Re: [OSM-talk] OSRM Update

[Seke Rob]

As I was testing routing around an new complex roundabout 2 weeks ago and
found Valhalla is the quickest with a day or so delay, GraphHopper came
second after a good week, OSRM had me waiting but eventually did.The cycle
is not clear.

On Fri, Aug 25, 2023 at 6:54 AM Phil Wyatt  wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
>
>
> Does anyone know the frequency of updates for OSRM? It doesn’t look to
> have been updated in a while? If there is an issue is there a dashboard
> somewhere that tells of its status?
>
>
>
> >> OSRM hasn't updated since 2023-07-09T04:00:00Z
> http://map.project-osrm.org/timestamps/
>
>
>
> Cheers - Phil
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[OSM-talk] area:highway=pedestrian signalled in Inspector as an object without tag features

[Seke Rob]

This tag is well described in a OSM wiki page

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:area:highway%3Dpedestrian

The OSM Inspector tagging view reports an object labelled like this as 
"Name/description without important tags". The object in question is a 
pedestrian area with a name.
Usage per tag info is around 7.6K
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/area%3Ahighway=pedestrian#overview

Opposed the highway=pedestrian + area=yes raises no flags

A tag like area:highway=traffic_island is neither considered a problem and has 
as of now about 15.9K use
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/area%3Ahighway=pedestrian#overview

JOSM nor from what I recollect ID Editor are flagging area:highway=pedestrian 
as a problem. JOSM in fact colours the closed way with the correct style albeit 
not as an area. Does do so when adding the redundant area=yes tag which it does 
not flag as redundant.

Is this a false positive needing adding to the valid list?

Rob (SekeRob in OSM world)
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[OSM-talk] Adoption of OSM geometry as state mapping base

[rob potter]

Hi,

I am representing the state transport department Department of Transport
and Planning (Victoria, Australia) - OpenStreetMap Wiki
<https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Department_of_Transport_and_Planning_(Victoria,_Australia)>
and
we are looking to consume the OSM road & rail networks for our operations.

*Lawyers have raised a concern about these conditions, as the road data use
is supplied to our emergency services fire and ambulance.  We have not
started using the information but we are implementing a system of
validation and change detection, then produce an authoritative version for
other agency consumption.*
*Unlawful and other unauthorized uses include a clause "Operate dangerous
businesses such as emergency services or air traffic control, where the use
or failure of the Services could lead to death, personal injury or
significant property damage;" and "Store data available through the
Services in order to evade these Terms (including aiding anyone else in
doing so); or"*

Please any advice would be greatly appreciated, ultimately we will enhance
the overall content of OSM in the Victoria, but really do not want to cause
problems later.

Thanks,

Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Automated Populate/Update Problem

[rob potter]

Thanks for your reply.

I have read the guidelines.

I'm in Victoria, Australia

Rob

On Wed, 28 Sept 2022, 18:07 Eugene Alvin Villar,  wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I work for the state transport department
>>
>
> Sorry if I missed this somewhere, but which state and which country?
> Depending on the answer, there might be a local community that can help and
> provide guidance as well with the conflation/import process.
>
> Thanks,
> Eugene
>
>
> On Wed, Sep 28, 2022 at 3:24 PM rob potter  wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I work for the state transport department and we are looking to become an
>> active member of the community and as a first dataset we have focused on is
>> our public transport stops, bus and tram initially and then stations.
>>
>> I would like your advice on how to achieve the outcome.
>>
>> There are a number of considerations:
>>
>>
>>- Currently in the state there are ~9,100 highway:bus_stop
>>   - our GTFS - stops.txt has ~27,000 stops
>>   - the current accuracy of highway:bus_stop needs review.
>>   - stops.txt location appears to be of a much better quality
>>
>> My initial thought was extract current, match data location, enrich what
>> stops.txt has then create all new and remove existing as final step.
>>
>> I would guess there are people screaming NO!! if so, please advise of
>> a viable way of making such a significant
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Rob
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[OSM-talk] Automated Populate/Update Problem

[rob potter]

Hi,

I work for the state transport department and we are looking to become an
active member of the community and as a first dataset we have focused on is
our public transport stops, bus and tram initially and then stations.

