamerprinter said that he would be reluctant to engage in vanilla worlds (areas). Whats required is to get one area up to the point where you can set a campaign in that place and have the incentive to map extra stuff for it, push back the borders, add characters and get story into it. Once your story is driving the mapping then its a breeze.

Its like populating a wilderness with people, you cant put down twenty individuals sparsely across the land. They will all die. You need a village and when its large enough a few of them venture out and start a new area. You gotta feel like your progressing and making something worthwhile. As soon as it feels like a chore or is so gargantuan that its scary is when people will desert the cause.

Maybe we should aim to make a single adventure. Then a single village / town then the area around that town with more adventures. Enough to sustain a few adventures and grow it out. The point here is that many people can come in and get a great deal out of it with little effort. Thats the kind of traction that would be needed to get people enthused to start or stay there.