Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

[Paweł Paprota]

On 01/09/2013 03:05 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote:


My idea of dealing with this complex situation is to:


This all sounds nice but has it been done on a scale that OSM needs it
to work? Are there large projects that have this kind of organization
that you describe?

There are dozens of large open source communities (Apache Software
Foundation, KDE, Ubuntu etc.) that we can learn from. I would say more -
not only learn from but by looking at those projects we can see what's
possible. Some of those communities have been around for a decade or
more - my theory is that it is safe to assume that between them all they
tried more or less everything in terms of organizing themselves.

So what we can choose from is out there today and working. Everything
else has failed the test of time. I don't think we want to be pioneers
and try something enitrely new that has not been done or, even worse,
try something that was tried before and failed (why repeat mistakes of
others?).

Paweł

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Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

[Peter Wendorff]

Am 09.01.2013 10:42, schrieb Paweł Paprota:

On 01/09/2013 03:05 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote:


My idea of dealing with this complex situation is to:


This all sounds nice but has it been done on a scale that OSM needs it
to work? Are there large projects that have this kind of organization
that you describe?

There are dozens of large open source communities (Apache Software
Foundation, KDE, Ubuntu etc.) that we can learn from. I would say more -
not only learn from but by looking at those projects we can see what's
possible. Some of those communities have been around for a decade or
more - my theory is that it is safe to assume that between them all they
tried more or less everything in terms of organizing themselves.

So what we can choose from is out there today and working. Everything
else has failed the test of time. 

Or it has never been tried.
You cannot say, everything that does not yet exist is impossible - and 
even if you do, OSM exists, and until now it's working and possible.
I would be very careful to say, Apache, KDE, Ubuntu etc. work better 
currently, because I'm not sure.
OpenOffice, now part of Apache, is well known, sure - but I think, still 
more people know Microsoft Office than OpenOffice.
Ubuntu is well known, but with increasing critics due to the trials of 
Canonical to make money and adding advertisements, product search and so on.


OSM has some drawbacks: You cannot get the one voice of OSM as a 
journalist, as it may depend who you are talking to, and there may be 
completely different opinions on some topics, but what's the 
alternative? Openoffice has at least one fork (Libreoffice), Ubuntu is 
one of many linux distributions, KDE "competes" with Gnome and others.
In contrast under the "hood" of OSM many projects are free to evolve, 
and except the license change which lead to fosm (according to the 
website that project is nearly dead or the website is not up to date, I 
think) OSM still is one.
I think, the main reason for that is that as soon as you cross the 
technical hurdle (yes, that's not that easy I fear), you are free to do 
your own stuff in the osm universe without forking the project.

I don't think we want to be pioneers
and try something enitrely new that has not been done or, even worse,
try something that was tried before and failed (why repeat mistakes of
others?).

I don't see any example why the osm way failed before?
The examples you gave are projects that did not try to stay with the 
volunteers-with-less-leadership model. Sometimes that's necessary, and 
for some project types I'm sure it is (e.g. software development at some 
stage), but in some parts we have that already: Osmosis can be extended 
by plugins, but there are maintainers who decide what goes into the 
core. The rails ports code is free, and as mentioned above, while 
welcome, changes have to be explained and good arguments have to be 
given to settle them into the master on osm.org.

We have this structures, but on a lower level.
OSM in parts is more like a free community of people and of groups of 
people, who are doing their stuff in cooperative, communicative and 
collaborative way than a centralized moloch of decision makers who 
reject what other people do because it does not fit to their opinion 
what should be done by someone.


regards
Peter

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Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

[Paweł Paprota]

On 01/09/2013 11:17 AM, Peter Wendorff wrote:

OpenOffice, now part of Apache, is well known, sure - but I think,
still more people know Microsoft Office than OpenOffice.


I don't think ASF would be happy with you reducing them to OpenOffice
:-) They have over a hundred of well-known projects and as an
organization they are a great example of how things can work.

With the rest of your post - I'm not talking about changing the project
itself. Again - no one wants to take away anything from anyone. I'm not
sure why people jump to defensive positions so quickly in those discussions.

The projects I gave as examples are as open source as OSM, everyone is
free to contribute, there is a community behind each of those projects -
no different than OSM.

They are just better organized to do some things like communication,
fundraising, strategy, events and the list goes on and on. This stuff
cannot be done properly with having only "structures at lower level"
because such structures will never be able to coordinate with each other
- they have a different role - to grow the project organically which is
great but cannot be applied in every area.

And better organization does not mean becoming, as you put it, "a
centralized moloch of decision makers who reject what other people do
because it does not fit to their opinion what should be done by someone."

Paweł

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Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

[Peter Wendorff]

Am 09.01.2013 11:53, schrieb Paweł Paprota:

On 01/09/2013 11:17 AM, Peter Wendorff wrote:

OpenOffice, now part of Apache, is well known, sure - but I think,
still more people know Microsoft Office than OpenOffice.


I don't think ASF would be happy with you reducing them to OpenOffice
:-) They have over a hundred of well-known projects and as an
organization they are a great example of how things can work.
That was not my intention. I didn't want to reduce Apache to Openoffice, 
but it would have been wrong to say, openoffice is still a project on 
it's own (and with Oracle/Sun behind it maybe never was). Neither is MS 
Office something on it's own, but backed by Microsoft. The issue in 
question remains: is the existence or the backing by Apache necessary to 
keep OpenOffice as well known as it is? or is it well known and Apache 
is irrelevant in the popularity context? Is popularity increasing by OOo 
being maintained under ASF or doesn't that matter?

With the rest of your post - I'm not talking about changing the project
itself. Again - no one wants to take away anything from anyone. I'm not
sure why people jump to defensive positions so quickly in those 
discussions.


The projects I gave as examples are as open source as OSM, everyone is
free to contribute, there is a community behind each of those projects -
no different than OSM.
They are just better organized to do some things like communication,
fundraising, strategy, events and the list goes on and on. This stuff
cannot be done properly with having only "structures at lower level"
because such structures will never be able to coordinate with each other
- they have a different role - to grow the project organically which is
great but cannot be applied in every area.
Where do we really need more money? You may say, more money is always 
better, but is there anything where you say, there we need money?
If yes: why don't you ask for that directly? Maybe you will get the 
answer, it's not worth the money. Maybe you only get "go for it, I don't 
have money for that, but I hope you'll find someone who want's to pay 
it". But your argument is "we need fundraising" without anything why you 
think that fundraising is necessary.


Communication professionals IMHO most often sound like marketing. 
Professionals most often aren't that into the project. They tell what 
they are told to tell, but I think, it's better to talk to someone who's 
addicted to a project, but not a communication professional. I like 
someone who makes errors - but tries it best to tell me the truth, 
probably mixed with his own opinions, and I would prefer that to a payed 
speaker who loses it's job as soon as he tells something that's not 
politically correct in some leadership's opinion.


Where do you think someone is not working with the current structures? 
What do you think has to be done and you are not able to do due to 
structural reasons?
Sure: Probably you personally are not able to cope with a task (no 
offense, for everybody there are tasks he's not able to solve), but 
where is the organizational structure of osm the killer of your efford? 
I didn't see any hint to something like that, and that's what's missing 
for some people arguing against you here, I guess.


Probably there are tasks that can be supported by some changes. Probably 
there are even tasks that may be best supported by a full fledged 
professional company structure. But if you have a task that's 
unsolvable, then ask for ideas how to solve that.
Probably you get more people to agree to your 
"get-more-professionals"-view, but probably there are people helping to 
solve that without organizational overhead, or with ideas how to cope 
with that task in a less complex or less organization-demanding way.



And better organization does not mean becoming, as you put it, "a
centralized moloch of decision makers who reject what other people do
because it does not fit to their opinion what should be done by someone."

Please give concrete examples what you then mean by "better organization".
What's missing where and when?
And if you really want, why do you think, a "better organization" would 
solve that issue - and what kind of "better organization"?


regards
Peter

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Re: [OSM-talk] Thank you

[Sylvain Maillard]

+1

I totally agree, a few negative are always more visible than a lot of
silent positive !


Sylvain


2013/1/9 RB 

> +1
>
> Thank you very much from a "silent mapper".
>
>
> On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 11:26 PM, Rob Nickerson 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> Richard, (All,)
>>
>> I read your email below and it saddened me that you feel this way. I
>> therefore want to write a quick thank-you on behalf of the "silent layer of
>> contributors". We are grateful for the work that all developers put into
>> OSM and please do not feel disheartened by a few negative responses. When I
>> meet up with other mappers face-to-face there is still a lot of positivity
>> towards the project, and any negative comments are perhaps a sign that
>> people are passionate and care about it too. Unfortunately we are all
>> guilty of not giving enough positive feedback and therefore it the negative
>> comments can start to look like a personal attack. They most certainly are
>> not.
>>
>> Please keep up the good work - we got over the change to ODbL, we can
>> tackle anything :-)
>>
>> All the best
>> Rob
>>
>>
>> == Quote: ==
>>
>> Complete disarming honesty time: the thing that puts me off working on OSM
>> code (and heaven knows I've spent enough time on it over the years) isn't
>> the lack of remuneration. It's the community, and its sense of entitlement.
>>
>> Something has gone wrong with the OSM community and I wish I knew how to fix
>> it. Writing code for OSM has become a really thankless, unpleasant business.
>> Most of the Top Ten Tasks, though ambitious - that's why they're in the Top
>> Ten, after all - are perfectly within the capability of one developer with a
>> vague acquaintance with OSM and a modest design sensibility. (Of them all,
>> the hardest is actually being tackled - by you, of course, Paweł!)
>>
>> But really, why bother? You'll only get crap thrown at you for doing so.
>> Every time there's even a modest layout improvement to the front page, all
>> hell breaks loose on some forum or other and there's an outcry of "Why
>> wasn't I consulted?". Let's keep the WMF comparison going: I don't think the
>> Wikipedia, or Linux, guys consult the entire fucking community every time
>> they swap two bytes in the code. But for some reason, much of our community
>> expects it, and vocally, without being prepared to lift a finger to help.
>>
>> Thing is, if you actually look below the surface of the lists and the
>> diaries and the chat snipers and all of that, there's a huge, silent layer
>> of contributors new and old, just as there's always been, quietly getting on
>> with mapping the world (when, that is, they're not being angry-messaged by
>> "experienced" users to say YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG). They're the guys who make
>> OSM what it is, not the voices on the lists. But I'm not strong enough to
>> ignore the noisy ones, and I wish I was.
>>
>> cheers
>> Richard
>>
>>
>>
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Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

[Paweł Paprota]

On 01/09/2013 12:20 PM, Peter Wendorff wrote:


Communication professionals IMHO most often sound like marketing.


