Re: [OSM-talk] Transcription and "internationalization" in place names

[John Sturdy]

On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 4:58 PM, Janko Mihelić  wrote:
> Hello, this is a great topic!
>
> There is one more issue with internalization and names. Users tend to add
> more than just names in "name=*" tags.
> For example "Lago di Garda". If a machine tried to turn that into English,
> it would be "Lake Lago di Garda", which is not right because lago already
> means lake. Fortunately, mappers put international tags, and the english one
> "name:en" says Lake Garda. But now, if a machine isn't carefull it could say
> "lake Lake Garda".
> Also it doesn't feel right to put "Lake" in front of all the lakes in the
> World. A machine should do that.
>
> Also lots of mappers put "School" in school names, "Airport" in airport
> names, "Bay" in bay names, and so on..
>
> My question is, should the renderer join "lake", "school" and "airport" with
> their names? I think that would make users put in cleaner data.

I think that words like "lake", "school" etc are part of the name, and
should be in the data, and the renderer should present the name just
as it is in the data.  I don't think a machine could get this right.
For example, not all named instances of "natural=water" are called
"lakes" in English (e.g. "Windermere" is a name in its own right, and
does not need "Lake" prepended to it).

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Re: [OSM-talk] Edit review: "building"="levels=N"

[John Sturdy]

On Sun, May 20, 2012 at 5:46 PM, Worst Fixer  wrote:

> Also I propose removal of "addr:housenumber=?" on these objects, and move
> "name=N" to "addr:housenumber=N".

I think that should be done only when the "name=N" is actually a number.

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Re: [OSM-talk] TomTom is thumping us

[John Sturdy]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 8:44 AM, Maarten Deen  wrote:
> Ok, they don't name us, but I think "a leading open source map" does refer
> to us.
>
> 
>
> Oh wauw. We're not perfect. Let's close up the shop. Thanks to SteveC for
> all the effort, but it wasn't enough.
>
> Well, probably one of the very positive effects from OSM is the fact that
> when we start mapping something, the closed-source mappers follow suit. The
> fact that Google needs to add gimmicks like kajak routing across the pacific
> to beat us says enough.
> It's a win-win situation.

It looks like we're getting to the point where the closed-source
mappers are starting to see us as serious competition.

If the best they can do is that "In one particular instance"
(presumably chosen to make their point as well as possible) we've got
"a third less residential road coverage and 16% less basic map
attributes" we're well on the way (especially the second part of
that).

Also, having said that the community is a drawback for Open Source,
they then claim their community as an advantage!  I doubt that their
specialists really go out and check each correction that's sent in; I
expect we do more (implicit) checking, as vandalism is reported and
undone.

I wonder whether their comment on "pedestrians and in city or town
centres" can be taken as conceding that we're doing better than them
in those areas?

The nearest they make to an accurate point is "classification of
footpaths as roads" --- I don't think I've seen any of those, but I
have found quite a few "unclassified roads" that look more like
"tracks" on Bing (and have adjusted them accordingly where confident
of it).

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Re: [OSM-talk] TomTom is thumping us

[John Sturdy]

On Tue, May 29, 2012 at 9:40 AM, Thomas Davie  wrote:
> To be honest, if a road has no classification, and is made of mud and gravel, 
> it's a track...

The ones I reclassified typically had two wheel-tracks of soil-colour
and grass between them, I think.  If it's asphalt-coloured, even if
there is grass growing down the middle, I still call it a road.

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Re: [OSM-talk] [Tagging] RFC: Names localization

[John Sturdy]

> [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Names_localization

+1, generally; but I'm not keen on deprecating the bare "name=*" tag,
because for many (perhaps most) named features, there is only one
name.  For example, a minor rural road in England will probably have a
name (in English), but it won't have names in other languages, and
no-one will really describe its name as "its English name" --- it's
simply "its name".  Multiple names are really an issue for
multilingual countries and for major features (typically large cities,
rivers, and perhaps mountains) in monolingual countries, and I suspect
those are well under half of all the features that will ever be
mapped.

Having just suggested keeping it simple, I'll suggest a complication
as well: multiple scripts for the same language.  In particular, I'm
thinking of mainland China, as it opens up more to interaction with
"the West"; and, when I did an introductory course on Chinese language
and culture, my teacher said the Chinese people begin learning to read
and write using pinyin, rather than in Chinese script, so maybe we
should ask Chinese mappers whether they're interested in it being
convenient to have names in both.

