OpenStreetMap
Apple Data Team #ADT multiplying Nodes on Coastlines
Posted by CharliePlett on 16 August 2022 in English.The Problem
In order to do beautiful micro-mapping it is necessary to map ways with a lot of nodes. However, it is painful for other mappers to connect their own adjacent ways to these nodes.
Possible Solutions
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Some mappers have suggested using multi-polygons to cut those ways and attach multi-polygons. But I have a personal problem with this which stems from the fact that a lot of beginners have a hard time understanding the concept of multi-polygons and how to use them.
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Another solution is to remove the way entirely. However, this also removes the history of that item, which I’m averse to.
The Main Culprit
The #ADT Apple Data Team has been multiplying nodes on coastlines and waterways all over Central America. Here are some examples:
Changeset in Belize by DaleOfAire
Discussion
Comment from SomeoneElse on 16 August 2022 at 07:53
I’m not sure I understand “it is painful for other mappers to connect their own adjacent ways to these nodes”? I thought that in most editors it was possible to easily add something following another way?
Also, I don’t think that [the one example that I looked at] was particularly overnoded - Had I been tracing something around https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/8114873377 , I might have used more, rather than fewer, nodes.
Andy (not in any way connected to Apple’s Data Team)
Comment from EdLoach on 16 August 2022 at 15:49
I’ve recently replaced (in England) a couple of beach multipolygons by beach areas (I was chopping the large beach up to add different names to different sections). It was really easy to keep pressing F in JOSM to follow an existing way that I was joining the beach to, when relevant, which seems to work in iD too based on a very quick test just.
Comment from CharliePlett on 16 August 2022 at 18:14
Huh, I’ve never heard of the F Follow command in ID before. Thanks a lot.
Comment from Glassman on 16 August 2022 at 18:28
Wow - the work they did looks great. They are welcome to improve coastlines around me.
Disclaimer, while I know some of the Apple team members, I’m not involved in their work, which they wouldn’t tell me about anyway.
Comment from mariotomo on 16 August 2022 at 21:08
in what is currently my area of concern, the ADT team announced they would review internal waters; then they edited the coastline.
it’s a pity they did not announce editing the coastline, because in the Panamanian Pacific isis a difficult task because of 5m high tides, potentially 800m distance from high and low tide coastline, and because the real coastline is hardly visible under the mangroves. they could have used some local hints.
also here, when editing the coastline, they did as Charlie described: multiplying by a not negligible factor the amount of nodes. take for example this mangroves island:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/142835431/history
from 39 nodes to 267, without changing the shape but looking like they performed a spline smoothing on the original shape, then split every so many metres.
what I would call unnecessary bloating of the database.
Comment from kucai on 17 August 2022 at 02:27
maybe part of their performance index evaluation. more nodes = moarr money. Hence the seemingly inability of paid xxxx mappers to draw a straight line with just 2 nodes.
Maybe. ;)
Comment from mariotomo on 25 August 2022 at 01:07
https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=72833
that’s about the coastline edits by the #adt team, with a reply from the team leader. most interaction happened on a public Telegram group.
Comment from mariotomo on 28 August 2022 at 18:52
p.s.: not only on coastlines … have you ever seen a town in Morocco? it’s only sharp corners, unless when mapped by Apple.
sometimes corners are so sharp, that Apple prefers to go through walls.