I did not mean communication professionals but giving more resources to
the OSMF's Communication Working Group or similar initiatives. Posting a
tweet or a blog post now and then really is not enough to communicate
about the project that OSM has become. There needs to be more
initiatives like switch2osm, campaigns need to be thought out and put
together. This does not have anything to do with marketing, it's just
how a project grows.


I didn't see any hint to something like that, and that's what's
missing for some people arguing against you here, I guess.



I did that multiple times already. It's kind of frustrating to see that
this discussion always seem to run in the same circles over and over
again... To see the gist of what I mean:

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-January/06.html

Projects like OSM do not run on fairy dust and rainbows. Yesterday I
watched Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) on The Colbert Report talk
show and he was talking about Wikipedia's strategy and budget. They
spend nearly 30 million dollars a year on hardware, network, manpower
(technical, administrative) just to keep Wikipedia running. Of course it
is not nearly the same scale as OSM but the same principle starts to
apply to OSM as I hope everyone wants OSM to be more like Wikipedia in
terms of users and being well-known. The number of core contributors
stays pretty much the same for two years now.

I heard plans to have a "big bang" campaign this year based on the new
editor for newcomers (iD) and potentially the new history tab that I'm
working on. I would *love* to be able to finish my tool so it is
production quality and can be used to show off how great OSM is in such
campaign. But I doubt I will reach such point simply because I can no
longer afford working exclusively on OWL. So this will probably move to
another month, then another year etc...

Sure it may seem as I am lobbying to get money for myself but ultimately
if OSM cannot support in some way (organizational or not,
ecosystem-driven or not) in creating such feature that I prototyped then
something is really wrong with the project or at least the project is
being limited.


Please give concrete examples what you then mean by "better
organization". What's missing where and when? And if you really want,
why do you think, a "better organization" would solve that issue -
and what kind of "better organization"?



If only I had all the answers... I am just trying to start a discussion
based on my own example with OWL. It does not seem to be working too 
well so let's drop it. It's clear that we speak different languages in 
this topic.


Paweł

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Re: [OSM-talk] Thank you

[Serge Wroclawski]

Yes, and thank you from a unsilent mapper as well.

I've said for a long time that there's a small, silent group of folks
in OSM that are its heart, that keep it going, both in the technical
and practical sense. You are one of those, as is Tom Hughes, Grant
Slator, Andy Allen and Matt Amos.

You all deserve to be thanked graciously every morning for your
incredible work on the project, and I hope this email makes a small
dent in the immense debt of gratitude I owe all of you.

- Serge

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Re: [OSM-talk] Can Google use our buildings

[Gregory]

Why do you want to see outlines autogenerated from aerial imagery, you
could just look at the aerial imagery?

Going out and getting the address/use details and then adding that to a
building outline, now that's helpful added data that you can't get from
automation.

On 7 January 2013 03:14, Jeff Meyer  wrote:

> Dave -
>
> What is the collection date of the imagery used? I couldn't find reference
> to it.
>
> What would be the measure of "relatively" out of date? Outside of newly
> developed areas, even imagery that is 5 years old could reasonably be
> expected to be ~95% accurate over most of the country. (Based on building
> completion estimates). So, isn't much of what's actually on the ground
> actually depicted in imagery that's only a few years old?
>
> Is there measured proof that filled maps are never QA'd? If so, why does
> Google offer tools to do just that? If there is no proof, what is the basis
> of your hypothesis?
>
> What would stop OSMers from QAing this type of data collection prior to
> inclusion in OSM?
>
> Why is accuracy the primary measure of concern here? As opposed to, say:
> completeness or consistency?
>
> Would it be that big of a problem if someone mapped somewhere other than
> where these building images are, as long as they were mapping?
>
> Thanks, Jeff
>
> On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 5:28 PM, Dave F.  wrote:
>
>>  I understand what & why you're saying this, Nathan, but remember these
>> images are all, relatively, out of date. I would rather that gaps were left
>> to be filled with what's is actually on the ground rather than what was
>> there a few years ago.
>>
>> I take pride that my city has newest buildings & roads mapped in OSM
>> before *any* other mapping service. (I'm still getting around to adding the
>> old, been there for centuries, houses)
>>
>> Having all areas filled with polygons of buildings doesn't actually
>> encourage users to refill it with up to date data. More often than not,
>> they think because *some* data is mapped it must be correct & go & map
>> elsewhere.
>>
>> Personally I'd rather have (slightly) less, but more accurate data than
>> blanket inaccurate data. When I first started ('09) I thought the opposite.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 07/01/2013 00:50, Nathan Mixter wrote:
>>
>> I'm not sure if this link has been posted before, but for those wondering
>> how Google got their new buildings, there is a link at PC Magazine
>> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2411232,00.asp. Apparently they
>> recently uploaded 25M buildings done through an automated image recognition
>> software.
>>
>> I've manually added most of the buildings in the city of Gilroy (
>> http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/?lon=-121.56369&lat=37.00553&zoom=17) so I
>> was curious to find out where they got their data from. I thought maybe the
>> city or county had a secret source that I hadn't found. And I checked
>> everywhere I could to find buildings that could have been imported.
>>
>> I was wondering if OSM could do the same thing. Could we buy as a group a
>> program like Feature Analyst, eCognition or Imagine Objective and add
>> buildings that way? We could combine the buildings with any existing
>> address points available. I checked into it earlier this year and one
>> program was about $2,000. But the money could be quickly raised. I know I
>> would be willing to donate.
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Jeff Meyer
> Global World History Atlas
> www.gwhat.org
> j...@gwhat.org
> 206-676-2347
> www.openstreetmap.org/user/jeffmeyer
>
>
>
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>


-- 
Gregory
o...@livingwithdragons.com
http://www.livingwithdragons.com
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Re: [OSM-talk] Can Google use our buildings

[Greg Troxel]

Gregory  writes:

> Why do you want to see outlines autogenerated from aerial imagery, you
> could just look at the aerial imagery?

That's not true.  For example, when converting to garmin format,
buildings render with very few bits, and let you know developed vs
undeveloped areas.  Imagery is too big to carry around (and I don't
think bing lets people download for offline use), and too detailed to
look at while driving.

This could be an urban vs rural thing.  Cities are basically full of
buildings, and any non-building area is notable and worthy of denoting
on the map.  In semi-rural or rural areas, there are large chunks of
just forest (sometimes with roads), and it's there that I find knowing
where buildings are to be very useful.



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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Paweł Paprota]

On 01/09/2013 01:37 AM, Jean-Marc Liotier wrote:

I may be a grumpy old dinosaur but I don't see how diluting the
Openstreetmap brand into the bland broth of proprietary centralized
social services that plague the Internet nowadays will bring any
value...


Simple question then: you go to osm.org and want to find out what's new
in the project. How do you do that? Where do you find project
announcements like the recent 1 million users news?

None of the links from the home page are obvious enough. You can go to
"Documentation" and there's the wiki where you can find news on the
front page but that's hardly obvious.

I don't mean to spread misinformation about Communication Working
Group's job here so correct me if I'm wrong but OSM does have an
official Facebook account[1] and official Twitter account which do have
such announcements. It seems only natural to promote those channels from
the main page and I will try to provide a patch for that.

I don't like those "propietary centralized social services that plague
Internet nowadays" either but I don't think OSM is the right bastion to
fight this particular war...

[1] https://www.facebook.com/OpenStreetMap
[2] https://twitter.com/openstreetmap

Paweł

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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Jonathan Bennett]

On 08/01/2013 21:31, Rovastar wrote:
> My idea is simple can someone add modern social media networks logos/links
> to the home page.

As a member of the OSMF Communications Working Group (CWG), I have
perhaps the greatest level of involvement in the various OSM-branded
pages/accounts on various social networks.

This idea has been discussed in CWG, and at some point* a mock-up will
appear. It's not straightforward because we can't use the standard
network-supplied widgets -- they leak information back to those
networks, so are an unacceptable risk to mappers' privacy.

If and when badges are put on the home page, it will be for a set period
initially to see if they do result in increase signups and views of OSM
information on those networks. If they do, they could stay. If they
don't then they can come off again.

Jonathan

* Maybe the next week or so.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Jonathan Bennett]

On 09/01/2013 13:43, Paweł Paprota wrote:
> OSM does have an
> official Facebook account[1] and official Twitter account

...and an official Google+ page:

https://plus.google.com/+OpenStreetMap

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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Greg Troxel]

Jonathan Bennett  writes:

> On 08/01/2013 21:31, Rovastar wrote:
>> My idea is simple can someone add modern social media networks logos/links
>> to the home page.
>
> As a member of the OSMF Communications Working Group (CWG), I have
> perhaps the greatest level of involvement in the various OSM-branded
> pages/accounts on various social networks.
>
> This idea has been discussed in CWG, and at some point* a mock-up will
> appear. It's not straightforward because we can't use the standard
> network-supplied widgets -- they leak information back to those
> networks, so are an unacceptable risk to mappers' privacy.

I'm glad to hear people are paying atttention to this; it's helpful to
the people that aren't using RequestPolicy :-)

Personally, I find it puzzling that open data (and open source) projects
are willing to (as projects) use services with bad data policies and bad
privacy policies.  While I wouldn't advocate that OSMF take a position
in the culture battle against such services, using them takes the
opposite position (that they are ok).

Perhaps a Diaspora pod?  (I realize that currently, that probably
reaches few people.)



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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Jonathan Bennett]

On 09/01/2013 13:57, Greg Troxel wrote:
> Personally, I find it puzzling that open data (and open source) projects
> are willing to (as projects) use services with bad data policies and bad
> privacy policies.  While I wouldn't advocate that OSMF take a position
> in the culture battle against such services, using them takes the
> opposite position (that they are ok).


