With paths in woodland, surveying in winter is better than summer.

On my garmin, I switch gps to satellite view which gives an estimate accuracy figure. Start just outside woodland area. Stop walking, turn facing south and let signal stablise then waymark on best accuracy figure. Walk further 10m/strides whatever along path to be traced, then stop, turn south let signal stablise again then waymark, move another 10m/strides whatever, then stop etc, etc until path is completed. If at the same time you note where the signal is weakest you will know where your main problems are going to be.

For very bad signal spots if you can, walk 90 degrees to the path to a stronger signal point then waymark, turn around walk back across your path you are tracing, still at 90 degrees on the other side of the path at roughly the same distance then waymark again. Hopefully you path will be somewhere between the two waymarks.

If you think the above takes for ever, yes it does!

Another way is to stick a BT gps receiver on a very long pole :-)

>The OSM foundation can't make any profit.

Yes it can. It can't distribute those profits to its members. The profits can be used for other activities

I happen to stray into that "so last century" mode of group internet communication, called mailing lists (something I never normally do)when I started looking for an alternative to OSM. Out of all the moderation I have seen over the years (and that's quite a few!) the moderation on OSM talk seems oppressive.

...rounding read running!

Time for bed I think

@paulbiv

Thanks. I have not been up the road to Cliffe recently, a bit too cold when the north winds blow.

I'm still collecting data but not decided where to put it yet, maybe fosm and/or my own thing, too busy with real work which works along side my data collecting.
I'm about 5000 items of data to enter behind at the moment and suspect within the next 6-8 weeks being 15000 items behind in total. I prep'ed a lot in the Frindsbury area recently (building outlines etc) ready to take the first lot of data but that won't happen on OSM now. So if you see a dementated person rounding around with reams of the paperwork scribbling away, walking into lamp posts in the process, you might have seen me!!

@Zartbitter Thanks

@ceyocky
In the OSM community, one of the worst examples such as:

"I can't be 100% certain, and I can't prove it, but I recall mapping these
areas with my laptop and GPS bug in my backpack on my mountain bike, back
before common mobile phones had GPS built in. They are marked as Author
"JohnSmith" who seems to be an anal retentive prick."

@Richard

I know, I think its to do being a reluctant leaver after spending so much time and effort over the last 4 years on OSM. Also there have been barriers to me abandoning the OSM ship some time ago in that the alternatives have not seemed to be viable and mature enough. Those barriers are now beginning to fade.

Spam

Check this out - http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index/your_rights/legal_system/police_powers.htm - may help to decide whether to take further action.

Suggest taking a dog out (the bigger the better) with you when out surveying, most people will ignore a dog walker (unless you have a 75kg Dane like me, but even then I only get smiles and comments " look at that thing" or similar) however I am told by someone working for Kent police, that officers hate having to arrest people with animals because it at least triples the hassle and paper work

That what happens when you substitute your brain for a satnav. Get a lot of "foreign" trunk drivers round here doing crazy things following the GPS. Last one was a Polish driver who buried his 44 ton arctic in a boggy farm track which you would have trouble driving anything down it

Don't worry about, KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON MAPPING

Comment on the User diary entry "Riga is flooded" set the alarm bells off for the teacher looking who was curious about the title. At the time the entry was near the top of the page of the user diary listing. The person involved started looking around and found more problems.
I suspect if a secondary school was involved it may not have been much of a problem but for a Church of England primary it was too much.

I've had no real problems with Vista HCx, the low battery indicator comes up fairly early but runs for a long time after indicator has come up. Only use on battery or mains power

been using P2 and its forerunner P1 for years, P2 was fine earlier today, then hit problems @ 5pm. checked flash at the time was ok. All ok now though, strange, considering I checked on different laptops and networks

In my part of the world you don't have to pay taxes to vote, for most of the population its a universal right.

>> @netman55: Last time I checked, the mailing lists, IRC channel, the forum and the wiki all carry no charge <<

But the vote didn't happen through those channels so is irrelevant, the vote was among OSMF members so you have to pay. Look here http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation , the paragraph on membership

Don't think it's a very democratic process where you have to pay to vote! Considering OSM is a global project, with respect to contributors, the annual fee to OSMF is more than a month/year wage in some parts of the world

A new more trendy breed of puppy that doesn't need hair cuts comes to the village, the people go "oooh and ahhh" and lavish it with lots of attention and cuddles and quickly forget about haircuts. Meanwhile the old dog curls up in the corner and looking forlorn wondering why it doesn't get attention anymore.

Perhaps you should talk to farmers to sort this one out! "Typical "townies", haven't got clue about the countryside" some farmers might say if they saw this discussion here and elsewhere.

As I visit farms on a regular basis and speak to farmers, here's my viewpoint (England/Kent):

Farm - Also known as "Estate" - an area "managed" by a person(s) as a single entity, that person may be or not the landowner. A farm can contain different types or "Grades" of farmland (oh dear another load of tags just been spawned!) plus buildings and waterways. So a farm is not just a building. Difficult to map from Bing as farm boundaries can change often especially with leased land.

Farmyard - area close to and including farm buildings which are central to farm operations and often used for "wintering" activities and storage

Farmland - a loose/generic term generally which can mean various things, for example a single farm or part of it, a collection of farms. Farmland can contain fields, orchards, woodland (yes, thats right woodland/forestry, grade 4 or 5 farmland), grazing land/paddocks etc etc.

So some of the wiki definitions are nuts.

However I think the tagging in this area is way overboard, for mapping purposes tag the farmland and the buildings i.e. landuse=farmland & building=yes should be just fine, especially as farmers are diversifying into other areas due to economic situations, one farmer down the road is leasing farm buildings to form a mini business park and another has an archery area, try tagging that lot accurately, on second thoughts don't bother

So it still was not an open vote to the majority of contributors (300K+) but to a relatively small group of, in effect self appointed, people. I don't call that "Open" but limited to people who can afford to pay the membership fee every year.
Remember in some parts of the world ( the very areas where active mapping should encouraged ) £15 could easy equate to a substantial part or not all a persons annual earnings

>> Can't be that the process is undemocratic - it was put to an open vote, and passed with a landslide <<

erm.. what open vote? I wasn't invited to register to vote, where's the result? I for one would be interested to know the outcome of poll of 300k+ contributors.

You missed:

"You hereby grant to OSMF a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable licence to do any act that is restricted by copyright, database right or any related right over anything within the Contents, whether in the original medium or any other. These rights explicitly include commercial use, and do not exclude any field of endeavour. These rights include, without limitation, the right to sub-license the work through multiple tiers of sub-licensees and to sue for any copyright violation directly connected with OSMF's rights under these terms. To the extent allowable under applicable local laws and copyright conventions, You also waive and/or agree not to assert against OSMF or its licensees any moral rights that You may have in the Contents."

Which in effect gives OSMF shared ownership of the data contributors make

... should read "won't let you roam". Wish you could edit your own comments at times