Tomorrow evening we're going mapping around Marble Arch!

This will be a very beginner-friendly introduction to mapping. So if you're in London come along, and tell all your friends. Anyone who's never tried OpenStreetMapping, or curious about other ways of doing it. All you people lurking following @OSMLondon ... Come tomorrow evening!

OSMLondon events have always been wide-open for beginners to come along to, but I'm stressing this aspect in the tomorrows event. This is part of an exciting new event formula in which we alternate "pub meet-ups" and "mapping parties".

Last month we met at the Iron Duke pub with the intention of kicking off the mapping season. This is a good spot for some of the mapping priorities of central London, and I'm pleased that Derick managed to fill in some awesome details around St James Street. For my part I had signed up for a slice of cake to the South, but I spent so long in the office preparing a print-out of building outlines to check... that it go too late so I just went the pub (ohhh! That's cheating!) It was the daylight confusing me.

Outside the pub (in the new evening daylight) the hot topic of conversation was...

An academic paper all about London OpenStreetMap mapping parties! (PDF)

Amazing and slightly weird that these people have analysed this in such detail. It feels a bit like somebody wrote a ten page academic paper about my personal bad habits. It's weird that they do all of this without ever attending a mapping party themselves, but we figured it was a scientific analysis in which the scientist decides to avoid interfering with their subjects!

In judging the participation and retention rates of mapping parties, their data source was raw edit data in OpenStreetMap. Can't argue with that. But the analysis seemed to me to have a few holes. They've looked at the location and times of mapping parties over the years, based on the wiki records. They did observe that in the summer of 2008 we had a lot mapping parties. This was actually a mapping blitz. A "marathon" of epic proportions, with evening mapping happening in far-flung locations, and happening every week. We were filling in obvious gaps in the map at that time. I imagine this yields some clear and easy to correlate editing data. These days there's fewer obvious juicy gaps to tackle. As a result mapping parties have largely been in central London, a bit less frequent, and probably attracting a bit less participation in actual mapping. I like to think that these days London's map attracts more casual localised contributions from people dotted around London. The character of mapping party events has changed massively over the years. I'm not sure if this has been properly accounted for in their analysis.

In analysing edits they used a 48hour time window. Justifying it as follows: "We found that in 40% of mapping parties the peak of activity was on the day of the event, while in 89% of cases the peak activity was within 30 hours after the party. In 99% of cases, the peak activity was within 48 hours, after which the daily edits stabilise to the norm previously observed."

That's pretty interesting, but certainly doesn't fit with my own editing patterns these days. I quite often wait several days before inputting data. Also these days I often add more data (more objects) tracing building outlines in preparation for a mapping evening, with only minor tweaks and additions afterwards. Back in 2008 however, I was probably quite diligent about adding the data in (new streets!) soon after, particularly as we needed to be ready to do it all again the following week! Also back then I imagine that editing activity would have stood out a lot more from the lesser background editing.

So I had those quibbles, however reading on, there's definitely some very thorough and valid approaches. For example "OSM users greatly differ in terms of the amount of contributions they make, and over what timespan. In order to quantify the impact of mapping parties on different types of users, we have grouped them based on the number of contributions they made in the six months prior to each party". So I'll be in their "Group 4" heavy contributors category. They go on to say that these users don't actually get much mapping done at mapping parties "We cross checked the names of some of these contributors against what is publicly available in OSM wikis, and found that many of these users take on organisational roles, visiting an area prior to the party, creating ‘cake diagrams’, and identifying ‘problems’ they wish the party to fix." ...Got me down to a tee. And I think there's quite a few other OSMLondoners who probably managed to wheedle their way into the heavy contributors category despite never really bothering with any mapping at the London events.

These groupings also allowed them to scientifically conclude what we already know, that we suck at retaining newcomers. In this graph we score quite well on retaining experienced mappers (pink and blue), but pretty hopelessly with the newbies (red and grey)

CONCLUSION! "mapping parties do cause an increased editing activity during the events themselves; they also sustain engagement over time, though mostly for already active contributors; however, they largely fail on their third goal of engaging new-comers. After just a week following the party, these users stop contributing to OSM and do not come back to other mapping parties again"

In our huddle of "Group 4" retained mappers outside the Iron Duke pub, we had a good chat about all these things ...then we went for burritos

