Also images are composites so you have really strange effects where parts of fields are green and parts are dry, roads are offset where the imagery has been merged and buildings come and go as you zoom in and out. The pivot shown here (osm.org/#map=16/-15.0054/28.1789) did not appear in earlier Maxar imagery but does now and vanishes altogether as you zoom out

Hi rab,

You don't want them to pass through again, the imagery has been updated and they would have to start all over again. new buildings and others no longer exist same with tracks paths and roads. Something I keep saying the situation on the ground is very fluid.

Hi Jesper Kamuhuza,

Isn't place=village a better tag rather than amenity= community_centre

Hi,

Had a look at the area you are querying, what you are seeing here are fenced cattle paddocks, if you zoom right down as far as you can on the tracks what you are actually seeing is a cleared fire break with a fence line with 2 tracks on either side of the fence line, bush fires here are a serious risk during the dry months, particularly June to October. Roughly in the center of the area of your changeset is a water reservoir at the point where 5 tracks come together, possibly 4 fence lines and 1 diagonal track/ firebreak, not clearly visible in imagery are 4 water troughs, 1 in each paddock for providing water to the cattle. These were not mapped but I have done so now so you can see it (changeset/101340396#map=18/-15.02764/28.06855), the same is visible at this point changeset/101340396#map=19/-15.02046/28.09469 where I had corrected the mapping of the reservoir.

To see what irrigation channels look like in the imagery have a look at Zampalm (a palm oil plantation) here changeset/101340396#map=19/-15.02046/28.09469

Hi,

Could you give an example of a track you think may be an irrigation channel and why you think it is.

Thanks

Hi Uli,
way/988251417 and way/988251418 are not buildings, rather undeveloped plots with a wall around.

Hi,

Perhaps as a courtesy you could have checked with me and possibly used the river modernization project as as part of your comment. There is nothing in the Tag:waterway=riverbank wiki to indicate this tag is being phased out (waterway=riverbank?uselang=en). A brief check on where I map will have shown you that I am probably the most active editor of data in Zambia, in fact I almost exclusively edit in Zambia and have been doing so since 2016. I spend many hours correcting errors made by remote mappers who have no idea what they are doing, it is a thankless task and never ending.

I reverted some of your changes as I was trying to be consistent with the tag through out Zambia, if you had contacted me direct and explained I would have happily changed the tags and as I live in Zambia I know what I am mapping.

Looking at the usage map (dated 2021-09-16, fairly recent) on the riverbank wiki page it would appear that only North America does not use this tag it is heavily used in parts of Europe and much of Africa so possibly not really an accepted deprecated tag just yet.

Perhaps leave Zambia as it is for now, there is plenty of work for you to do elsewhere.

Hi,

Be careful when selecting a number of buildings and using a shortcut such as 'Q' to square them off, any circular buildings will become straight lines

Hi,

Be careful when using a shortcut such as 'Q' in JOSM to square off a number of selected buildings as any circular buildings selected will end up a straight line. In Zambia many buildings will be circular

Hi,

Be careful of using a shortcut such as 'Q' in JOSM to square off buildings. If the building is circular, many are in Zambia, they will end up as a straight line

Hi,

Be careful when selecting all buildings and reshaping using something like 'Q' to square off the buildings, any that are round or triangular will end up as a straight line

Hi,

Please use Maxar imagery when editing in Lusaka, while not totally up to date it is more current than Bing and Lusaka is developing so fast things change on the ground quickly. Thanks

Please use Maxar Imagery when editing in Lusaka, while it is not totally upto date it is more recent than Bing

Hi Coolbaugh,

I suppose it is a matter of semantics, are the houses along the road or in the vicinity of the road? Also the understanding of what a 'residential' road is, according to the OpenStreetMap tagging wiki it is within a settlement, highway=residential, these roads are not within any settlements, they run through areas made up of small farms, the collections of buildings will be the dwelling places of the farmers, most of whom do not own any vehicles. As always 'guidelines' are exactly that a guide and need to be applied with some context. As the majority of mappers are remote mappers the guides are created with these mappers in mind. I would defy some of those who created the guides to classify some of the roads on the ground let alone from satellite imagery.

Another point, don't think of Africa as a single country, this really annoys the residents of the continent of Africa. Like the USA where there are many differences between the individual states in Africa there are differences between the countries. Unlike the states in the USA some countries drive on the left and others on the right.

Please don't classify ways as residential just because there hare a few houses in the vicinity. A residential road is one lined by houses in a residential area of a town or village, this applies to Africa just as it does in the developed world. The houses here are small family farms

Hi WildIsLife,

Welcome to OpenStreetMap. Please be careful when editing large relations such as Kariba as you may break these relations by removing sections from them and as a result they disappear from the map. I have repaired the Kariba relation. Also take into account that Kariba water levels fluctuate so better to draw along the edge of the high water mark or perhaps midway between the level shown in the imagery and the obvious high water mark. In places the Maxar imagery is at least 4 years old

Hi EKOTAMIKE,

Please be careful when deleting ways, check they are not part of a relation first, you deleted ways 605687772 and 605786283 which were inner parts of the Bangweulu swamp relation. Not all edits on the map are part of a HOT project.

Thanks

Hi Frans S,

I am a local mapper, one of the very few in Zambia. The problem with using strict classifications as per the wiki for example is you are trying to apply a formal system of classification to a very informal situation on the ground. The area of this project is made up of what are termed small scale farms, the owners of these farms do not own vehicles and work the fields with mainly oxen. There are a few tractors that are owned by the wealthier farmers that will be hired out so the network of 'roads' are really wide paths close to 2m wide or more that the occasional vehicle will travel down even small Toyota Corollas. The classification of track is too ridged for parts of Africa, I have 2 pictures taken this morning, if I could send them to you somehow I doubt you would even be able to classify them from the pictures let alone from satellite imagery. 99% of the roads in this area are really wide paths made by foot and bicycle traffic with ox carts thrown in for good measure but will be used by the occasional vehicle, you would be amazed where a vehicle can go. Not all tracks will be 2 track roads, maybe on the larger commercial farms this will be the case. The constant foot traffic and seasonal nature of the Zambian climate will see to this. Also the time of year at which the image is taken will make classifying a problem, go to this point, osm.org/?mlat=-14.7138&mlon=27.9231#map=10/-14.7138/27.9231 and have a look at the Maxar imagery. East of the point the image was taken towards the beginning of the rains, everything is greener but also the tracks are less distinct as the vegetation encroaches. West of the point is taken at the end of the dry season, images may even be taken only a few weeks apart but the difference is marked, note the tracks are more distinct, areas are burnt and paths are visible in the burn but these paths may not exist in the next year as they will disappear in the wet season. For all of these reasons I tend to use local knowledge to classify the highways and ignore the very obvious small paths.

I have no preference over validators and tend to map independently from HOT but have provided them with advice, but as you know nobody really reads the wikis or instructions.

Hello,

The area being mapped consists mainly of small family farms, if you were to map it all as unclassified it would be 'over mapped', zoom out and see how dense this area has become with all the mapping here, much of it should not have been mapped anyway. The imagery is at least 4 years out of date so in no way represents what is on the ground. No highway here should be mapped as residential as they are not meet the criteria for being classified as such, "road lined by houses" not a road leading to a cluster of houses that are the dwelling place of the small scale farmer and his family.

Sorry generally west not east