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Pgd81's Diary Comments

Diary Comments added by Pgd81

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Adding addresses: NG9

An even later reply to your reply… ;-)

Totally agree there should be a better solution. Your example, where both numbers AND names exist in the sub-street, demonstrates this. The only other possibility currently mentioned in the wiki is “addr:place” (e.g. for the sub-street), but the description seems VERY strict as to how it should be used…

A different idea: the most important thing is the name/number of the premises, together with the street that the number relates to (which itself may not always be obvious, as I’ve recently discovered). Therefore arguably your made-up example should be “addr:housename=Dairy Barn; addr:housenumber=2; addr:street=Glebe Farm Court”. The information that Glebe Farm Court is a “part” of Church Lane might then be stored elsewhere – e.g. in a tag on Church Lane, or in a relation. Thoughts?

Adding addresses: NG9

Great post, and great work!

For retail units within a named larger building I’ve used “addr:housename=[name of building]; addr:housenumber=[number of building]; addr:unit=[number of retail unit within building]” (i.e. using the tag “addr:unit”) but I don’t know how accepted this is.

I’ve yet to delve into residential numbering, can’t quite face the thought of it. Could you use “addr:housename, addr:unit” for sub-streets? i.e. the terrace, mews etc. is considered as a building separated into units?

London's contours and lost rivers

Thanks! RE Fleet: as far as I have been able to discern, the two upper branches don’t have separate names.

Mapping Croydon

SK53 – Oh wow, that looks awesome, thanks! Should be able to read it ok.

Mapping Croydon

Thanks, Tom!

Yep, postcodes are on my to-do list; I’ve already added a couple of obviously visible ones. A couple of questions, if you don’t mind:

– I’ve seen the CodePoint Open data at http://codepoint.raggedred.net before, but not Matt Williams’s page. I assume “missing postcodes” are those that appear on the Land Registry database but not CodePoint Open? Is that a problem? Are there any checks I should make on the Land Registry data before adding the relevant postcodes to OSM?

– What sources (if any) for postcodes are acceptable other than on-the-ground surveys (incl. postboxes), and the Land Registry database? E.g. are business websites ok?

Thanks again.

Mapping Croydon

Or did you mean the map? That, of course, is very accurate indeed! ;-)

Mapping Croydon

Well, yeah, I can’t deny that aspects of it are a bit shit. But the point is, it’s no more shit than countless other places. It’s become a sort of byword for shit places, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And since I happen to live there, that makes me sad. That’s all :)

Mapping Croydon

Oh good lord – “Location: Broad Green, Waddon, London Borough of Croydon, London, Greater London, England, SE25, United Kingdom” – what a mess; some major work needed there I think!

My 10 most useful OSM links

Personally I’ve never understood why pedestrian routing isn’t more widespread in OSM. Surely it’s much simpler than car or bike routing – all you need is the network itself; things like class of road, speed limit, traffic lights, one-way systems are unimportant. But then I’m not a programmer :)

Day 2

Hi Matthew, Welcome to OSM. I notice that you’re running into conflicts with other OSM users, and it looks like it’s due to a misunderstanding of how our tagging system works. OSM is designed to reflect current reality. However, that does not mean that historical information cannot also be added. There is no reason why you cannot complete your project, but I would recommend you create a new tag, such as “former_operator” or “former_name” (other users might have better suggestions) to hold information such as “M&GN” or “Great Eastern”. That way, you (and other rail fans) can use those tags to quickly & easily locate these railways, whilst OSM maintains the correct tagging describing what is currently on the ground, and everybody wins. I hope this is helpful, and happy mapping.

Untangeling ways

I’m still pretty new, but yep that’s the opinion I’ve arrived at too. Ways should share nodes with ways, areas should share nodes with areas. But small rivers & streams are an exception if they form a border of e.g. an administrative area or property boundary.

Croham Hurst, or, Experiments with Multipolygons

Hi Tom,

Thanks for the comments. I’m not sure about leisure=nature_reserve – to me (and the Wiki), they’re more “managed” and often have restricted public access, whereas Croham Hurst is really just an attractive area of land preserved for public use, there are no access restrictions that I’m aware of (despite its SSSI status). Hence why I considered “leisure=park” – but that’s not really correct either…

On an unrelated note, I enjoyed your latest blog post re Rothamsted. I agree with most of what you say – I work in a scientific field myself (though not environmental), am interested in environmental issues, and don’t necessarily have a problem with direct action in certain contexts. But regardless of rights & wrongs, if the Greens want to be taken seriously as a political party they really can’t be seen to condone direct action, and I’m saddened that Jenny Jones, who I voted for in the mayoral elections, hasn’t done more to make the distinction clear.

First post!

Thanks to all for the friendly and helpful comments!

@CycleStreets - Yep, great site; already use it as my default cycle route-planner! However, there are various route planning/mapping sites that will show you the gradient profile of a specific route. What I was more interested in was topography more generally – where the hills are, and how the roads, railways and settlements interact with them. (and also where London’s lost rivers flowed, which is also an interest of mine :) )

@Mappo - Seconded! Use it often so would be great to contribute back.

@Sanderd17 - I’m hoping to upgrade to a smartphone with GPS as soon as possible, hopefully next month.

@AndrewBuck - Thanks, I’ll give that a go. Croydon town centre has almost no detail at all currently so I’ve got any amount of opportunity to try these things out.

@LivingWithDragons - Oh, how annoying! What do you do in a mapping party - do you all work on a similar area and compare notes, or do you go off to different places and meet up later? And how large an area would be worked on?

Cheshire Cheese pub meet-up a while back

As a new mapper, the Armchair Mapping debate intrigues me. Obviously I’m not familiar with the history, but presumably access to Bing imagery has changed the game somewhat. Are there “degrees” of AM? For instance, without a GPS device the only way I can currently map is to visit a place, take photos/make notes/remember stuff, then use those pics/notes/memories when I get home to trace areas and ways using Bing (I don’t map things if I can’t clearly trace, or at least confidently infer, their outlines). Is that considered “better” than simply tracing a building miles away from you that you have little or no actual knowledge of? Or are both considered AM?