So it is with these things in mind, that I've shifted the way the events are organised just a little bit. Alternating "pub meet-ups" and "mapping parties" Not a major shift, but half the time we'll just call it what it is, a "pub meet-up" in which people who know each-other are meeting-up. We don't preclude newcomers of course, but we face the fact that it will most likely be the usual crowd (Nothing wrong with that. It's always fun!). But then for the "mapping parties" we try to angle it a little more towards newbies. I'm not under any illusions that this small change will make much difference, but it's probably taking things in the right direction. Also if I can chill out on the promotion effort and the cake diagram drawing effort for some of the events, that will be welcome, and maybe I'll have more time to do better promotion of these less frequent "mapping party" events.... was the plan... but I didn't get much time this time around. Promotion is a job for everyone though. Please reach out to people who may be interested, and pass on the link: http://bit.ly/londonosm9

...and I'll see you tomorrow evening for a beginner-friendly mapping session!

Looks like I’ve been a member for 330 days. Most of my edits have been in Canberra.

Incomplete list of edits:

Added footpaths in local suburb & surroundings (Weston Creek).

Added some green spaces.

Minor fixes of redaction things when it happened.

Parliamentary Triangle. Including memorials in Kings Park/Commonwealth Park. Surveyed Nerang Pool surroundings.

Named landmarks around lake e.g. Rond Terraces, Kurrajong Point, RG Menzies Walk, Aspen Island etc.

Parliament House grounds. Including all (AFAIK) water coolers.

Charles Sturt University.

Governor General’s residence (Government House).

Lake Burley Griffin circuit. Including most water coolers.

Also Yerrabi Ponds, Tuggeranong Lake and Lake Ginninderra circuits.

Circularising roundabouts—including State Circle and Capital Circle.

Retagged all ACT nature reserves (AFAIK).

Naming some residential areas e.g. apartment blocks, and also the local shops in several suburbs (incomplete).

Office areas in Deakin (surroundings of John James Hospital, and south of Alfred Deaking High).

Swinger Hill

Adding dog parks.

Realigned Forest Drive and added some new National Arboretum features.

Minor Canberra University edits.

Parking aisles here and there.

Latest project: surveying, drawing, consolidating, and cleaning up all Canberra off-road signed cyclepaths. I did this for the area south of the lake, then for Lake Burley Griffin itself. Most recently, I’m trying to fix up the northwest (Belconnen to Dunlop) and northeast (Gungahlin) areas. Currently fixing up Harrison. There could be some places I’ve missed, particularly the inner-south, ANU and Fyshwick areas. That may have to wait till after our winter.

I am not able to find a tool to tag a photograph of a particular location/feature in openstreetmap edit environment. please help

Summary

Amaroussi is working around the clock to resolve Greece's road classification nightmare.

OpenStreetMap users and editors may be aware that I am trying to solve a major issue regarding road numbers and classification in Greece, following my visit to the country last year. Additionally, I have discovered a very old government document regarding the classification of Greece's Provincial Roads.

The problem

At present, many of the National and Provincial roads are unnumbered, and I have been trying to introduce numbers based on interpolation and the 1963 list of national roads. As an interim measure, secondary roads had refs based on their destinations, whereas the Leonidos-Sparta road had ref=Leo-Spa (in Greek).

Last weekend I stumbled upon SkyscraperCity's forum topic on Greek highways and it appears that the road numbering system is very patchy.

Firstly, According to user ea1969, new numbers were added without proper consideration for the growing motorway network. Motorways then completely replaced National Roads without considering prohibited traffic.

Secondly, there is a provincial road numbering system and there is a pilot of the scheme at Alexandras Avenue since this morning using ref=EΠ8, based on the position it appeared for the entry regarding Attica's provincial roads. The problem is that it dates from 1956. Yes, 1956 - it has not been updated since.

This means that there going to be roads between towns and strategic municipality-maintained roads without the recently-discovered EΠ numbers, which makes the situation complex.

The solution (?)

The objective of OpenStreetMap is to be as useful to cyclists and pedestrians as much as motorists. In the UK, we know very well that road numbers are very useful and I hope to make it useful to our Greek users as well.

The advantage for OpenStreetMap over other Internet maps of Greece is that other maps either mistake Motorways for some National Roads, or simply just guess the route, which leads to overlapping sections. In both scenarios, they leave out Provincial Roads completely.

I have been doing actual research to figure out what the exact route of every National Road was and what it might look like today. That means that with consultation with actual government documents and Greek road enthusiasts, OpenStreetMap has the advantage to represent the most accurate road network of Greece to date in respect of road numbering.