>From CWG's point of view, it's a pragmatic decision: Many people *are
already using* those networks (for better or worse), so we may as well
use them to get the OSM(F) message out there. We'll certainly never drop
more open methods of communication in favour of social networks, but
offering people a choice seems better than being dogmatic.

> Perhaps a Diaspora pod?  (I realize that currently, that probably
> reaches few people.)

As you say, the audience we'd reach that way would be minimal. It's also
not clear how we could create an unambiguous "official" OSM Diaspora
account and have it managed by several people, as is the case with the
closed social networks. Any help or advice on this would of course be
gratefully received.

J.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Tobias Knerr]

On 08.01.2013 22:31, Rovastar wrote:
> Nearly every site now has twitter, facebook, google plus, youtube channel,
> etc links. We have these social media outlets lets tell people about them.
[...]
> I cannot see any harm in this it would take up very little screen real
> estate and I think look a more professional cohesive community.

In my opinion, the most important reason to avoid implementing this is
not the screen space cost, but that it would be off-putting to those in
our community who feel that centralized platforms like Facebook are
incompatible with the spirit of an open, diverse and neutral web.

Of course that is an ideological point of view, and many even in the OSM
community no doubt do not share it. However, I would be wary to brush
aside ideology completely: We rely on very similar ideals when we
compare ourselves to competitors. Look at Google Map Maker - just like
Facebook, it relies on users' contributions and offers certain free
services in return, but is ultimately limited in its potential to
whatever fits the agenda of its owner.

I don't mind if people use their favourite social networks to advocate
OSM. However, a front page placement is more than that. It would imply
an endorsement of that service to an extent (until now, the only
companies mentioned on the front page are ones which directly support
the OSM community). It would also give special treatment to that small
number of commercial services and neglect all the alternatives.

Personally, I want to help OSM to overcome Google Map's dominance for
pretty much the same reasons why I reject Facebook. So, please, do not
advertise Facebook, Google Plus, or any similar networks on the OSM
front page.

Tobias

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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Sylvain Maillard]

Hi,

> This idea has been discussed in CWG, and at some point* a mock-up will
> > appear. It's not straightforward because we can't use the standard
> > network-supplied widgets -- they leak information back to those
> > networks, so are an unacceptable risk to mappers' privacy.
>
> I'm glad to hear people are paying atttention to this; it's helpful to
> the people that aren't using RequestPolicy :-)
>

What about a simple logo+link ?
it's the easiest way to add a link, with no information leak ... and i'm
not sure we really need all the "like", "+1", ... stuff on the main page


cheers,
Sylvain
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Re: [OSM-talk] Can Google use our buildings

[Paul Johnson]

Not necessarily.  Urban blind people probably want to know where there's
likely to be a wall.


On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 7:30 AM, Greg Troxel  wrote:

>
> Gregory  writes:
>
> > Why do you want to see outlines autogenerated from aerial imagery, you
> > could just look at the aerial imagery?
>
> That's not true.  For example, when converting to garmin format,
> buildings render with very few bits, and let you know developed vs
> undeveloped areas.  Imagery is too big to carry around (and I don't
> think bing lets people download for offline use), and too detailed to
> look at while driving.
>
> This could be an urban vs rural thing.  Cities are basically full of
> buildings, and any non-building area is notable and worthy of denoting
> on the map.  In semi-rural or rural areas, there are large chunks of
> just forest (sometimes with roads), and it's there that I find knowing
> where buildings are to be very useful.
>
>
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>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Philip Barnes]

 +1
I too would like OSM to become the goto site for maps and directions.

I work in a large office, and to walk down the office and not see google maps 
on somebodys screen is rare.

I do try to promote OSM, or OSRM when asked a where is, how to get to question 
and try to wean people of google.

I would love to see directions on the site, but do suggest that more of us play 
with OSRM and weed out the routing issues first. I still find it all too easy 
to get silly routes due to missing turn restrictions, speed limits.

 Phil
--

Sent from my Nokia N9



On 09/01/2013 14:18 Tobias Knerr wrote:

On 08.01.2013 22:31, Rovastar wrote:
> Nearly every site now has twitter, facebook, google plus, youtube channel,
> etc links. We have these social media outlets lets tell people about them.

[...]

> I cannot see any harm in this it would take up very little screen real
> estate and I think look a more professional cohesive community.


In my opinion, the most important reason to avoid implementing this is
not the screen space cost, but that it would be off-putting to those in
our community who feel that centralized platforms like Facebook are
incompatible with the spirit of an open, diverse and neutral web.


Of course that is an ideological point of view, and many even in the OSM
community no doubt do not share it. However, I would be wary to brush
aside ideology completely: We rely on very similar ideals when we
compare ourselves to competitors. Look at Google Map Maker - just like
Facebook, it relies on users' contributions and offers certain free
services in return, but is ultimately limited in its potential to
whatever fits the agenda of its owner.


I don't mind if people use their favourite social networks to advocate
OSM. However, a front page placement is more than that. It would imply
an endorsement of that service to an extent (until now, the only
companies mentioned on the front page are ones which directly support
the OSM community). It would also give special treatment to that small
number of commercial services and neglect all the alternatives.


Personally, I want to help OSM to overcome Google Map's dominance for
pretty much the same reasons why I reject Facebook. So, please, do not
advertise Facebook, Google Plus, or any similar networks on the OSM
front page.


Tobias

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Re: [OSM-talk] Thank you

[Pavel Melnikov]

 +1 Another "Thank you" from another almost silent mapper
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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

   I share Tobias' and Jean-Marc's dislike of centralized and 
proprietary social networks and I don't think we should offer free 
advertising for them (even if that is commonplace nowadays).


Like Tobias said, many other things are "commonplace" (like contributing 
to Google Map Maker and therefore allowing your work to be assimilated 
by a non-open system) and we argue against them, so it is only fitting 
if we spend more thought on this than the average web site operator.


Pawel has a point though when he says


Simple question then: you go to osm.org and want to find out what's new
in the project. How do you do that? Where do you find project
announcements like the recent 1 million users news?


I think it is ok for us to post stuff to Twitter, and I think we should 
make room for such news on our web page (many web sites have a widget 
that shows the most recent twitter mentions).


I would dislike a "follow us on Twitter" button because it will only 
show the Twitter signup page if someone doesn't have an account, and 
therefore make it look like you had to subscribe to Twitter in order to 
read our news - which is thankfully not true.


Having said all that, I don't have the time or passion to fight this 
point in CWG, and I trust CWG enough to believe they're not a troupe of 
Facebook fanboys. They know that endorsing proprietary "silo" sites 
doesn't harmonize with our other messages, and if they choose to add 
such endorsement to our web site nonetheless, it will be because they 
have reason to believe that the net effect is still positive.


Anyone who wants to do something about that would have to join CWG and 
do his share of the job.


Bye
Frederik

--
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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Paul Johnson]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:

>
> I think it is ok for us to post stuff to Twitter, and I think we should
> make room for such news on our web page (many web sites have a widget that
> shows the most recent twitter mentions).
>
> I would dislike a "follow us on Twitter" button because it will only show
> the Twitter signup page if someone doesn't have an account, and therefore
> make it look like you had to subscribe to Twitter in order to read our news
> - which is thankfully not true.
>

I think this would be missing our audience.  If you're illiterate (a group
Twitter caters specifically to), what are the odds you're going to be able
to make use of a map, much less contribute constructively to OSM?
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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Joseph Reeves]

Ok, I'll bite...

>I think this would be missing our audience.  If you're illiterate (a group
Twitter caters specifically to), what are the >odds you're going to be able
to make use of a map, much less contribute constructively to OSM?

How do illiterate people use Twitter?
Do illiterate people have no spatial knowledge that could be of use to the
wider world? Is there no way that Open spatial data could help illiterate
people?
Is "our audience" people that look at osm.org and don't like social media?

In my opinion OSM is going to really take off once we start making more use
of social media, or other means of participation, such as SMS messaging
(the sorts of things you couldn't do with closed spatial data, such as
GMaps), and start thinking less of pixels on osm.org

Joseph


On 9 January 2013 15:15, Paul Johnson  wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
>
>>
>> I think it is ok for us to post stuff to Twitter, and I think we should
>> make room for such news on our web page (many web sites have a widget that
>> shows the most recent twitter mentions).
>>
>> I would dislike a "follow us on Twitter" button because it will only show
>> the Twitter signup page if someone doesn't have an account, and therefore
>> make it look like you had to subscribe to Twitter in order to read our news
>> - which is thankfully not true.
>>
>
> I think this would be missing our audience.  If you're illiterate (a group
> Twitter caters specifically to), what are the odds you're going to be able
> to make use of a map, much less contribute constructively to OSM?
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Jean-Marc Liotier]

On 09/01/2013 01:37, Jean-Marc Liotier wrote:
I may be a grumpy old dinosaur but I don't see how diluting the 
Openstreetmap brand into the bland broth of proprietary centralized 
social services that plague the Internet nowadays will bring any 
value... But that's just my worthless opinion [..] But first, can we 
agree that user behaviour data is the raw material ?
Data-driven research : 100% of subsequent posts in this thread have 
indulged in bikeshedding about whether to place a Facetweet button on 
the home page, while my remark was merely introductory to the main point 
of feeding our discussion not with opinions but with facts mined from 
visitor activity.


Anyway... Can anyone from the CWG give us a peek into the analytical 
tooling currently built into Openstreetmap's Web presence, what we can 
expect from it, what the future holds and what contributions are most 
welcome ?



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[OSM-talk] Being more like Wikipedia (was: OpenStreetMap Future Look)

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 01/09/13 13:26, Paweł Paprota wrote:

Projects like OSM do not run on fairy dust and rainbows. Yesterday I
watched Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) on The Colbert Report talk
show and he was talking about Wikipedia's strategy and budget. They
spend nearly 30 million dollars a year on hardware, network, manpower
(technical, administrative) just to keep Wikipedia running. Of course it
is not nearly the same scale as OSM but the same principle starts to
apply to OSM as I hope everyone wants OSM to be more like Wikipedia in
terms of users and being well-known.


