OpenStreetMap
OSM Notes in Australia
Posted by Fizzie41 on 25 February 2022 in English. Last updated on 28 March 2022.Late January 2022, I noticed this article in the weekly OSM News: https://www-openstreetmap-org.translate.goog/user/AngocA/diary/398423?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=EN&_x_tr_hl=en-GB, concerning the efforts the local community had made in cleaning up open OSM Notes in Colombia
By strange co-incidence, I’d started cleaning up the Notes in my local area a week or so prior to reading this!, but thought that would be a great thing to do, so, on 26 Jan, I mentioned the idea of cleaning up all the Australian Notes. on the AU mailing list.
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/2022-January/015573.html
At that stage, there were ~4500 of them, putting Oz in 22nd place for number of open Notes. That’s not too bad in any sense of the word, but some of them dated way back to 2013!, which certainly isn’t good :-(
So, several of us started working on them, pretty effectively I must say! :-)
On 10 Feb, I was able to post that the count was down to 3543, with ~30 still outstanding from 2017, all of which had had questions asked regarding them. This tally also dropped us down to #33 on the list.
Further update on 21 Feb had us down to 2460 open, with 26 prior to 2019, & also pushing us down to #44.
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/2022-February/015751.html
(Edit to add links to AU posts)
Oh, & the Notes page, showing the graph :-) https://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-notes-country?c=Australia
Update from Sunday 6 Mar 22: We made the Weekly Newsletter! :-) (& we were at 1092!) ________________________
8 Mar 22 - 999!!! :-) Amazing work everybody! ________________________
28 Mar 22 - I’m calling that pretty well done! 338 open Notes remaining, virtually all of which have either had questions asked to get further info, need on-the-ground checking, are brand new, or need further action by the OP. & once again - check that graph! :-)
https://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-notes-country?c=Australia
Discussion
Comment from BlueMM on 27 February 2022 at 23:08
Hi @Fizzie41 Would you be able to link to the Talk-au thread(s) by any chance? I followed your above link & eventually found OpenStreetMap (OSM) notes of Australia which shows a summary, but super exciting to see the huge change in the graphs!
Comment from Fizzie41 on 28 February 2022 at 02:37
Only too happy to oblige, so added above,
Oh, incidentally, 1532! :-)
Comment from AngocA on 6 March 2022 at 19:52
Congratulations for solving notes. I started back in December 2020, and I involved the Colombian community to solve them. We have learned a lot, and now we are trying to replicate the same initiative in latam.
We can even talk one day about our findings while solving noyes.
Andres Gomez - AngocA
Comment from stevea on 6 March 2022 at 20:36
I mentioned these congratulations on the talk-au list, but I’ll say them here again: very nice knock-down, Team Oz!
This is yet another example in OSM of both the initiative of what is often single individual, but ultimately turns into good teamwork / crowdsourcing. It is amazing how a passionate individual can plant a seed, then that grows to a small team and finally an entire movement! Like a prairie fire (maybe you say “bush fire” down under?) of “better map data” spreading across the landscape. What’s left isn’t a scorched earth, but a cleaner, more beautiful database!
All the way from California, USA (it’s all one planet, really), I applaud your efforts and say to others, “See?! A better map starts with you!” (And her, and him, and them, and us…and so on).
And look: whether in Columbia, Australia, California…even the entire movement of “cleaning Notes” can take off like a rocket ship in other areas of our beautiful planet (and map). Yeah!
Comment from Fizzie41 on 8 March 2022 at 07:25
Andres - Yep, a number of “interesting” things were found! Only too happy to talk any time you wish.
Stevea - Thanks :-)