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Re: [OSM-talk] High Viz Jackets?

[John Sturdy]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 6:01 PM, Serge Wroclawski  wrote:
> Are the high viz jackets on sale anywhere?
>
> You used to be able to get them shipped internationally from
> Gravitystorm but the page is 404.
>
> I'm thinking of ordering a bunch, so if the jackets aren't available,
> maybe someone knows what kind of jacket they were, and has all the
> logos, etc. in a way that I could order new sets made?

A supplier I've used a while ago (not for OSM logos but other custom
printing) is here:

http://www.hivis.co.uk/hi-visibility/custom-printed-hi-vis.html

John

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Re: [OSM-talk] Shoud OSM Help move to Stackexchange community?

[John Sturdy]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 7:29 AM, Tobias Knerr  wrote:

> I don't think this is a good idea if it means that OSM users need to
> register another account to participate in help.osm.org.

+1

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Re: [OSM-talk] "China's maps to be closely monitored for more accuracy" - China Daily

[John Sturdy]

How long does it take to check a map of China for accuracy? ;-)

With the speed Chinese building companies can work at,  I reckon at
least one new city could be built in the time it takes to check the
whole map.

The check really seems to be that various points of contention are to
be shown in the official way,  rather than what cartographers would
call "accuracy".

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[OSM-talk] My first "coastline" question

[John Sturdy]

In the view around
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.21134&lon=-10.35719&zoom=16&layers=M,
the road R549 seems to cross the coastline a few times.  I brought up
Potlatch 2 to try to fix this.  It turned out that the photo data
isn't available for part of that area, but I did notice that the
coastline way isn't the coastline that's visible on the slippy map
(which doesn't seem to have a way corresponding to it).  Is it just a
matter of waiting for a very occasional automatic update, or is there
something that needs to be fixed manually here?

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Re: [OSM-talk] Mapnik and (no) Buildings

[John Sturdy]

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 6:03 PM, Dirk-Lüder Kreie  wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I noticed that in the current render of Bremen there are quite a few
> buildings missing, especially some with tags like building=yes or
> building=terrace. Is this an error in the import or stylesheets?
> I don't think it's really intentional, is it?

The high-zoom re-rendering around
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.655291&lon=-8.428702&zoom=18&layers=M,
where I have recently edited, is coming up blank, too.

Perhaps there's a server / renderer problem behind both of these?

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Re: [OSM-talk] Mapnik at zoom=19

[John Sturdy]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 11:10 PM, Kai Krueger  wrote:

> There are by now enough densely mapped areas, where a z19 level offers a
> real advantage. At z18 too much information gets dropped in the decluttering
> process.
>
> At the moment, when I want to e.g. check if  something is already mapped in
> a densely mapped area, I need to switch into Potlatch where I can zoom to
> z19 (and beyond). However, if everyone does that, I suspect that would use
> up much more resources than offering a z19 rendered map.
>
> Therefore imho, offering z19 would be possible and a net benefit to OSM, but
> that is obviously for the server admin team to decide.

+1

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Re: [OSM-talk] Mapnik at zoom=19

[John Sturdy]

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 9:23 PM, Christian Quest
 wrote:
> You can see what zoom level 19 looks like with Mapnik/cartocss style on
> http://layers.openstreetmap.fr/?zoom=19&lat=48.87206&lon=2.30069&layers=B

That looks excellent; I'm sure this would be useful on the main map.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Display names of crossroads

[John Sturdy]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 12:01 PM, Jean-Marc Liotier  wrote:

> My position in regards to highway=junction vs. junction=* is neutral -
> though I consider the everything=yes trend as namespace pollution. So :
> - junction=* if there is enough diversity to justify that namespace
> - highway=junction if junction=yes is going to represent most of the
> junction=* space

+1

The junctions are part of the highway system, so it seems appropriate
to tag them under highway=

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Re: [OSM-talk] [Talk-us] Tagging Live indoor music venues

[John Sturdy]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 3:58 PM, Janko Mihelić  wrote:

> I suggest we use amenity=music_venue for each place where music is played,
> and we use amenity=concert_hall as a specialized type of a music venue. That
> means that if a concert hall is tagged with amenity=music_venue, that's not
> false. Just like a fast food place can be tagged with amenity=restaurant,
> although it's not as accurate as amenity=fast_food.