I'm very much an outsider to Wikimedia but if I look at how much money 
they have spent on development and how little has changed for the 
contributing user - adding a table to an article is practically as 
difficult now as it was five years ago. You sit there and wonder: How 
hard can it be? Hundreds of man-years of developer time... and still a 
person with average computer literacy cannot add a table to an article!


I have the highest respect for Wikipedia and what the movement has 
achieved, but if you are looking for proof that big money can actually 
be translated into direct ease of use for contributors, then you should 
really look elsewhere. If we embrace the Wikipedia model and achieve the 
same efficiency with regard to user interface advances, then iD will 
launch in 2016 and your history tab in 2018.


It is too simplistic, to say things like "everyone wants OSM to be more 
like Wikipedia in terms of ", because you can't always separate the 
good from the bad. It's easy to say "I'd like to have the kind of money 
that Wikimedia have" or "the popularity that Wikipedia enjoys" but none 
of this can be had without a downside.


For example, Wikipedia being as well known as it is has lead them to 
create "relevance criteria" - you can't create an article on a living 
person or a geographic feature, for example, unless that person or 
feature fulfills certain criteria. Wikipedians felt that this was 
necessary because they were swamped with data they considered irrelevant 
and un-encyclopedic. Many people left Wikipedia because of that (and 
indeed many of them are to be found in the ranks of OSM nowadays). I've 
heard other OSMers make fun of the tons of "WP:xxx" rules that Wikipedia 
has but I am sure they are not there because Wikipedians terribly enjoy 
rule-making - they probably had to be created in response to problems.


Same with money - an organisation that deals with a multi-million budget 
will automatically have a much higher overhead (recent Wikimedia 
fundraising has been criticized because they made it sound like your 
donation was for servers when in fact only 10% if it went to 
infrastructure or so) and there will be more fighting over who gets how 
much of the cake. If you believe that we're currently having heated 
discussions, imagine how such discussions would go if they were about 
the allocation of millions ;)


Bye
Frederik

--
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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[colliar]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256



On 09/01/13 15:18, Tobias Knerr wrote:
> On 08.01.2013 22:31, Rovastar wrote:
>> Nearly every site now has twitter, facebook, google plus, youtube 
>> channel, etc links. We have these social media outlets lets tell people 
>> about them.
> [...]
>> I cannot see any harm in this it would take up very little screen real 
>> estate and I think look a more professional cohesive community.
> 
> In my opinion, the most important reason to avoid implementing this is not
>  the screen space cost, but that it would be off-putting to those in our 
> community who feel that centralized platforms like Facebook are 
> incompatible with the spirit of an open, diverse and neutral web.
> 
> Of course that is an ideological point of view, and many even in the OSM 
> community no doubt do not share it. However, I would be wary to brush aside
> ideology completely: We rely on very similar ideals when we compare 
> ourselves to competitors. Look at Google Map Maker - just like Facebook, it
> relies on users' contributions and offers certain free services in return,
> but is ultimately limited in its potential to whatever fits the agenda of
> its owner.
> 
> I don't mind if people use their favourite social networks to advocate OSM.
> However, a front page placement is more than that. It would imply an 
> endorsement of that service to an extent (until now, the only companies 
> mentioned on the front page are ones which directly support the OSM 
> community). It would also give special treatment to that small number of 
> commercial services and neglect all the alternatives.
> 
> Personally, I want to help OSM to overcome Google Map's dominance for 
> pretty much the same reasons why I reject Facebook. So, please, do not 
> advertise Facebook, Google Plus, or any similar networks on the OSM front 
> page.

+1

I might understand why osm should have its presence on these medias but only
to advertise OSM and point out the huge disadvantages and problems of these
medias.

I even dislike using them instead of an "open" or "own" platform cause you are
already following their rules and strategy.

If someone likes to make advertisement for free for these companies he/she can
do so but OSM is not the right place for it and especially not the front page.

I would have quite some problems to explain this to folks I did start to
convince about OSM or at least showed an alternative.

Somehow puzzled to have to discuss about that on this place.

cu
colliar
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)

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LbwAoLVvWhx8fDwO9AwBaocohsfGyoPh
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Re: [OSM-talk] Being more like Wikipedia

[Paweł Paprota]

Frederik,


Hundreds of man-years of developer time... and still a person with
average computer literacy cannot add a table to an article!


Maybe ease-of-use is not a priority for them? I could imagine a lot of
arguments against having a full WYSIWYG editor in Wikipedia.

Regardless, their achievements speak for themselves - billions of page
views per month, something like 500 million unique visitors per month,
#5 website on the internet etc. etc. so they must be doing something
right...

Anyway, I think I am finished with discussion in this thread, I just
want to say that I'm looking forward to some concrete suggestions from
you that are backed by data or examples.

My impression from this discussion is that some people cling to the idea
that stuff is black or white. Either we have funding/staff and become a
corporation with "a lot of overhead" or we stay what we are today. If
you think in such binary way there's no room for discussion or at least
the discussion is very painful because there will always be some
loophole you will find and grab at it to tear down any new ideas or
directions that are different from your own.

That's OK, I don't mind, I am not discouraged by this, although it
definitely would be better if there was more people who would say
"great, let's do it" or "let's try it" instead of trying to come up with
reasons why not to do it.

Thankfully it's an open project so we can try different approaches, so
again - I look forward to what you come up with and I also hope for
myself that I can finish some stuff I have started and maybe even make
some moves towards organizing funding, although I wouldn't know where to
start with that...

Paweł


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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[John F. Eldredge]

Joseph Reeves  wrote:

> Ok, I'll bite...
> 
> >I think this would be missing our audience.  If you're illiterate (a
> group
> Twitter caters specifically to), what are the >odds you're going to be
> able
> to make use of a map, much less contribute constructively to OSM?
> 
> How do illiterate people use Twitter?
> Do illiterate people have no spatial knowledge that could be of use to
> the
> wider world? Is there no way that Open spatial data could help
> illiterate
> people?
> Is "our audience" people that look at osm.org and don't like social
> media?
> 
> In my opinion OSM is going to really take off once we start making
> more use
> of social media, or other means of participation, such as SMS
> messaging
> (the sorts of things you couldn't do with closed spatial data, such as
> GMaps), and start thinking less of pixels on osm.org
> 
> Joseph
> 
> 
> On 9 January 2013 15:15, Paul Johnson  wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Frederik Ramm 
> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> I think it is ok for us to post stuff to Twitter, and I think we
> should
> >> make room for such news on our web page (many web sites have a
> widget that
> >> shows the most recent twitter mentions).
> >>
> >> I would dislike a "follow us on Twitter" button because it will
> only show
> >> the Twitter signup page if someone doesn't have an account, and
> therefore
> >> make it look like you had to subscribe to Twitter in order to read
> our news
> >> - which is thankfully not true.
> >>
> >
> > I think this would be missing our audience.  If you're illiterate (a
> group
> > Twitter caters specifically to), what are the odds you're going to
> be able
> > to make use of a map, much less contribute constructively to OSM?
> >
> > ___
> > talk mailing list
> > talk@openstreetmap.org
> > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
> >
> >
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ___
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I think that was a somewhat-snarky way of commenting on how many Twitter users 
don't spell very well and/or have poor grammar.  This isn't limited to Twitter 
users, unfortunately.

-- 
John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to 
think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Steve Doerr]

Twitter- and Facebook-user here, and I look forward to seeing links to 
those sites on the OSM page. Perhaps a 'Share this map' button alongside 
the Permalink/Sharelink links (it's basically an extension of the same 
idea, but saves the effort of doing copy and paste).


Steve

On 09/01/2013 15:15, Paul Johnson wrote:
On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 8:57 AM, Frederik Ramm > wrote:



I think it is ok for us to post stuff to Twitter, and I think we
should make room for such news on our web page (many web sites
have a widget that shows the most recent twitter mentions).

I would dislike a "follow us on Twitter" button because it will
only show the Twitter signup page if someone doesn't have an
account, and therefore make it look like you had to subscribe to
Twitter in order to read our news - which is thankfully not true.


I think this would be missing our audience.  If you're illiterate (a 
group Twitter caters specifically to), what are the odds you're going 
to be able to make use of a map, much less contribute constructively 
to OSM?


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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Sylvain Maillard]

looking at some facts, there are:
- 13002 followers on twitter
- 4311 likes on facebook page (to be compared at the >200 000 on the google
maps page)
- ? suscribers on talk@
=> on the 1 millions osm user, I'm quite sure (but have no facts) that a
lot of people have a facebook account but didn't know about the osm page !

My point of view is that social networks are perhaps not the best regarding
privacy,.. but there are a great opportunity to communicate about OSM.
I think we can surely do a better job to communicate around the osm
ecosystem, even without social networks, by putting more informations in
the main page and not only the map: new user will also know that osm i more
than just a free (costless) map to display ...


