OpenStreetMap

I broke my streak

Posted by Zverik on 19 December 2017 in English.

A few days ago I forgot to spend a minute in an OSM editor. I had almost a month of consecutive edits, level 3 in OSM Streak with almost a hundred points. And then, after a hard day, I forgot about even opening a laptop. Neither an email, nor a telegram notification helped.

Participating three days in a row

The next day I submitted my first changeset in a row. How much did I lose in the game? I had been receiving five points for each changeset (I was too lazy to complete tasks), now I get three, completing the tasks. The fourth level was two months ahead, now… I don’t know, two and a half? 500 points is a long way to go.

I am practicing for mapping every day in the next year. Now I have seen how the streak could be broken, and to prevent that, I must not push mapping towards the end of a day, but do it the minute I see a notifidaction. Sometimes the task intimidates me: instead of opening the iD editor on a random place and mapping a building (which takes a minute), it requires opening JOSM, finding a specific place, looking at third-party services like Mapillary, remembering some piece of tagging, adding an imagery layer and uploading changes. All of this fits in five minutes, but there are days when I cannot spare that for OSM.

But seeing the point counter increase is still fun. I invite you to register in OSM Streak and spend a few months mapping. You might like it. Or maybe you will have a few ideas for the tasks.

Discussion

Comment from 4004 on 19 December 2017 at 17:56

Lost my streak after a long day and Telegram’s failure, but I certainly wasn’t as close to the next level as you were. Thanks again for OSMStreak

Comment from Yury Yatsynovich on 20 December 2017 at 02:27

I wish there was an entirely opposite challenge – a week/month/year without a single OSM edit

Comment from taranarmo on 20 December 2017 at 07:47

Day or week without OSM contribution is easy enough: just go to the place without, or with very bad and slow internet connection :)

Comment from Zverik on 20 December 2017 at 08:31

Yuri, I made a plugin for JOSM, no_more_mapping, in late 2012. It disables OSM editing for you, so not mapping wouldn’t pose a challenge. Alas, it was quickly deleted by Frederik, because “Some might find it a humorous way of pointing the finger at our vulnerabilities but I don’t find it all that funny”. Too bad.

Comment from Yury Yatsynovich on 20 December 2017 at 09:51

Ah, Frederik has a peculiar sense of humor and a vague idea about self-control problem. I would definitely benefit from that plug-in

Comment from philippec on 20 December 2017 at 22:30

I had a quick look and immediately I saw something I don’t like =

title: Improve a Coastline emoji: 🌊 description: >- Many coastlines were imported long time ago from a digitized low-resolution satellite imagery. You can definitely help improving it in some places. Add at least 10 nodes to a coastline. test: modified_way: “natural=coastline” added_10_nodes: “”

Please stay away from the Flemish coast. I once though I improved a pier, but these are well mapped in a map which we can use as a background.

So stay away from well mapped places with well educated locals.

Comment from philippec on 21 December 2017 at 09:38

I have an idea for a task : In a well mapillarized area, look for stairs without an incline and add that tag. That tag value does not change overnight.

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