A problem with separating them out like that is that some have a
variety of types of musical event, e.g. pop and classical.  For
example, the Corn Exchange in Cambridge hosts just about any style.

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Re: [OSM-talk] "Incorrect speed limit" anonymous notes - who is behind that?

[John Sturdy]

I wonder whether these "incorrect speed limit" notes might not be
reporting that the speed limit on the map isn't what it is on the
road, but someone objecting to what the speed limit on the road is,
and making a token protest about it?


On Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 1:24 PM, JB  wrote:
> Have a look  there:
> https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/486
> If categories are create (and I think they should), I would still add
> private notes/heavy duty work
> JB.
>
> Le 10/08/2014 14:10, Matthijs Melissen a écrit :
>
>> I see a lot of comments like this. The underlying problem seems to be
>> that it is not clear whether notes are meant for armchair mappers, or
>> for surveyors in the field.
>>
>> I think both types of notes are useful: that way the notes can serve
>> as a two-way communication between mappers in the field (for example
>> novices who don't know how to edit the map themselves) and armchair
>> mappers (who might want to communicate with mappers in the field if
>> they are unable to do a field check themselves at that moment).
>>
>> So the solution might be very simple: make two types of notes, 'desk'
>> notes and 'field' notes. The desk notes can be handled by armchair
>> mappers. The field notes need a check in the field. Notes created by
>> anonymous users should be desk notes by default, and if information is
>> missing, the armchair mapper should be able to turn it into a field
>> note.
>>
>> The notes JB refers seem to be field-type notes. I think they are
>> useful, and I think it's not helpful if armchair mappers try to close
>> all of them without doing a survey.
>>
>> Anyone think a split in field and desk notes is a good idea?
>> Implementation of this should be easy.
>>
>> -- Matthijs
>>
>> On 10 August 2014 11:50, JB  wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>> I think I will reopen the debate here, by asking a simple question: how
>>> many
>>> of those saying "hey, let this note open, it does no harm to anybody"
>>> have
>>> actually browsed a country for its opened notes and tried to close them?
>>> How
>>> many have done the same with openstreetbugs during its last year of life?
>>> If you have not, let me tell you, loud and clear: the note database will
>>> become unusable soon. When you browse 10 notes and are forced to leave 9
>>> open because it does provide no clean information, you just stop trying.
>>> That is why during OSB close up, I found so many notes of that kind
>>> (continue the path, this is wrong, this does not exist, etc.), that where
>>> just not clear enough, or where just too old (the correction had been
>>> done
>>> without OSB), and most of them where more than 2 years old. And this is
>>> why
>>> OSB was a mess in the end.
>>> I have tried to keep the DB clean in France, am still trying by beeing
>>> less
>>> narrow-minded, but I just see its quality decreasing every day.
>>> So I do not have the exact number, but adding some 10s of little valued
>>> notes every week saying "this speed limit may be wrong", some of them
>>> added
>>> by error (not along a highway) does not seem an improvement to the notes
>>> DB
>>> to me.
>>> JB.
>>>
>>>
>>> Le 10/08/2014 09:42, Martin Koppenhoefer a écrit :
>>>
> Il giorno 09/ago/2014, alle ore 13:56, Norbert Wenzel
>  ha scritto:
>
> just seeing these notes along a
> motorway every few kilometers. And since these messages don't tell what
> the actual speed limit should be and where it starts it gets really
> annoying to close all these automatically generated notes.


 why are you closing them, if you can't solve the issue? I would keep
 them
 open, if you are not sure that the limit is correct in OSM

 cheers,
 Martin
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>>>
>>>
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[OSM-talk] New mapping satellite

[John Sturdy]

Announced in typical Register style:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/13/creepy_satellites_will_be_able_to_zoom_in_on_your_face/

I expect it'll be some time before images become available for OSM, though :-(

And I'm not confusing resolution and accuracy!

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Re: [OSM-talk] web page element browsing history regression

[John Sturdy]

To me, the current version certainly seems like a step back; I
presumed either it was done to meet some other requirements, or I had
just stupidly missed finding how to do what I wanted, so I didn't say
anything at the time.  In particular, ISTR it being much easier on the
previous version to go from looking at your edit history, to having a
particular changeset displayed centred in the slippy map and zoomed to
fit.  When mapping, I often want to come back to wherever I was last
editing, and although it doesn't take that long to find something by
panning and zooming manually, it was nice to have it done
automatically.