Sylvain



2013/1/9 colliar 

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA256
>
>
>
> On 09/01/13 15:18, Tobias Knerr wrote:
> > On 08.01.2013 22:31, Rovastar wrote:
> >> Nearly every site now has twitter, facebook, google plus, youtube
> >> channel, etc links. We have these social media outlets lets tell people
> >> about them.
> > [...]
> >> I cannot see any harm in this it would take up very little screen real
> >> estate and I think look a more professional cohesive community.
> >
> > In my opinion, the most important reason to avoid implementing this is
> not
> >  the screen space cost, but that it would be off-putting to those in our
> > community who feel that centralized platforms like Facebook are
> > incompatible with the spirit of an open, diverse and neutral web.
> >
> > Of course that is an ideological point of view, and many even in the OSM
> > community no doubt do not share it. However, I would be wary to brush
> aside
> > ideology completely: We rely on very similar ideals when we compare
> > ourselves to competitors. Look at Google Map Maker - just like Facebook,
> it
> > relies on users' contributions and offers certain free services in
> return,
> > but is ultimately limited in its potential to whatever fits the agenda of
> > its owner.
> >
> > I don't mind if people use their favourite social networks to advocate
> OSM.
> > However, a front page placement is more than that. It would imply an
> > endorsement of that service to an extent (until now, the only companies
> > mentioned on the front page are ones which directly support the OSM
> > community). It would also give special treatment to that small number of
> > commercial services and neglect all the alternatives.
> >
> > Personally, I want to help OSM to overcome Google Map's dominance for
> > pretty much the same reasons why I reject Facebook. So, please, do not
> > advertise Facebook, Google Plus, or any similar networks on the OSM front
> > page.
>
> +1
>
> I might understand why osm should have its presence on these medias but
> only
> to advertise OSM and point out the huge disadvantages and problems of these
> medias.
>
> I even dislike using them instead of an "open" or "own" platform cause you
> are
> already following their rules and strategy.
>
> If someone likes to make advertisement for free for these companies he/she
> can
> do so but OSM is not the right place for it and especially not the front
> page.
>
> I would have quite some problems to explain this to folks I did start to
> convince about OSM or at least showed an alternative.
>
> Somehow puzzled to have to discuss about that on this place.
>
> cu
> colliar
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iEYEAREIAAYFAlDtll0ACgkQalWTFLzqsCuwYwCdHfUQpUVz3Gt15FlCjcPXrhgV
> LbwAoLVvWhx8fDwO9AwBaocohsfGyoPh
> =Rl79
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Martin Koppenhöfer]

Am 09.01.2013 um 15:18 schrieb Tobias Knerr :

> On 08.01.2013 22:31, Rovastar wrote:
>> Nearly every site now has twitter, facebook, google plus, youtube channel,
>> etc links. We have these social media outlets lets tell people about them.
> [...]
> 
> In my opinion, the most important reason to avoid implementing this is
> not the screen space cost, but that it would be off-putting to those in
> our community who feel that centralized platforms like Facebook are
> incompatible with the spirit of an open, diverse and neutral web.
> 
> Of course that is an ideological point of view ... However, I would be wary 
> to brush
> aside ideology completely...
> I don't mind if people use their favourite social networks to advocate
> OSM. However, a front page placement is more than that. 


+1, no endorsement of closed silo services on the main page.

cheers,
Martin
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Re: [OSM-talk] Being more like Wikipedia (was: OpenStreetMap Future Look)

[Clifford Snow]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 7:53 AM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:

> For example, Wikipedia being as well known as it is has lead them to
> create "relevance criteria" - you can't create an article on a living
> person or a geographic feature, for example, unless that person or feature
> fulfills certain criteria. Wikipedians felt that this was necessary because
> they were swamped with data they considered irrelevant and un-encyclopedic.
> Many people left Wikipedia because of that (and indeed many of them are to
> be found in the ranks of OSM nowadays). I've heard other OSMers make fun of
> the tons of "WP:xxx" rules that Wikipedia has but I am sure they are not
> there because Wikipedians terribly enjoy rule-making - they probably had to
> be created in response to problems.


Frederik - I think we already have similar rule making issues. Just look at
recent discussions on imports. Or how many left OSM because of the license
change. Rules and policy changes have little to do with full time staffs.
As you said, rules are there because there were needed. OSM changed the
licensing because of a need.

Can't OSM be more like Wikipedia and be the first choice to visit yet still
be a fun place for mappers? I'd like to think so. We have some great tools
for mappers. Potlatch is even being used by the USGS and bing looked into
by the US National Park Service. And JOSM is great. Let's try to duplicate
why users love Wikipedia, even though most are not contributors instead of
just saying their model won't work for OSM.

-- 
Clifford

OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
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[OSM-talk] Overlapping ways

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi List,

If I have a situation (e.g. a 2 level carpark) where a road runs exactly
above another road, how do I map this? Currently I used layers but I have
found that the way is being deleted by another mapper who sees this as a
"duplicated way" (possibly in keep right). Do I simply need to draw then
incredibly close together but not sharing nodes?

Thanks,
Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Kai Krueger]

Martin Koppenhoefer wrote
> Am 09.01.2013 um 15:18 schrieb Tobias Knerr <

> osm@

> >:
>> 
>> Of course that is an ideological point of view ... However, I would be
>> wary to brush
>> aside ideology completely...
>> I don't mind if people use their favourite social networks to advocate
>> OSM. However, a front page placement is more than that. 
> 
> 
> +1, no endorsement of closed silo services on the main page.

Imho this is a rather different kettle of fish, but given the current
discussion on how far to "support" the closed silo of facebook and its
ideology, I thought I'd mention it here never the less.

I am hoping to extend the current login page to also support "login with
Facebook" and "login with your Microsoft account" as can be tested on the
following demonstration page (
http://apmon.dev.openstreetmap.org/facebook-login/ ).  This would also
include a "Facebook logo" on the login page.

Unlike the "logon with google" which has been an option on osm.org for a
while now, other commonly used federated logins, like e.g. Facebook, have so
far not been supported, as they don't use OpenID which is the appropriate
open standard for this. Instead Facebook and MS accounts use oauth 2, which
requires to register the page with them first and a small amount of custom
code  for each supported identity provider.

Never-the-less, I don't think this is a real issue with regards to not
supporting a closed silo. For one, the "login with Facebook" is obviously
entirely voluntary and I don't see anything in the design of the login page
that would suggest this is a requirement (or even the preferred method) for
using OSM. Secondly, no (privacy) information is leaked to Facebook or any
other third party unless you explicitly decide to use that identity provider
(in which case it is imho your responsibility to trust it and consider the
privacy implications). And finally I don't see it as OSMF "endorsing" a
closed silo, as it equally supports the entirely open (and decentralised /
user centric)  OpenID protocol.

Therefore, despite also having some ideological issues with closed social
networks like Facebook, I don't want to neglect the reality of 900 million
Facebook accounts and the possibility to make life easier for OSM mappers /
users if they so choose.

Kai



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Re: [OSM-talk] Overlapping ways

[Jo]

You can use the layer tag on one of both ways. It probably also needs
bridge=yes.

Jo

2013/1/9 Rob Nickerson 

> Hi List,
>
> If I have a situation (e.g. a 2 level carpark) where a road runs exactly
> above another road, how do I map this? Currently I used layers but I have
> found that the way is being deleted by another mapper who sees this as a
> "duplicated way" (possibly in keep right). Do I simply need to draw then
> incredibly close together but not sharing nodes?
>
> Thanks,
> Rob
>
> ___
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> talk@openstreetmap.org
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>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Overlapping ways

[Cartinus]

Hello,

You can simply revert the other mappers changeset or redraw the way, as
you mapped it "right". Adding a bridge tag would be "wrong" as there is
no bridge.

It probably helps to message the other user what you are doing and why.

On 01/09/2013 08:38 PM, Jo wrote:
> You can use the layer tag on one of both ways. It probably also needs
> bridge=yes.
> 
> Jo
> 
> 2013/1/9 Rob Nickerson 
> 
>> Hi List,
>>
>> If I have a situation (e.g. a 2 level carpark) where a road runs exactly
>> above another road, how do I map this? Currently I used layers but I have
>> found that the way is being deleted by another mapper who sees this as a
>> "duplicated way" (possibly in keep right). Do I simply need to draw then
>> incredibly close together but not sharing nodes?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Rob

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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Jeff Meyer]

+1 to JM's request for putting together a plan to gather data. Moral and
ethical questions aside, we don't know the value to OSM unless we test.

I believe larger sites do things like offer a different home page to
different users - e.g. one with these links, and then one without - in an
attempt to compare two concurrent data sets, but I'm not sure how feasible
that approach would be.

The timeframe for the test is another data point - did the Comms WG have
any thoughts on how to long to run this test? 3 months? 6 months?

- Jeff

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 7:51 AM, Jean-Marc Liotier  wrote:

> On 09/01/2013 01:37, Jean-Marc Liotier wrote:
>
>> I may be a grumpy old dinosaur but I don't see how diluting the
>> Openstreetmap brand into the bland broth of proprietary centralized social
>> services that plague the Internet nowadays will bring any value... But
>> that's just my worthless opinion [..] But first, can we agree that user
>> behaviour data is the raw material ?
>>
> Data-driven research : 100% of subsequent posts in this thread have
> indulged in bikeshedding about whether to place a Facetweet button on the
> home page, while my remark was merely introductory to the main point of
> feeding our discussion not with opinions but with facts mined from visitor
> activity.
>
> Anyway... Can anyone from the CWG give us a peek into the analytical
> tooling currently built into Openstreetmap's Web presence, what we can
> expect from it, what the future holds and what contributions are most
> welcome ?
>
>
>
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>



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[OSM-talk] piwik.openstreetmap.org - what is it?

[Jeff Meyer]

Is it active?
What reports does it generate?
Any way to see what it's doing?

Thanks!
Jeff

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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Jean-Marc Liotier]

On 01/09/2013 08:49 PM, Jeff Meyer wrote:
> +1 to JM's request for putting together a plan to gather data. Moral
> and ethical questions aside, we don't know the value to OSM unless we
> test.
Actually, moral and ethical problems must be defused preemptively -
especially within a project that upholds exemplary values.

Data retention policy sounds awfully corporate, but such document is the
foundation for not unthinkingly drifting sooner and later into
behaviours that we would not have condoned in the first place. Is anyone
aware of such document somewhere around OSM ?

Of particular importance is the anonymization of user data - an
essential step if we wish to provide useful datasets to a group larger
than a trusted core.

> I believe larger sites do things like offer a different home page to
> different users - e.g. one with these links, and then one without - in
> an attempt to compare two concurrent data sets, but I'm not sure how
> feasible that approach would be.
That is called behavioural targeting. It is rather more advanced than
what is usually needed to begin with and users don't like being aware
that a specially skewed content has been served to them. That said, as
an intermediary step, we might want to differentiate more strongly
between logged users, non-logged users with a specific cookie and new
arrivals.

> The timeframe for the test is another data point - did the Comms WG
> have any thoughts on how to long to run this test? 3 months? 6 months?
We don't even know if they are aware of this thread... I'm cc:ing a few
of them in case they aren't.