I would like your advice on how to achieve the outcome.

There are a number of considerations:


   - Currently in the state there are ~9,100 highway:bus_stop
  - our GTFS - stops.txt has ~27,000 stops
  - the current accuracy of highway:bus_stop needs review.
  - stops.txt location appears to be of a much better quality

My initial thought was extract current, match data location, enrich what
stops.txt has then create all new and remove existing as final step.

I would guess there are people screaming NO!! if so, please advise of a
viable way of making such a significant

Regards,

Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] How INSPIRE data are sold in your countries

[Rob Nickerson]

A quick look at the EU code tells us:

"Member States should therefore make available, as a minimum and free of
charge, the services *for discovering and*, subject to certain specific
conditions, *viewing* spatial data sets."

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=OJ:L:2007:108:TOC

So you can look but not necessarily use under licence. That seems to depend
on what each country decides to do. The missed a trick but this was over 10
years ago now when views were different.

Best,

*Rob*

On 3 May 2018 at 00:21, Martijn van Exel  wrote:

> INSPIRE sets the framework for geospatial (meta)data in the EU and
> requires member states to commit to having certain types of data available
> in a defined exchange format. When I was involved in this more closely,
> there was not the assumption that the data would be free (as in beer), and
> as far as I know the conditions of availability to citizens were not
> enshrined in the INSPIRE directive.
>
> NL makes a lot of spatial data under INSPIRE freely available, see
> https://www.pdok.nl/en
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On May 2, 2018, at 17:10, Rob Nickerson  wrote:
>
> INSPIRE is an EU requirement. As far as I know the UK makes all their
> INSPIRE data open for free, although I am not sure if they had to under the
> EU rules of if they just decided to. See:
>
> https://data.gov.uk/location/inspire
>
>
> *Rob*
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] How INSPIRE data are sold in your countries

[Rob Nickerson]

INSPIRE is an EU requirement. As far as I know the UK makes all their
INSPIRE data open for free, although I am not sure if they had to under the
EU rules of if they just decided to. See:

https://data.gov.uk/location/inspire


*Rob*
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[OSM-talk] Is Open Historical Map still functioning?

[Rob H Warren]

Dave,

http://www.openhistoricalmap.org/ died sometime this morning of an overfull tmp 
directory. It is back up now. The specific cause is being looked at here:

https://github.com/OpenHistoricalMap/OpenHistoricalMap/issues/17

Should anything go wrong, complaining to 
https://github.com/OpenHistoricalMap/OpenHistoricalMap/issues will get quick 
attention.

With deep apologies,
R

> On Jun 12, 2017, at 7:08 AM, talk-requ...@openstreetmap.org wrote:
> 
> 
> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 12 Jun 2017 12:08:23 +0100
> From: Dave F 
> To: OSM Talk 
> Subject: [OSM-talk] Is Open Historical Map still functioning?
> Message-ID: <593e7627.8060...@btinternet.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
> 
> Hi
> http://www.openhistoricalmap.org/ is down. Temporarily or is the project 
> dead?
> 
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Historical_Map
> 
> DaveF
> 
> 


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[OSM-talk] new Wikidata+OSM data in one RDF database

[Rob H Warren]

Yuri,

There is a plan afoot to do something similar with the geometries from 
www.openhistoricalmap.org; let's keep in touch, I would really like to enable 
linkages across datasets.

