OpenStreetMap

RobJN's Diary Comments

Diary Comments added by RobJN

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🌂 The Past, The Present, The Future

I can shed some light on Item 1. The code for the banner was simply re-used with a different image of the same dimensions as previous promotional campaigns. Those previous campaigns have typically been to raise awareness of the community run State of the Map conferences. I suspect when it was first done care was taken so that the close icon (cross in the top right corner) was more visible.

So in summary there was no bad intent to make it hard to find the close icon, just a volunteer working quickly to get something on line (quickly because it is their personal time they are volunteering) and they didn’t realise this. The alternative is to pay a professional services company to handle these things but even they make mistakes all the time!

Advanced StreetComplete

Awesome. Thank you for sharing - I need to get back into StreetComplete to test out some of these features.

Hedges as area features as well as linear ones

I think once it starts to cover a large non-linear area (as in your second example), calling it a hedge is not right. Instead it is an area of land that includes many of the same plants that you expect to see in a hedge. These are shrubs, trees, bushes. Looks like natural=scrub is the right tag (“uncultivated land covered with shrubs, bushes or stunted trees”). Indeed the wiki page for natural=shrub states “draw the area and tag it natural=scrub, and then you can map the individual shrubs by placing a node”. I also add nodes for large trees in hedgerows if I can be bothered.

So in summary, I don’t think area=yes on barrier=hedge is correct.

Community.osm.org - how's it going?

Like SK53 wrote, I find that reading more about other communities (i.e. non-UK for me) are doing, is the biggest benefit of the new forum.

And a few of the negatives don’t affect me. Firstly, despite using firefox on mobile, I don’t have the issue noted here. Loading times don’t bother me, and I find the interface intuitive enough that I haven’t needed documentation. I don’t recall ever noting anything wrong with the back button either and the “below the fold” point has never bothered me. In fact I wonder how important it is these days given that scrolling on a mobile is common on pretty much everything.

So all in all, a really good new addition. I now go here as my first place and check the other forums (e.g. talk-gb’s online achieve) second / less often.

UK Quarterly project 1 2023

Nice write up.

I’ve had two evenings working on Notes. The first was super successful and I closed close to 30. This evening was less productive at only 3! I ran across some wider map errors today so spent longer cleaning then up that actually addressing the notes. It was a good reminder that the quality of our map varies from place to place and largely depends on the amount of active skilled mappers monitoring an area for change (especially urban development).

I’m still undecided when to add data directly and when not too. A second source is not so important to me, but what is important is that the Note is clear and unambiguous. Close up photos in Notes are the harder one to deal with. I prefer Notes with photos that show the wider environment so that you can check positional accuracy against aerial imagery.

Finally, one thing I do when I close a note is look at the user on https://hdyc.neis-one.org/ and based on what I see, I make some suggestions for the mapper. I’m finding that I’m recommending the Every Door app regularly (which makes sense as I’m only reviewing notes created in StreetComplete so suggesting another app is a logical next step).

Happy mapping

Rob

UX/UI Concept: Your Business on the Map

Having business on the map makes sense, particularly those that are open to the public. I’ll leave others to debate how best to do this but on the question “How do you get an owner to submit their business?” perhaps look at how others do this, e.g. google maps. Last time I looked, it wasn’t all just web scraping; they did have a site that owners could go to provide detail about the stores they operate. And of course google also asks for crowdsource info here.

Do not map like this (a collection of incorrect mapping practices)

Nice example Richard (and much nicer wording in the router than my suggestion above). This is one example which is just those extra few meters apart that it is not right to connect the roads. What I’d call a classic staggered crossroad. No idea how common they are outside the UK though.

Do not map like this (a collection of incorrect mapping practices)

@DUGA: I agree with you on number 1. My point was that it can be down to individual opinion. For example if the road was an extra 1m, 2m, or 5m offset, would you still join them…? (Not an actual question I want answering, just making the point that it isn’t always clear)

Do not map like this (a collection of incorrect mapping practices)

In example 1: how much further apart should the roads be before you don’t join them? It’s not always easy to know!

Instead of “Turn right and then turn left” routers could say “go over the staggered crossroads” or something similar.

Vespucci 16.0 Beta

I’ll be testing the MVT support out when I find time. I’m still new to this so any links to worked examples / tips much appreciated. For example, for MVT in JOSM I leaned that I needed to point the custom URL to a style.json file. Is it the same principle in Vespucci?

(Sorry if that’s a really novice question - I play around until I get stuff to work rather than understanding what to do!)

Updating East Kent Hospitals NHS Trust Buildings

Sounds good. Tip: There is an overlay layer that you can add to help with alignment. It should appear under the name “OSM UK cadastral parcels” or similar. This shows the correct position of land ownership. Once loaded there should be a way to adjust the position of the aerial imagery to align to these before you continue with mapping. This is useful because the aerial imagery is not always that well aligned.

If in doubt, ask as I can provide some images/further help.

Cheers Rob

Big corporations are paying Openstreetmap mappers. Are you getting paid yet?

if the firms pay their employees/contractors for map edits, shouldn’t they pay to all who make the same kinds of edits?

If you want to get paid then you could try applying for their jobs as and when they become available. Of course it would mean that you are no longer free to map what you want - as an employee you will be instructed what to map.

Personally I will continue to contribute what I want to work on as an unpaid volunteer. I will also continue to benefit from the sponsorship that these companies pay to e.g. State of the Map and other projects that are able to make a positive case for what they are doing.