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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Jeff Meyer]

+1 to JM's -1's to my +1 comments ; )

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 12:06 PM, Jean-Marc Liotier  wrote:

> On 01/09/2013 08:49 PM, Jeff Meyer wrote:
> > +1 to JM's request for putting together a plan to gather data. Moral
> > and ethical questions aside, we don't know the value to OSM unless we
> > test.
> Actually, moral and ethical problems must be defused preemptively -
> especially within a project that upholds exemplary values.
>
> Data retention policy sounds awfully corporate, but such document is the
> foundation for not unthinkingly drifting sooner and later into
> behaviours that we would not have condoned in the first place. Is anyone
> aware of such document somewhere around OSM ?
>
> Of particular importance is the anonymization of user data - an
> essential step if we wish to provide useful datasets to a group larger
> than a trusted core.
>
> > I believe larger sites do things like offer a different home page to
> > different users - e.g. one with these links, and then one without - in
> > an attempt to compare two concurrent data sets, but I'm not sure how
> > feasible that approach would be.
> That is called behavioural targeting. It is rather more advanced than
> what is usually needed to begin with and users don't like being aware
> that a specially skewed content has been served to them. That said, as
> an intermediary step, we might want to differentiate more strongly
> between logged users, non-logged users with a specific cookie and new
> arrivals.
>
> > The timeframe for the test is another data point - did the Comms WG
> > have any thoughts on how to long to run this test? 3 months? 6 months?
> We don't even know if they are aware of this thread... I'm cc:ing a few
> of them in case they aren't.
>
>


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Re: [OSM-talk] Overlapping ways

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi,

I used the layer tag, but not bridge (as its a carpark not a bridge) but
because the way shares nodes with the way one layer down, it seems to be
flagged as duplicate and deleted by other mappers.

For example, in the following car park, cars enter up the ramp on to level
1. There is a rectangular service road (parking aisle) on this level, which
I have tagged with "layer=1". Cars can the go down the ramp to layer 0.
Although I can't see this on Bing to fill in the parking aisle, I do know
that part of this runs underneath the level 1 parking aisle in order to get
to the car parks ground exit.

As you will see, because the layer 0 "exit" way runs directly under my
rectangular level 1 parking aisle, it appears to be flagged as a "duplicate
way" in one of the fixer tools. As such someone has removed part of the
rectangular "layer=1" way, leaving just a horse shoe (which is incorrect):

http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/141374480

Am I doing something wrong? Is the fixer tool flagging something up
incorrectly?

Regards,
Rob





On 9 January 2013 19:38, Jo  wrote:

> You can use the layer tag on one of both ways. It probably also needs
> bridge=yes.
>
> Jo
>
> 2013/1/9 Rob Nickerson 
>
>> Hi List,
>>
>> If I have a situation (e.g. a 2 level carpark) where a road runs exactly
>> above another road, how do I map this? Currently I used layers but I have
>> found that the way is being deleted by another mapper who sees this as a
>> "duplicated way" (possibly in keep right). Do I simply need to draw then
>> incredibly close together but not sharing nodes?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Rob
>>
>> ___
>> talk mailing list
>> talk@openstreetmap.org
>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>>
>>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Being more like Wikipedia (was: OpenStreetMap Future Look)

[Tom Morris]

On Wednesday, 9 January 2013 at 15:53, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> I'm very much an outsider to Wikimedia but if I look at how much money
> they have spent on development and how little has changed for the
> contributing user - adding a table to an article is practically as
> difficult now as it was five years ago. You sit there and wonder: How
> hard can it be? Hundreds of man-years of developer time... and still a
> person with average computer literacy cannot add a table to an article!
>  
I'll take off my OpenStreetMap pootling-around-Britain-with-a-camera-and-a-GPS 
hat off and put my Wikipedia administrator hat on and say…

That's perhaps not a great example to choose. The visual editor only started 
development in 2011. Everyone in the community knew it was going to be a huge 
and massive slog to build the visual editor. Given what they are trying to do 
(retroactively specify a parsing model for Wikitext, write a bidirectional 
parser for it, then build an editor that has to cope with both mobile and 
desktop use in 280 languages), they are working ridiculously hard. The visual 
editor is scheduled to launch later this year.
  
>  
> For example, Wikipedia being as well known as it is has lead them to
> create "relevance criteria" - you can't create an article on a living
> person or a geographic feature, for example, unless that person or
> feature fulfills certain criteria. Wikipedians felt that this was
> necessary because they were swamped with data they considered irrelevant
> and un-encyclopedic. Many people left Wikipedia because of that (and
> indeed many of them are to be found in the ranks of OSM nowadays). I've
> heard other OSMers make fun of the tons of "WP:xxx" rules that Wikipedia
> has but I am sure they are not there because Wikipedians terribly enjoy
> rule-making - they probably had to be created in response to problems.
>  

Well, we have to rein in people who like to make rules. A while back, someone 
was suggesting that we adopt a new notability criteria for civil aviation 
disasters. I was one of the few people from outside the aviation community on 
Wikipedia to step in and say "rules bloat!" In addition, a lot of the time it's 
not so much rule-making as consensus-documenting. We had to have a rethink a 
while back about notability criteria guidelines for pornography actors and 
actresses because the rules that the pornography enthusiasts had written were 
being ignored in practice. In that regard, it's rather like how OpenStreetMap 
works with taginfo and the OSM wiki - ideally, we stabilise and then canonise 
that which works in practice.

As for the notability guidelines (the "relevance criteria" you refer to). There 
is a reason for that, and it's not necessarily because people create things 
that are irrelevant and unencyclopedic… though people do actually do that (the 
number of things I've deleted on the basis that are just things kids made up in 
school one day is pretty astounding). The notability guidelines are there 
because we judge notability on the basis of the presence of reliable sources. 
The reliable sources are there for the benefit of the reader: if the reader 
says "well, why should I trust what Wikipedia has to say on X?" and we say 
"well, here's a book, two articles in the Guardian and an article in the New 
York Times", that helps with verifiability. If there aren't any sources, the 
topic isn't "notable" (in the sense Wikipedia uses) not because we think it's 
bad or unimportant or crappy or not worth talking about but literally, nobody 
has taken any note of it! And if nobody has taken any note of it, we can't 
reliably source the claims made in the article, which sucks for readers.
  
>  
> Same with money - an organisation that deals with a multi-million budget
> will automatically have a much higher overhead (recent Wikimedia
> fundraising has been criticized because they made it sound like your
> donation was for servers when in fact only 10% if it went to
> infrastructure or so) and there will be more fighting over who gets how
> much of the cake. If you believe that we're currently having heated
> discussions, imagine how such discussions would go if they were about
> the allocation of millions ;)




Plenty of those accusations were rather overblown. There is a legitimate kernel 
of complaint, which is that the infrastructure of the Wikimedia Chapters system 
can be a little bit bloated. There are reforms going on around financial 
accountability and movement finance. I'd tell you more, but the time I could 
have spent reading that kind of stuff I instead spend clicking buttons in JOSM… 
;-)

I think the important difference between Wikipedia/WMF and OSM is that the WMF 
exists because Wikipedia had explosive growth in 2004-2006. It's still growing 
massively obviously (in October 2012, Wikipedia had 488 million uniques; in 
April 2012, Wikipedia passed 2 billion mobile page views per month). But there 
were a lot of things that were absolutely 

Re: [OSM-talk] piwik.openstreetmap.org - what is it?

[Tom Hughes]

On 09/01/13 19:53, Jeff Meyer wrote:


Is it active?


Yes.


What reports does it generate?


Everything you see at http://piwik.org/ basically.


Any way to see what it's doing?


Not really. There are data protection issues that make it impossible to 
make access generally available.


Tom

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Re: [OSM-talk] Being more like Wikipedia

[Tom Morris]

On Wednesday, 9 January 2013 at 16:15, Paweł Paprota wrote:
> Frederik,
>  
> > Hundreds of man-years of developer time... and still a person with
> > average computer literacy cannot add a table to an article!
>  
>  
>  
> Maybe ease-of-use is not a priority for them? I could imagine a lot of
> arguments against having a full WYSIWYG editor in Wikipedia.


Some people do make that argument (let's make it unfriendly for newbs so they 
don't break stuff!), but they are a very small minority.

I think most people in the Wikipedia community are actually very much in 
support of the development of the visual editor. Their primary frustration is 
that they are still waiting for it.  

--  
Tom Morris




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[OSM-talk] Réf.: Re: OpenStreetMap Future Look

[THEVENON Julien]

--
Le mer. 9 janv. 2013 13:26 HNEC, Paweł Paprota a écrit :

>Projects like OSM do not run on fairy dust and rainbows. Yesterday I
>watched Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) on The Colbert Report talk
>show and he was talking about Wikipedia's strategy and budget. They
>spend nearly 30 million dollars a year on hardware, network, manpower
>(technical, administrative) just to keep Wikipedia running. Of course it
>is not nearly the same scale as OSM but the same principle starts to
>apply to OSM as I hope everyone wants OSM to be more like Wikipedia in
>terms of users and being well-known. The number of core contributors
>stays pretty much the same for two years now.
>

Hi Pawel,

Since few months I read several articles saying that wikipedia loose 
contributors (due to more and more constraint it seems to be harder to 
contribute) and I also see quite a lot of criticism in forums from people 
complaining about cost of manpower in wikipedia compared to hardware and 
network costs.
I love wikipedia and the idea of participative common encyclopedia but the fact 
that some people think that there are negative points like  mentionned above, 
is very painfull and make me feel that wikipedia is perhaps not a so good model 
in term of organisation..I hope this will never happen for OSM and that the 
main words used by external people to talk about OSM will continue to be 
fun,passion,community etc

hug and thanks for  mappers,users,developers and all people involved in osm

Julien


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Re: [OSM-talk] Overlapping ways

[Cartinus]

Hello,

The ways should be on top of each other, but they should _not_ share all
nodes. Only the nodes at the ends where they connect in the real world
should be shared with something.

A shared node means something shares the same space in _three_
dimensions and you should be able to route from all objects connected to
that node to all other objects connected to the same node. (Baring
access restrictions of course. At a level railroad crossing the road and
railway share a node, but almost no vehicles can route that way.)

Fixer tools often flags things incorrectly. That is why good tools allow
you to flag things as "false positives".