I've just looked a bit further at this, and found that while the link
from a mapper's edit history no longer brings the slippy map to the
right place, the link from a friend's "most recent edit" on my profile
page does take me there.  The puzzling bit is that the two links are
the same!

__John


On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 11:00 AM, Pieren  wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2014 at 6:43 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer
>  wrote:
>> It's been some time now that the new web page is deployed, and despite the 
>> overall improvement, the regression for object browsing (tiny part of the 
>> screen is actually useful, map occupies most of the screen but is really not 
>> needed or could be much smaller at least, the current presentation style 
>> leads to scrolling requirement for any slightly more complex object) is 
>> still bothering the users. Also dates and times are not shown any more, 
>> instead there is approximated text like "almost 6 years ago", "12 months 
>> ago" etc.
>
> I don't know if I'm the only one have this issue : browsing from a
> changeset to one of the list objects (way or node) does not update the
> map view (firefox). So I have to zoom and move the map manually making
> this web object browsing hard to use. This was not the case in the
> past.
>
> +1 for the dates. Maybe something "nice" on the screen but not
> something required by people using it. I'm just asking myself if the
> devs really identified our needs with this object browser. The
> previous version was maybe not so "nice" but really useful. Now we
> have to move the mouse on each entry to see the date details
> (especially when all of the history show you the same text...). Is it
> an improvement ?
>
>> I understand that this is an open source project with volunteer 
>> contributions, but that part actually WAS already functional for years. 
>> Would it be possible to get the old browsing and history pages back, at 
>> least until someone comes up with an improvement?
>
> Maybe not a rollback but clearly, the current version is a downgrade
> compared to what we had before (at least for those people who are
> really taking a close look in data) and it's not evolving since then.
>
> Pieren
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Helping mappers feel comfortable about their contributions / quality control

[John Sturdy]

On Tue, Sep 20, 2011 at 3:47 PM, Mike N  wrote:
>
>  Even today, I would find it confusing to edit a group of objects which have
> source tags - it would be more intuitive to put the source in the changeset,

That makes sense to me --- surely most changes in a changeset will
have the same source.  Perhaps it could cascade / inherit, so that a
"source" attached to an individual object will override the "source"
of the changeset.

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Re: [OSM-talk] satellite Imagery missing

[John Sturdy]

On Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 6:33 AM, kenneth gonsalves
 wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-09-20 at 10:49 +0200, Erik Johansson wrote:
>> > 90% of my mapping is in such areas - gps, josm and repeated visits
>> to
>> > the area are needed. Camera and laser range finder are a plus.
>>
>> Do you actually use an laser range finder, isn't that a bit hard to
>> use? I would really like to hear how you use it, if not an extensive
>> exposé then a shor one. :-)
>
> it is dead easy - just point it at the target and click - it gives the
> distance.

So do you get the distance from two known points, and triangulate by
distance, or do you use distance and bearing from one known point, or
something else?

And I'd be worried about "being brought to the attention of the
authorities" for being seen pointing lasers at infrastructural things
such as electricity pylons --- do people tend to complain about having
their buildings etc visibly surveyed?  (I'm a newbie at all this, my
only experience of potential problems has been that I could see that
people were wondering what I was doing when I was walking around
writing down house numbers.)  Or does a hi-vis jacket make it all
alright ;-) ?

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[OSM-talk] Potlatch2 missing?

[John Sturdy]

The "edit" tab isn't working for me -- neither on my home machine, nor
if I ssh through to my work machine. (Both running iceweasel on
Debian, and I haven't reconfigured anything since it last worked for
me.) The slippy map and placename search seem to be OK.  Is anyone
else getting this?

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Re: [OSM-talk] Potlatch2 missing?

[John Sturdy]

On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 8:43 PM, SomeoneElse  wrote:
>
> What flash player are you using?  I seem to remember reading that FP 10 was
> needed now...
>
> ... ah - here we are:
>
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/potlatch-dev/2011-September/001220.html

That'll probably be it; it's about time I updated my browser anyway.

Could the site put up a message if the wrong version of flash is
running?  Or perhaps most people will have seen the announcement
anyway?

