OpenStreetMap
In Sweden, we had an extended Ascension Day weekend, because of the National Holiday here. And the weather was beautiful. So I took to opportunity to map Sverigeleden #30 from Kristdala to Vimmerby. I also did stretches of the cycling routes Jönköping-Västervik and Jönköping-Kalmar.
But I wonder when they will show up on OpenCycleMap. There is a tremendous delay. Some edits that I made two months ago still have not shown up at the low zoom levels. Andy Allan is working on the problem, but it would do so much more to motivate people to contribute if updates were shown the next day.
Discussion
Comment from Andy Allan on 10 June 2011 at 15:59
Yeah, I'm really sorry about the recent delays to the updating. The root cause is the one server trying to do too many things at the same time - updating the database, rendering all the new tiles, and serving the tens of thousands of people hammering away at the server.
I've spent the last two days configuring another caching proxy in front of the tileserver - the first one has lightened the load, but it needs another. Most importantly the new one has got throttling to help deal automatically with people who are mass-downloading tiles. I've also got a few minor updates to the rendering side of things to help it go faster too.
I'll keep working on it (of course) and hopefully things will go better. It's all a question of time spent doing this, and when I need to spend days working on it then real work gets in the way!
Comment from PieterKuiper on 10 June 2011 at 17:52
Maybe the server should be allowed to concentrate on updating the map now and then. Just switch off requests once a week for several hours. That would make it predictable when OSM edits appear on the map, and different zoom levels would be consistent. It would stimulate people to contribute to the growth of OpenCycleMap. And I will make a donation - it seems that more hardware is needed.
Comment from flaimo on 19 June 2011 at 21:27
now that the tileserver for the main mapnik map got a hardware upgrade and is really fast, why can't that server take some of the load, maybe by rendering or serving the tiles?
Comment from PieterKuiper on 20 June 2011 at 09:51
That might be a good idea. By the way, the problem is not recent. It was the same thing last summer, see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:OpenCycleMap#Render_cycle?
Comment from PieterKuiper on 29 June 2011 at 08:17
I see that Andy has been busy updating the lower zoom levels the last several days. Great! Levels 5 to 9 are now consistent with eachother. It seems that these contain OSM edits until the end of last week.