On 01/09/2013 09:51 PM, Rob Nickerson wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I used the layer tag, but not bridge (as its a carpark not a bridge) but
> because the way shares nodes with the way one layer down, it seems to be
> flagged as duplicate and deleted by other mappers.
> 
> For example, in the following car park, cars enter up the ramp on to level
> 1. There is a rectangular service road (parking aisle) on this level, which
> I have tagged with "layer=1". Cars can the go down the ramp to layer 0.
> Although I can't see this on Bing to fill in the parking aisle, I do know
> that part of this runs underneath the level 1 parking aisle in order to get
> to the car parks ground exit.
> 
> As you will see, because the layer 0 "exit" way runs directly under my
> rectangular level 1 parking aisle, it appears to be flagged as a "duplicate
> way" in one of the fixer tools. As such someone has removed part of the
> rectangular "layer=1" way, leaving just a horse shoe (which is incorrect):
> 
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/141374480
> 
> Am I doing something wrong? Is the fixer tool flagging something up
> incorrectly?
> 
> Regards,
> Rob
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 9 January 2013 19:38, Jo  wrote:
> 
>> You can use the layer tag on one of both ways. It probably also needs
>> bridge=yes.
>>
>> Jo
>>
>> 2013/1/9 Rob Nickerson 
>>
>>> Hi List,
>>>
>>> If I have a situation (e.g. a 2 level carpark) where a road runs exactly
>>> above another road, how do I map this? Currently I used layers but I have
>>> found that the way is being deleted by another mapper who sees this as a
>>> "duplicated way" (possibly in keep right). Do I simply need to draw then
>>> incredibly close together but not sharing nodes?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Rob
>>>
>>> ___
>>> talk mailing list
>>> talk@openstreetmap.org
>>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>>>
>>>
>>
> 
> 
> 
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> 

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Re: [OSM-talk] Overlapping ways

[SomeoneElse]

Rob Nickerson wrote:


Am I doing something wrong? Is the fixer tool flagging something up 
incorrectly?


In cases such as this I normally say to the other mapper that I was last 
there on so-and-so date, and when I was last there it looked like X; and 
ask whether perhaps he's been there more recently and the geometry's 
changed?


Personally I believe that the various QA tools do an excellent job, but 
it'd be simply impossible to miss all the false negatives and not catch 
some false positives - it has to be up to the mapper to decide what's a 
real issue and what's not.


(begin rant)

I wish more of the people doing these remote corrections would actually 
talk to the person who did the original mapping in the first place.  
Perhaps the way was drawn by a new mapper who actually has lots of 
questions about how to do things, but doesn't know who or where to ask.  
Maybe it's a mistake by someone who's been mapping for a while (we all 
still make them!), in which the best person to correct the error is 
surely a person who's been there rather than a person who hasn't.


In some cases it does make sense to correct remotely (perhaps 
non-connecting footpaths that match GPS traces that were drawn by a 
mapper who hasn't been seen since 2009 would be an example), but in many 
cases I would argue that it doesn't.


(end rant)

As an interesting aside, what I've found myself doing more frequently 
recently is revisiting places that I'd mapped previously that had been 
subsequently "armchaired".  In almost all cases what resulted from a 
resurvey wasn't exactly the same as from the original, but slightly more 
nuanced and with a lot more detail - revisiting isn't necessarily a bad 
thing.  Still, it can be annoying to have to go back and resurvey an 
area because someone has "corrected" it to look like an old Bing photo, 
prompted by a false positive on a QA site.


Cheers,
Andy


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Re: [OSM-talk] piwik.openstreetmap.org - what is it?

[Jeff Meyer]

Tom - thanks for the reply.

Good to know that it's there.

As it is there, how are the reports and data currently used?

I take it there's no way to anonymize?
(I realize there are plenty of cases where anonymized datasets have been
reversed to id individuals.)

Thanks, Jeff

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 1:18 PM, Tom Hughes  wrote:

> On 09/01/13 19:53, Jeff Meyer wrote:
>
>  Is it active?
>>
>
> Yes.
>
>
>  What reports does it generate?
>>
>
> Everything you see at http://piwik.org/ basically.
>
>
>  Any way to see what it's doing?
>>
>
> Not really. There are data protection issues that make it impossible to
> make access generally available.
>
> Tom
>
> --
> Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu)
> http://compton.nu/
>



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Re: [OSM-talk] piwik.openstreetmap.org - what is it?

[Tom Hughes]

On 09/01/13 21:47, Jeff Meyer wrote:


Good to know that it's there.

As it is there, how are the reports and data currently used?


Well a few people have access and will sometimes have a look if somebody 
asks above what browsers people are using and such like.


There is some effort to do some conversion tracking but that's not 
working very well yet.



I take it there's no way to anonymize?
(I realize there are plenty of cases where anonymized datasets have been
reversed to id individuals.)


The statistical reports are fine - the problem is that the web interface 
includes a live feed that literally shows you IP addresses and what URLs 
they are hitting.


Tom

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Re: [OSM-talk] Overlapping ways

[Richard Mann]

Consider slightly offsetting each level. Add a note saying
slightly-offset-from-level-below.

Sharing nodes between vertical layers is certainly wrong.

Richard


On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 9:31 PM, SomeoneElse wrote:

> Rob Nickerson wrote:
>
>>
>> Am I doing something wrong? Is the fixer tool flagging something up
>> incorrectly?
>>
>
> In cases such as this I normally say to the other mapper that I was last
> there on so-and-so date, and when I was last there it looked like X; and
> ask whether perhaps he's been there more recently and the geometry's
> changed?
>
> Personally I believe that the various QA tools do an excellent job, but
> it'd be simply impossible to miss all the false negatives and not catch
> some false positives - it has to be up to the mapper to decide what's a
> real issue and what's not.
>
> (begin rant)
>
> I wish more of the people doing these remote corrections would actually
> talk to the person who did the original mapping in the first place.
>  Perhaps the way was drawn by a new mapper who actually has lots of
> questions about how to do things, but doesn't know who or where to ask.
>  Maybe it's a mistake by someone who's been mapping for a while (we all
> still make them!), in which the best person to correct the error is surely
> a person who's been there rather than a person who hasn't.
>
> In some cases it does make sense to correct remotely (perhaps
> non-connecting footpaths that match GPS traces that were drawn by a mapper
> who hasn't been seen since 2009 would be an example), but in many cases I
> would argue that it doesn't.
>
> (end rant)
>
> As an interesting aside, what I've found myself doing more frequently
> recently is revisiting places that I'd mapped previously that had been
> subsequently "armchaired".  In almost all cases what resulted from a
> resurvey wasn't exactly the same as from the original, but slightly more
> nuanced and with a lot more detail - revisiting isn't necessarily a bad
> thing.  Still, it can be annoying to have to go back and resurvey an area
> because someone has "corrected" it to look like an old Bing photo, prompted
> by a false positive on a QA site.
>
> Cheers,
> Andy
>
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Overlapping ways

[Rob Nickerson]

Can I ask for some clarification on what is meant by "sharing nodes". For
example, if I draw the layer 0 way, then draw the layer 1 way on top, using
the same nodes as a guide, BUT THEN "unglue" all the nodes by pressing "G"
in JOSM, does this still count as a "shared node"?

Thanks,
Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Overlapping ways

[Clay Smalley]

On Jan 9, 2013 5:03 PM, "Rob Nickerson"  wrote:
> For example, if I draw the layer 0 way, then draw the layer 1 way on top,
using the same nodes as a guide, BUT THEN "unglue" all the nodes by
pressing "G" in JOSM, does this still count as a "shared node"?
That is perfectly valid as they are separate nodes according to OSM. Some
validators might pick up on these and call them errors, but that's a false
negative.
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Re: [OSM-talk] piwik.openstreetmap.org - what is it?

[Rob Nickerson]

Is there any way to pull out the reports that are fine into a document that
can be periodically released?

Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Rovastar]

Firstly, I didn't expect so much conversation on this. I must say I never
really though about the closed nature vs open source of OSM conflict. 
And I am not a facebook user myself (I really dislike the walled garden idea
that is facebook) and only joined Twitter to see what it is about, I've not
used it.
(However I do sometimes read the info on facebook, search twitter and google
plus to see the latest OSM news. Just like I've been lurking and reading the
talk mailing lists for years and only joined for this.)

I was only thinking that a load of people use these social networks, we run
the facebook account, the Google Plus account and Twitter feed. A billion
plus all could spread the word of OSM more.
 
I didn't actually realise their is no YouTube channel. I just thought we had
one and that is why I mentioned it, to be honest. But an official channel it
would be great for tutorials and stuff but you can always use Vimeo or
something.

And a bravo for Jonathan for getting this done and I am glad that it was
already thought of. And a big thank you for running these social networks
and spreading the word of OSM.
I would like to think even the biggest critics of these closed-silos would
appreciate the work you put in to keep the world informed. 

I look forward forward to seeing the mock up.

Cheers,

John  





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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Steve Doerr]

On 10/01/2013 00:17, Rovastar wrote:

Firstly, I didn't expect so much conversation on this. I must say I never
really though about the closed nature vs open source of OSM conflict.
And I am not a facebook user myself (I really dislike the walled garden idea
that is facebook) and only joined Twitter to see what it is about, I've not
used it.



I'm really disturbed by the prevalent tone in this thread. What's 
'ideology' got to do with OpenStreetMap? After 3+ years of contributing 
to OSM, have I actually been supporting some crypto-socialist conspiracy 
that opposes private-property rights, commercialism, mass-marketing, the 
profit motive, free-market capitalism, and basically everything I 
believe in? I thought I was just helping to create a fantastic mapping 
database. Just because I contribute to an 'open' database, does that 
mean I have to oppose anything that is 'closed' or proprietary?7


As for being accused of being illiterate because I use Twitter... Well, 
words fail me.


Steve

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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 10.01.2013 01:46, Steve Doerr wrote:

I'm really disturbed by the prevalent tone in this thread. What's
'ideology' got to do with OpenStreetMap? After 3+ years of contributing
to OSM, have I actually been supporting some crypto-socialist conspiracy
that opposes private-property rights,


;)

You'll find that most of us are acutely aware of private-property rights 
and exercise them (at least regarding intellectual property) with much 
more thought than the average citizen - witness the, thankfully now 
past, years and years of license debates.


Bye
Frederik

--
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

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[OSM-talk] (sans objet)

[Pierre Béland]

I propose to have discussions that are more fun for all of us than the ones in 
the last few days.