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Re: [OSM-talk] Fixme: A proposal

[John Sturdy]

On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Ed Avis  wrote:
>    FIXME=Do these roads join here?  Not clear on Bing imagery.  Survey needed.
>
> That will be a useful note for somebody planning to visit the area later so
> they can check this place if they wish.

How about starting a convention of using a tag "fixme:survey_needed"
with the details in the value string?

The only other subtype of fixme that I can think of immediately would
be "fixme:incomplete", for long / hard-to-spot linear features such as
powerlines (where I've seen someone else was using fixme=incomplete
and have tried to follow that convention myself).

I like the idea of extending the NONAME layer to report fixmes, and if
we used a convention like fixme:survey_needed we could have a distinct
map symbol for that.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Fixme: A proposal

[John Sturdy]

On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 7:48 AM, Jochen Topf  wrote:

> Only manually detected problems should be tagged with fixme. And it should be
> as easy as possible to mark those. Extra categorization would make it more
> difficult.

I don't think it makes it significantly more difficult, as fixmes
should have some kind of description of the problem.  Classifiying
them in the tags is just a more systematic way of doing that, which
makes them more amenable to higher-level tool use (e.g. someone could
write a program that identifies the areas with most density of
problems that need on-the-ground surveying... or even a route planner
that creates a route using highways tagged as approximate, for someone
to carry a GPS over, although the latter is probably stretching it a
bit).

> Why exactly do you want the extra categorization? What help would it
> be in your practical day to day work?

It's not just ease of tagging things with fixme that counts (although
it should be easy, and a plain "fixme" should always be acceptable);
ease of using (finding and fixing) the fixmes is also important.

> I can see one useful differentiation: Some problems are fixable only with 
> local
> knowledge (say a missing street name), some are fixable from afar (most
> topological problems). It might be helpful to not see problems needing local
> knowledge in areas where I don't have local knowledge.

I think it's also helpful for people to be able to plan problem-fixing
surveys efficiently.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Fixme: A proposal

[John Sturdy]

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 7:31 AM, Jochen Topf  wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 04, 2011 at 06:56:51AM +0100, Ed Loach wrote:
>> Nathan wrote:
>>
>> > Would it make more sense to categorize by the tag? For example:
>> > *FIXME:name=yes
>> > *FIXME:maxspeed=verify that the entire road is 55 mph
>>
>> We don't need a proposal for this. It is such common sense that
>> people do this already where it is appropriate (i.e. where more than
>> one FIXME is needed on a single OSM element) :
>> http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/search?q=FIXME#keys
>
> Its not common sense, its stupid. That way you make sure that your special
> fixme tag is not seen by tools that look for the normal fixme tag.

I think this reflects a problem with such tools, rather than with the idea.

> The value for the fixme tag is a free-text note.

Although there are many problems which don't fit neatly into classes
and are most simply addressed by a free-text note, that doesn't mean
that all problems are best addressed that way.

> You can just write:
> "fixme=Not sure whether the name is right, verify maxspeed". Even better:
> If you are not sure about the name and maxspeed, delete those tags. Then
> its obvious that something is missing there and somebody will add it in due
> course. No special tags needed.

This particular example is one where I'd agree that the free-text note
is suitable; but there are some specific characteristics of problems
that I think are worth marking in a systematic (tool-readable) way; in
particular:
  things that need to be verified on the ground
  stubs
  approximated routes that need GPS surveying e.g. joining two stubs
that you know connect (perhaps rare)

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Re: [OSM-talk] Moderating / Quality checking OSM contributions -- was: Re: OSmosa.net run now.., contribution model

[John Sturdy]

On Wed, Dec 7, 2011 at 7:41 AM, Kate Chapman  wrote:

> I agree with you when a large amount of new people start the quality
> can go down.  My theory is there needs to be a certain ratio of senior
> mappers to new people to keep the quality high.  However I think as
> people learn how to fix their mistakes the quality will go up again
> and they will in turn be able to help new people avoid those mistakes.

Might this imply that when introducing (possibly large) groups to
mapping, it would be good practice to introduce a smaller group of
them first (perhaps a week or two before the main group), so that not
all of the group are beginners at the same time, but have some more
people (other than the instructors) to help them a bit?