In summary: I don’t believe humiliating organisations in to paying OSM more will work (it’s also a failure to understand our data licence as we give data for free not for a fee). In fact it is likely to have the opposite effect and take money away from things like State of the Map. Instead we would be better to focus on making positive cases for projects that benefit both sides.

What’s in a name? What should HOT’s new regional hubs be called...

What about:

  • Map group Asia Pacific (supported by HOT)
  • Mapping Asia Pacific (supported by HOT)
  • Maps for good: Asia Pacific (supported by HOT)
  • Map plan …
  • Base Map …

There’s got to be a play on either of the words “coordinates” or “landmark” too but these might only work in English!

Also maybe:

  • HOT Map Series: Asia Pacific
Notizen vom Treffen des OSMF-Advisory-Boards am 24.02.

If you are dissatisfied with the progress in some parts of the community then demonstrate how it can be done better. Set up a discourse instance for OSMUK and demonstrate to the rest of the community how useful it is.

OSMUK is already overstretched. That, and seeing others clearly overstretched, is why we added this to the agenda. We wanted to discuss ideas that go beyond “just do it yourself” or “just ignore the fact that you’ve identified a potential improvement as someone will get to it eventually”. We need support and I suspect other groups much smaller than OSM UK do too. We therefore wanted to discuss ideas for helping each other out.

By the way, the “discuss the idea and if it’s good, people will come” works to a degree, but there is now a long back log of ideas which non developers (and developers) have indicated are good. We wanted to discuss how we tackle these.

If you have suggestions, please share. Without those suggestions, then yes, we do have a systematic problem.

Notizen vom Treffen des OSMF-Advisory-Boards am 24.02.

In der Diskussion ging es in erster Linie um Discourse wenngleich Rob auch versucht hat, das Webseite-Thema mit anzuhängen. (The discussion was primarily about Discourse, although Rob also tried to add the website topic).

I actually wish I had not included the examples at all because the agenda item was how to make more progress on infrastructure items that in general are stuck. Adding the examples just resulted in a discussion about Discourse which was not my aim. I was hoping that the AB might be able to advice on some ways to increase the amount of work done on infrastructure (stability of which was a topic that came out high in the survey).

Also I note that in quite a few places you’ve written things like “seems like”, or “I assume this means”. Given that you were in the meeting you should have asked. Some of your assumptions are plain wrong and could have been clarified if you’d asked.

Online Briefing on the 2021 OSMF Community Survey

I will also use the Power Point 365 facility for rendering speech to text so that anyone who can read English can read subtitles as I speak.

How do you do that (as a presenter not a viewer) as I cannot seem to find the option and would like to use it as well?

OSMF survey on board priorities - a quick analysis using the Borda count.

On the database rights topic, we might actually still be protected depending on whether our EU mappers can be called “makers”. Here are some things to look in to:

“[The sui generis database rights] shall apply to a database whose makers or right holders are nationals of a Member State or who have their habitual residence in the territory of the Community” (Source: Notice to stakeholders– Withdrawal of the United Kingdom and EU rules in the field of copyright 28 March 2018)

And

“Whereas the objective of the sui generis right is to give the maker of a database the option of preventing the unauthorized extraction and/or re-utilization of all or a substantial part of the contents of that database; whereas the maker of a database is the person who takes the initiative and the risk of investing; whereas this excludes subcontractors in particular from the definition of maker;” Source: Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases

And within OSM:

“When you upload data to OSM, you remain the copyright holder of your data, but you grant certain rights to the OpenStreetMap Foundation under the Contributor Terms.” (source: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Legal_FAQ)

Given that many of our mappers live in the EU, then does this not mean that the database continues to be protected if they are “makers”? It might be worth exploring that avenue. Are our mappers in the EU “makers” in the sense that they took on the initiative and risk when they decided to contribute to OSM? If they are then do they continue to hold sui generis database rights? If instead they are “subcontractors” then they would not hold any right, but as we are not contracting them to go out and map (they map what they please) they’re probably not subcontractors. Makers seems to fit in my mind. Worth asking for legal advice.

Thoughts on paid services as means of resources in OpenStreetMap Foundation and Local Chapters

The “UK method” is appropriate for large organisations but adds significant extra work for smaller organisations. I can confirm that OSM UK does not do do this.

If you want a low effort, high gain change, then one suggestion would be that Local Chapters have to offer out any work to the community prior to taking it on themselves. The OSM UK Local Chapter does this. Each time we are approached to do paid work, we share the scope of the work openly with our community. Anyone is free to apply to do this work and the company can pick who they want without interference from OSM UK. This has been successful on several occasions for us. In other instances nobody came forward to do the work. In those cases the OSM UK Local Chapter did the work via one or more of the board members and the money raised went in to the OSM UK account for use on OSM UK projects.

If you ban Local Chapters from engaging in paid work, then you reduce the number of ways that Local Chapters can raise money. Less money means less ability to support the local community.

PRoW Mapping in Lancashire

Good to see the Mapbox layer I created getting some use :-)

Thoughts on paid services as means of resources in OpenStreetMap Foundation and Local Chapters

I think we should let each local group decide what works best for them. We should therefore not add extra rules that might work well in some parts of the world but not in others.

On clauses in the Articles of Association, my own experience of helping to set up OSM UK is that you should be really careful what clauses you add to the Articles of Association. Every extra clause makes it harder to do something and what might seem like a good idea at first, could cause you more trouble that what it is worth. I think it is much better to define principles but allow flexibility. With regular elections the board can be held to account if the local community feel it is deviating too far from the principles.

Summary: Let local groups decide and ensure that the local members can elect new directors / vote on resolutions if they feel the need to change direction.