As you will have noticed, I have been reviewing National Roads in Attica and the Peloponnese, as well as provincial roads between villages and towns. Over the next few months, I will be piloting a new provincial road system in the area with EΠ numbers, based on the position it appeared for the entry regarding each province's provincial roads at the time.

However, to implement this I am proposing major changes to how we classify roads Greece:

1. National Roads may be re-tagged as Trunk roads instead of Primary roads, so that Provincial Roads will become Primary roads instead of Secondary roads. This will free up the Secondary road tag for key municipal roads and roads between towns that were built after 1956.
2. To disambiguate between Expressways and National Roads, Expressways will be tagged with motorroad=yes. At present the trunk road tag is visually underused in Greece, and this has a negative effect of making National and Provincial Roads appear barely visible on MapQuest Open.

I just hope that one day the Greek Government will tidy up the road numbering system. Maybe our intervention will restore credibility to Greece's patchy road numbering system.

Footnote

Just before I sign-off this post, I want to enquire how I could start my own OSM server for creative and testing purposes? Thank you.

是不是又有大雨啊？？

Après une longue période d'absence due en partie à l'utilisation de logiciels privateurs, je suis de retour sur Openstreetmap, le matériel a changé et la pratique aussi. Utilisation d'un smartphone GPS plus précis, des cartes satelites BING et de Walking paper pour imprimer les cartes OSM avant de partir les remplir durant la cartographie d'un lieu.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/changeset/16073666

この変更セットのコメントか「キャンパスマップより建物を設定」となっていますが、 キャンパスマップという別種の地図情報を引き写して書いたのか？　 という指摘を受けました。実際は違うので説明させて下さい。

• この変更は現地を知っている者として行ったものです。
• 建物エリアは現地の知識とbing イメージを元に図示しました。
• 建物名称は現地で使われている名称をもとに書きました。

なのでこれらの変更については、source:knowledge です。 ただし誤字脱字などが無いよう、また、第三者が情報が正しいものと確認出来るよう、 当該組織のホームページよりキャンパスマップ（俯瞰図）を参照した、 というつもりでコメントをつけたのですが、不適切なコメントでした。申し訳ありません。

今後は source: GPS, knowledge を第一に、 コメントでは誤解を招かないよう気をつけたいと思います。 当該変更セットについては、後日GPSトレースを公開のうえ、 改めて編集を行いたいと思います。

ご指摘いただきありがとうございました。

Updated geometry and attribute updates to Bob Hope Airport, Burbank California. Some people make some elaborate geometry edits to follow the taxilines for aircraft, but when you do this it makes labeling (naming) the geometry very difficult. Happened quite a bit at Bob Hope Airport.Taxilines don't neccessarily equal taxiways. My wife and I fly out of Bob Hope every time we go home to visit family.

Updated geometry and attribute data for Sacramento Mather Airport, in Rancho Cordova, California. I flew T-43s here in 1983 and again in 1989-1991 when it was Mather Air Force Base. Updated geometry and attribute information for University Airport, near Davis, California.

Updated geometry and attribute data for Reddding Municipal Airport, in Redding, California. It is a wonderfful airport. I used to fly through there a lot in the late 1980s. Updated geometry and attribute data for the Lake Tahoe Airport, near South Lake Tahoe, California.

Added attribute information to Vance Amory International Airport, near Newcastle, Nevis, West Indies.

Blogged about @ http://clockwerx.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/consuming-georss-and-querying.html

Relatively low effort to pull together - 10 hours perhaps? from start to finish, split over two sessions.

Demonstrates * SimpleXML/PHP to consume the overpass API and results * Simple Leaflet usage * Rendering of polygons from OSM data.

Toady I started using OSM Marker to take GPS Data.

コメントの無い変更がいくつかありますが、下記のいずれかの場合がほとんどです。

• bing航空写真・GPSデータに比べて地図がずれていたので微調整
• ノードの位置が悪く道路が見えにくい部分を微調整
• 保存した変更セットについて、その直後に再度微調整

後からコメントを追加できれば良かったんですが、出来てません。すみません。

Hallo liebe OSM Gemeinde,

besonders diejenigen, die der deutschen Sprache mächtig sind, könnten mir vielleicht weiter helfen. Ich lebe seit gut einem Jahr in Paraguay und Kartenmaterial gibt es hier so gut wie keins. Man bekommt zwar ein Stadtkarte der Hauptstadt, aber dann hört es auch schon langsam auf.