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Re: [OSM-talk] Things People Say

[John Sturdy]

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 7:48 PM, Michal Migurski  wrote:
> On Dec 28, 2011, at 2:21 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote:

> I should be more specific: this person goes to maps.google.com, they see a 
> big map with a search box, they enter an address and pan around to look at 
> their house or hometown. They go to openstreetmap.org, and they see a big map 
> with a search box so they assume OSM is filling the same need. It's clear 
> from your mails that you think OSM fills a lower-level, more data-oriented 
> need so we should *change our public presentation to fit what we're actually 
> trying to do.*

I think we need to keep the "big map with a search box" quite
prominently, partly because that is a major use, and partly because
that is what will attract newcomers' attention and give them a way to
evaluate the quality of our data (reading an XML file in an editor
isn't an easy way of seeing whether we cover a particular area well).
We should make the availability of the underlying data visible by
drawing attention to it *in addition to* the rendered maps, not
instead of them --- perhaps a textual link on the front page to the
downloads page.

For example, we could re-write "OpenStreetMap is a free editable map
of the whole world." (on the front page) to something like
"OpenStreetMap is an editable map of the whole world, freely available
both as displayable map and as underlying data."  We could add a
"Data" link to http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm to the
list that currently has:
Help Centre
Documentation
Copyright & License
Community Blogs
Foundation
Map Key
as it currently takes quite a bit of searching (from a newcomer's
knowledge) to find the Planet page on the wiki.

>> I'm a little tired of people like that and I hope that by drastically 
>> reducing the amount of map on our front page we will get rid of them.

The problem is, that that might get rid of a lot of other people, too.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Request for Romano-British features

[John Sturdy]

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 3:12 PM, Nathan Edgars II  wrote:

> For something like this, where there is very limited overlap between past
> and present, it makes sense to use a separate database. But in cases where
> most of the features still exist, such as railways or Roman roads, it's
> silly to duplicate the effort between databases (or somehow require everyone
> improving a way in one to upload it to the other and fix all intersections).

Agreed.

As long as the tagging used is such that things that no longer exist
are not normally rendered (and only show as thin outlines on standard
editors) I think including historic data shouldn't be a problem.
Compared with the amount of modern ("current") data, there's not
really that much of it, anyway, so its effect on the storage
requirements is going to be fairly small; and we still meet the
requirement of the most accurate map of what is current.

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Re: [OSM-talk] How I got here - was Geocaching.com moved to OSM (partly)

[John Sturdy]

On Thu, Jan 19, 2012 at 11:20 AM, Martin Koppenhoefer
 wrote:
> One problem I'd see around here is that this kind
> of data is not very stable (usually the dead remain only for 20 years
> in their graves, not for eternity, but this depends on the religion
> and local culture).

In ordinary UK churchyards and other cemeteries, the graves remain for
centuries, and there are some gravestones and tombs still in place
from several centuries ago.

> Keeping this data in a separate layer is suboptimal: e.g. you will
> have tombs in OSM and the graves in them in another layer, now if
> someone moves the tombs (to improve the position) they would move the
> dead out of their tombs. Very bad for your karma...

I remember, from working on a project to encourage local authorities
to use free / open source software, that there are specialized
software packages for cemetery management.  (These were a sticking
point / excuse for inertia in FLOSS adoption, as they ran only on
Windows.)  It might be worth looking for existing standards as to what
data is kept.  There might also be existing databases that would be
available for import (although I gather some of the OSM community
isn't keen on bulk imports, but these will at least be fairly local).
And perhaps local authorities who are starting to use OSM might be
interested in using it to store their cemetery data.

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Re: [OSM-talk] SOTM-EU 2012 ???

[John Sturdy]

I'd be interested in attending such a meeting; possibly in helping to
organize, depending on where it's hosted.

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Re: [OSM-talk] "proprietary" keys and values, machine readable vs. humans

[John Sturdy]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 11:22 AM, Martin Koppenhoefer
 wrote:

> the concept seems to be documented here:
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_Features/UUID

I don't see any mention of what should happen to UUIDs attached to
ways, when ways are split or merged.  Should this be coded explicitly
in editors?  In which case, it makes sense to push all such "external
linking" tags to use UUIDs, so that they are handled consistently when
the map is edited, without editors having to make special provision
for all known external linking tags.

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Re: [OSM-talk] "proprietary" keys and values, machine readable vs. humans

[John Sturdy]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 3:38 PM, Jochen Topf  wrote:

> Importing is difficult enough to do properly and I think updating that data is
> even more difficult to do.