The International Open Data Hackathon on Feb 23 is an opportunity for OSM 
developpers and mappers to work together and have fun. We could let 
people better know OSM and licensing problems we face with so called 
governments, municipalities OpenData not so open. 


This event is already scheduled in many cities and they ask to propose 
projects.  An OSM project could be proposed for adding data to OSM, 
exporting from OSM, adapting APIs, etc.


see http://wiki.opendataday.org/Main_Page
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Re: [OSM-talk] Simple improvement(s) to openstreetmap.org

[Jeff Meyer]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 4:46 PM, Steve Doerr  wrote:

> On 10/01/2013 00:17, Rovastar wrote:
>
>> Just because I contribute to an 'open' database, does that mean I have to
>> oppose anything that is 'closed' or proprietary?7
>
>
That depends on what you think of social welfare programs.  ; )

Absolutely not.

I'm +1 for anything that might increase word of mouth or interest in OSM,
including links to Twitter, Facebook G+, and the like, even if they have
those insidious little linkie things on them. I visit sites that include
those gremlins every day & have never *not* gone to a site because of them.
I also happen to use a cookie blocker for Facebook & a Facebook specific
browser. Twitter, in particular, already has a fair amount of OSM-related
chatter on it. It's how I learned about the 1 millionth registration.

twitter: https://twitter.com/GWHAThistory
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GWHAThistory
-- 
Jeff Meyer
Global World History Atlas
www.gwhat.org
j...@gwhat.org
206-676-2347
www.openstreetmap.org/user/jeffmeyer
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Re: [OSM-talk] Being more like Wikipedia (was: OpenStreetMap Future Look)

[pavithran]

On 10 January 2013 02:41, Tom Morris  wrote:
> Scenarios where people are going to get upset over OpenStreetMaps are 
> considerably fewer than ones where people get upset with Wikipedia. (In fact, 
> when people do get upset about maps, they'll usually get upset with Wikipedia 
> too. At WikiConference India, members of the nationalist BJP protested 
> because of Wikipedia's map and description of the situation in Kashmir.*)

Though offtopic , the same group also has another set of gang or
groups which vandalises the wikipedia articles and you can hardly see
any political articles on India with NPOV ( Neutral Point Of View)
because a major group of editors come from a certain group and are
well versed with all kinds of rules which wikipedia editors use to
remove/revoke/edit an article .

Coming to mapping in India , Kashmir might be the one border issue
where  "International territory "  and "line of Control" are two
different lines and can be interpreted by various cartographers  in
whatever way it pleases them .  Google maps India doesnt even show the
line of control , google maps US shows it as a dotted line , OSM shows
it as bordder .

I would admit the fact that OSM is not that popular ( atleast in
India) that people who vandalise articles in wikipedia havent yet
started . Lets say it to the advantage of the tools being hard to use
even for the wikipedia editor , also would be the other fact that
there is less data here(India) for them to seriously consider OSM as a
map which needs to be checked up / bothered with .   Google enjoys the
complete dominant position with people fighting editor wars in
mapmaker .

Personally am I waiting for a surge of mappers ? No I am not , I would
rather see a surge in mapping and effective usage of tags , hopefully
which the future editors could clearly include some 2 minutes of
tagging tutorial .

Regards,
Pavithran


-- 
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http://look-pavi.blogspot.com

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Re: [OSM-talk] Being more like Wikipedia (was: OpenStreetMap Future Look)

[Steve Bennett]

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 2:53 AM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
> I'm very much an outsider to Wikimedia but if I look at how much money they
> have spent on development and how little has changed for the contributing
> user - adding a table to an article is practically as difficult now as it
> was five years ago. You sit there and wonder: How hard can it be? Hundreds
> of man-years of developer time... and still a person with average computer
> literacy cannot add a table to an article!

Hi Frederik,
  Before getting into OSM, I did a lot of work with Wikipedia: writing
articles, developing policies and guidelines, moderating the mailing
lists, various cleanup etc, mostly in 2006-8. As noted, your example
is poorly chosen: the goal of Wikipedia is to diseminate a high
quality encyclopaedia to the world's people. Letting punters create
tables easily is a low priority (and hard!), compared to all the
infrastructure of actually serving up the content, making translations
work, zillions of plugins, bots, browser support, the monster that is
the wikitext parser etc. All the developer time has produced an
enormous amount: a stable, high quality encyclopaedia that it's in the
top 10 web sites, looks good, is searchable etc etc.

> It is too simplistic, to say things like "everyone wants OSM to be more like
> Wikipedia in terms of ", because you can't always separate the good from
> the bad. It's easy to say "I'd like to have the kind of money that Wikimedia
> have" or "the popularity that Wikipedia enjoys" but none of this can be had
> without a downside.

I can't speak for the money side, but I'd like OSM to be more like
Wikipedia in terms of the maturity of its community and its attitude
towards content development. Wikipedia took a firm stand that the
"healthy hothouse" attitude of the early days was just a passing
phase: things had to settle down, standardise, become more process
driven in order to produce high quality content. OSM has been around
enough years now for something similar to have happened, but it
hasn't. Newcomers are still encouraged to invent tags, and to ignore
the wiki, because that's just "wikifiddling". Whereas Wikipedia takes
policies and guidelines seriously, has large numbers of highly
successful wikiprojects, has people who take responsibility for pretty
boring things like stub and category management, and it works. Whereas
one look at taginfo.openstreetmap.org will show you the complete chaos
that we have - and it's not getting better.

Wikipedia strives for high quality content, at the expensive of the
contributor. OSM strives for ease of use for contributors, at the
expense of content consumers. After all these years we still have no
agreement about exactly what highway=path means, dozens of very common
tags, or even sets of tags that consumers should support.

> For example, Wikipedia being as well known as it is has lead them to create
> "relevance criteria" - you can't create an article on a living person or a
> geographic feature, for example, unless that person or feature fulfills
> certain criteria. Wikipedians felt that this was necessary because they were
> swamped with data they considered irrelevant and un-encyclopedic. Many
> people left Wikipedia because of that (and indeed many of them are to be
> found in the ranks of OSM nowadays).

Notability. People leave Wikipedia for all kinds of reasons. Those
that leave because the content they were interested in creating wasn't
within the scope of Wikipedia were obviously on the wrong project. You
make this sound like a bad thing.

> I've heard other OSMers make fun of the
> tons of "WP:xxx" rules that Wikipedia has but I am sure they are not there
> because Wikipedians terribly enjoy rule-making - they probably had to be
> created in response to problems.

They were created in pursuit of a goal, and they work. Best of all
they focus debates, and move them forward. You can debate whether a
given course of action fits within existing policies and guidelines,
or you can debate whether the policy/guideline is right. But you don't
start from scratch every single time like we do in OSM debates.

Probably one reason that there are more policy/guidelines on Wikipedia
is policy writing is a closer fit with encyclopaedia writing. Whereas
geospatial types get frustrated quickly with writing text, I think.

Steve

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Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Future Look

[Michal Migurski]

On Jan 9, 2013, at 4:26 AM, Paweł Paprota wrote:

> On 01/09/2013 12:20 PM, Peter Wendorff wrote:
>> 
>> Communication professionals IMHO most often sound like marketing.
> 
> I did not mean communication professionals but giving more resources to
> the OSMF's Communication Working Group or similar initiatives. Posting a
> tweet or a blog post now and then really is not enough to communicate
> about the project that OSM has become. There needs to be more
> initiatives like switch2osm, campaigns need to be thought out and put
> together. This does not have anything to do with marketing, it's just
> how a project grows.

+1 to this.

OSM is amazing, but operationally it's a big problem that we don't have an 
identifiable power structure. We seem happy to rely on happy accidents and the 
occasional messiah (Cloudmade, Mapquest, more recently Knight/Mapbox) but it's 
not enough. We've mentioned a few successful projects like Apache on this 
thread, but outside the world of software there are also unsuccessful efforts 
that can serve as warning signs. To get unnecessarily political for a minute, 
it's been said of Occupy that failure to make organized demands was a mistake:

"Nor does it require poststructuralism-leading-through-anarchism to 
understand how to reverse these developments. You do it by rebuilding a 
powerful and competent regulatory state. You do it by rebuilding the labor 
movement. You do it with bureaucracy." (http://teczno.com/s/x14)

As far as potential solutions or approaches, one that I can think of is to add 
some type of process-based items to the TTT’s, for example: double the number 
of sysadmins qualified and trusted to run the servers, appoint a VP Eng., 
increase the number of core application servers to satisfy higher API demand, 
and develop a database failover/recovery plan. I don't enough of the gory 
details to assert that these are the right ideas, but maybe Tom, Grant, Andy or 
Matt can help add vital information.

"Lots of things are like that. They're not complicated. They don't require 
brilliant, innovative strategies, they're just hard. They require more work and 
more effort and than anyone might reasonably expect. The best managers create 
organisational room for that to happen." (http://teczno.com/s/zl9)

-mike.


michal migurski- contact info and pgp key:
sf/cahttp://mike.teczno.com/contact.html





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[OSM-talk] Welcome Working Group meeting tomorrow

[Martijn van Exel]

Hi all,

We will be picking up regular meetings for the emerging Welcome
Working Group tomorrow at 1900 UTC on #osm-strategic. More info on
what we're up to as well as how to join the IRC channel is at
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Mvexel/Welcome_Working_Group

We don't really have a set agenda or even regular members yet so if
you want to help shape this please step forward and join tomorrow!

Best
Martijn

(I accidentally sent this to talk-us, it was meant to go here in the
first place.)
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[OSM-talk] Happy New Year from MapRoulette!

[Martijn van Exel]

Hi all,

We've seen some great progress from MapRoulette users fixing the
almost 70,000 connectivity errors in the US. Returning from my
Christmas break, they were all but eliminated! Great, but we did not
really have the next challenge ready yet. So for now, we expanded the
scope of the connectivity challenge to include Mexico and Canada, so
we have over 57,000 fresh connectivity errors for you to sink your
teeth into. So stop reading and start fixing, over at
http://maproulette.org/!

PS the next challenge is almost done, we could also do a parallel
MapRoulette for that, what do you think?
--
Martijn van Exel
http://oegeo.wordpress.com/
http://openstreetmap.us/

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