In das eigentliche mapping muss ich mich erst einfuchsen. Als Neuling "erschlägt" es einen erst einmal, aber das wird mit der Zeit schon werden.

Meine eigentliche Frage: Ist es möglich Fotos bei OSM einzufügen (wie bspw. bei Google Maps)? Gerne würde ich die bereits gemappten Bereiche aus meiner Umgebung mit Bildern bestücken, wenn das geht, bzw überhaupt erwünscht ist.

Viele Grüße aus Südamerika,

Pepe

I think there must be a very large number of GPS trace points at the intersection of the equator at the prime meridian (what's that place called anyway?).

I'm afraid I've been fool enough to add quite a few of these myself! Oops. Sorry.

I've modified one of the gpsbable scripts that I use to prepare NMEA files, chopping out anything around (0,0), so all should be fine from now on.

Попиарю немного свою новую страничку: http://ask.fm/peirceosm

Если вы хотите что знать, но боялись спросить, вам туда)

I really love this new editor

by mapping a relatively small community college campus. I have been using the iD editor exclusively. Wish me luck!

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-26.140363&lon=28.134159&zoom=19

Imagery will reveal all.

Salve, sono felice di partecipare al miglioramento delle mappe.

12312

In den Zeiten um Feiertage gibt es in OSM immer wieder viele Neulinge und dann wird teilweise auch schon einmal der Landuse einer gesamten Stadt gemapt.

Aber in OSM ist nicht alles so einfach wie es am Anfang zu sein scheint. Es gibt so manche Regel, die nicht ausreichend und klar dokumentiert ist oder/und (dann) einfach nicht beachtet wird. Und wenn man dann im Kartographier-Eifer ist, kann es dann schon einmal sein, das eine Menge ganz umsonst war - Möglicherweise daher sind die ältesten Knoten so mancher Kartographierer bereits wieder gelöscht.

All das kann nur durch eine starke Community aufgefangen werden. Mit den vorhandenen (wie http://owl.apis.dev.openstreetmap.org/) ist bereits ein Bisschen möglich, aber sicherlich sind noch viele weitere und bessere Community-Werkzeuge von bedarf.

Das wichtigste muss immer sein, unerfahrene Nutzer darauf aufmerksam zu machen, wenn etwas nicht sinnvoll ist und dann auf das Wiki zu verweisen. Eine Mail zu bekommen, wenn man sich neu angemeldet hat, kann da nur der erste Schritt sein.

Die Schritte danach wären Werkzeuge, die einem Änderungssätze übersichtlich darstellen. Oder Beobachtungslisten von Objekten und Bereichen mit E-Mail-Benachrichtigung. Vielleicht sogar eine Grundfunktion, die anzeigt, wenn Objekte, die man angelegt hat oder zuletzt editiert hat, editiert werden.

Eine stärkere Community-Arbeit hätte den Vorteil, dass man wesentlich homogenere Daten hätte und neue Nutzer schneller lernen würden und eigene Fehler korrigieren könnten. Ohne sie gibt es immer wieder das Problem, dass die Karte von Hand aufgeräumt und überarbeitet werden muss, weil mancherorts Daten ungenau oder nicht nach den Vereinbarungen eingegeben wurden. Und ganz "teuer" sind Fehler, zu denen man Ortskenntnis oder sogar Vor-Ort-Dokumentation benötigt.

Man kann versuchen seine eingebenen Daten schon direkt durch hohe Qualität vor Änderungen anderer Mapper zu schützen, aber das geht nicht in jedem Fall und ist immer noch von anderen Faktoren abhängig.

Aus meiner Sicht wäre der eleganteste Weg eine verlässliche (und noch mehr Eigenschaften erfüllende) Karte zu erstellen, neue Nutzer von der ersten Sekunde an stark in die Community zu integrieren - sie automatisiert bei Fehlern auf Wiki-Artikel hinweisen, vorschlagen welche Nutzer sich mit einem Tag wahrscheinlich gut auskennen, automatisierte Erinnerungen an lokale Aktivitäten uvm.

Derzeit muss man wohl sagen, dass die OSM zum Glück noch keine (im entferntesten) annähernd so große Popularität wie die Wikipedia hat, denn die Kapazitäten der Community sind begrenzt - auch wenn sie dynamisch sind. Also lasst uns die Erfolgserlebnisse aller Beteiligten (also auch uns selbst) beim Mappen vermehren!