I think it would make more sense for some kinds of data (particularly,
the more "volatile" ones) to have map servers that can gather data
from multiple data servers (i.e. OSM and whatever the imports would
otherwise have been from) and combine it to present it as a single
data stream (probably in an OSM-defined format).

Similar ideas have been in use in bioinformatics for some time now;
for example, see http://www.biodas.org/wiki/Main_Page (DAS is
Distributed Annotation Server).  Perhaps we could get ideas from them.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Contact And Remap Campaign

[John Sturdy]

I've started to remap an area that I don't know from first-hand
experience, as it's got a particularly high concentration of data that
was mapped by a decliner.  I'm remapping it from Bing (deleting old
data and re-tracing it) which means that I lose the road names.  I
don't think this is particularly satisfactory, I'm just doing it so
there won't be a gap from the switchover date.

I've realized from doing this (and from guessing I won't be the only
remapper working this way) that it might be worth re-instating the
"noname" option to the slippy map, for a period around the changeover
date (perhaps from around now, until remapping has largely been done).

Any thoughts on this?

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Re: [OSM-talk] Contact And Remap Campaign

[John Sturdy]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Ed Loach  wrote:

> It looks like you've picked Exeter - a place I was also considering
> looking at when chance permits.

Yes, I've started on Exeter.

Don't let my having started on it put you or others off doing
likewise!  I picked an arbitrary starting point and am working out
from there (if you want to minimize chance collisions of remapping).

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Re: [OSM-talk] Contact And Remap Campaign

[John Sturdy]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Ed Loach  wrote:

> It looks like you've picked Exeter - a place I was also considering
> looking at when chance permits.

The main decliner in the Exeter area has now accepted, so much less
need now.  I'll try to get my changes in that area reverted.

__John

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Re: [OSM-talk] Finding untagged dead-ends

[John Sturdy]

Something I'd like to have a way of highlighting, as I've been doing
quite a bit of electricity distribution mapping, is power lines /
minor_lines that end in something other than a transformer or pole.
(In fact, any non-power tags on a power line are probably suspect, but
one ending in an untagged node is likely to mean that it needs
completion.)

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Re: [OSM-talk] [Talk-us] Finding untagged dead-ends

[John Sturdy]

On Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 5:27 PM, Martijn van Exel  wrote:

> I don't really see the value of a generic noexit=yes tag - it can and
> should be inferred from the network. But finding dead ends can be
> valuable for tagging the countless turning circles / cul-de-sacs that
> exist in post-war subdivisions in the US - like John mentioned.

After a bit more thought, I'm not even sure of the definition of a
dead end --- is a road that leads into a closed tree (or other graph)
of roads and dead end?  It does lead to other roads, but you can't get
out onto the wider road network without coming back along the same one
again.  For example, is
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/4678941 a dead end?

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Re: [OSM-talk] Keeping tags generic (was: Wind turbines no longer rendered on mapnik layer)

[John Sturdy]

On Thu, Feb 16, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Graham Jones  wrote:

>  Why create a key generator:power_source rather than just use
> power_source.  power_source is much more generic so you could re-cycle it
> for things like district heating, but generator:power_source is only ever
> going to be used for generating stations, and needs a new column in the
> database. .   I think I just prefer more generic, re-usable keys
> rather than trying to invent a new one for each situation

Seconded heartily!

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Re: [OSM-talk] Map Co-ordinates for towns, etc in UK

[John Sturdy]

The logical centre and the geometrical centre aren't necessarily
anywhere near each other --- for example, what is generally thought of
as the "city centre" of Cambridge UK is some way west of the crossing
point between the lines between the northmost and southmost, and
westmost and eastmost, points of the outline of the city.

(I tried drawing those lines a few years ago, they crossed in Mill
Road Cemetery, which makes it the "dead centre" of the city ;-) )

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Re: [OSM-talk] Mapnik slower than usual?

[John Sturdy]

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 5:05 PM, Nathan Edgars II  wrote:
> Is it just me, or are there more timeout magnifying glasses than usual?

I've been getting that too.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Associated Press article: "Crowds create Wikipedia-style maps of the world"

[John Sturdy]

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 8:54 AM, Spod OSM  wrote:
> http://www.japantoday.com/category/lifestyle/view/crowds-create-wikipedia-style-maps-of-the-world?utm_campaign=jt_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_source=jt_newsletter_2012-03-22_AM

Good -- they even mention it's data rather than just a map!

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