Keep up the good work! -rhw


> On May 13, 2017, at 8:00 AM, talk-requ...@openstreetmap.org wrote:
> 
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 16:03:52 +
> From: Yuri Astrakhan 
> To: OpenStreetMap talk mailing list 
> Subject: [OSM-talk] new Wikidata+OSM data in one RDF database
> Message-ID:
>   
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
> 
> TLDR: A SPARQL (rdf) database with both OSM and Wikidata data is up for
> testing.  Allows massive cross-referenced queries between two datasets. The
> service is a test, and needs a permanent home to stay alive.
> 
> Overpass Turbo is awesome, but sadly it does not have data from Wikidata,
> nor does it support some SQL-like conditions. I have setup a temporary RDF
> database that has both OSM & Wikidata. You can use SPARQL queries to find:
> 
> * All OSM objects with wikidata tag that references a Wikipedia
> disambiguation page. Get the name of the page in first available language
> ru, fr, de, en.http://tinyurl.com/mzlfb26
> 
> * OSM relations with wikidata tag pointing to a person (also tries multiple
> language fallbacks).  http://tinyurl.com/m6fh3wx
> 
> * OSM relations with duplicate Wikidata IDs http://tinyurl.com/mvhhogx
> 
> 
> == OSM data structure ==
> osmnode, osmway, osmrel - OSM object prefix, e.g.  osmnode:1234
> osmt - tag, e.g.  osmt:name:en  (only has tags with latin chars, -, _, :,
> digits
> osmm - meta data about the object -- type, isClosed, version.
> 
> I try to preserve OSM data without much changes. Every tag's value is
> stored as a string, except for wikidata and wikipedia tags which are
> converted to a URL, the same format as stored in Wikidata.
> 
> osmway:29453885
>  osmt:name "Samina";
>  osmt:waterway "river";
>  osmt:wikidata wd:Q156065;
>  osmt:wikipedia ;
>  osmm:type "w";    could be "r", "w", and "n"
>  osmm:isClosed false;     this meta property is only for OSM ways
>  osmm:version 24.
> 
> Wikidata data structure is identical to https://query.wikidata.org (see
> help)
> 
> 
> == Current limitations ==
> * Only includes OSM objects with either "wikidata" or "wikipedia" tags
> * The OSM data only contains tags with only Latin letters, digits and
> symbols - : _
> * OSM geometry info is not imported, e.g. no center point or bounding box,
> except for osmm:isClosed (true/false) property for ways.
> * Does not include OSM object inheritance data - e.g. cannot query for
> "find a node that is part of a way which is part of a relation that has
> wikidata tag that ..."
> * Wikidata is updated every second, but OSM does not yet update at all,
> imported from a full db dump as of a few days ago.


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[OSM-talk] SotM: Help wanted (comms & program)

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

The State of the Map working group would like some help. We are
specifically looking for the following:

* A communication lead - someone to manage our outreach, both on social
media and on email (mailing lists and newsletter) and OSM blog.
* Program selection committee - we constantly review the make-up of our
program selection committee to ensure that we cover a wide range of
backgrounds. Geographically we could do with more support from outside
Europe & the USA. In terms of topics we would like more support from those
with a technical background (e.g. software developers).

Please contact us on: team AT stateofthemap DOT org.

Best regards,
*Rob*
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[OSM-talk] SotmM 2017 (Japan): Call for scholars and session proposals

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

# Please share with anyone interested #

We would like to invite you to State of the Map 2017 being hosted by Japan.

You can propose a session (talk) before April:
https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2017/02/16/propose-your-session-to-state-of-the-map-2017/

Need some financial support in order to attend? Scholarships open until
22nd March 2017:
https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2017/02/22/apply-for-a-scholarship-to-state-of-the-map-2017/

Can I ask that if you intend to submit an application to either of these,
can you please do so as soon as possible. The State of the Map working
group will have a lot to read so we would like to make a start before the
application closes.

As always, we look forward to seeing some familiar and new faces there.

Best regards,
*Rob*
On behalf of the State of the Map working group
http://2017.stateofthemap.org/
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Re: [OSM-talk] SOTM EU

[Rob Nickerson]

>Well - in my eyes transparency is not something optional that can be
>added when time permits in case of a working group of the OSMF.
>
>Also keep in mind that you are probably depriving yourselves from a lot of
valuable support this way.

I understand the concern however I feel a balance has to be struck. We are
aiming to provide a "SotM cookbook" but this is stalled since September due
to lack of resource.

Having ran 2013 in the open and published 2015 meeting minutes, my view is
that you gain valuable support by good project management, breaking work
down in to small chunks and providing short summaries of tasks. People are
generally too busy to read reams and reams of meeting notes.  I expect you
often come across this in your day job ("why am I being asked this/why has
someone done that - clearly they didn't read the notes"!!).

I don't get project management right all the time but I'm trying to
improve. Hopefully the plans for 2017 demonstrate an improvement.

If there is a specific thing that you are missing then we could try to
prioritise that. Just ask :-)


*Rob*
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Re: [OSM-talk] SOTM EU

[Rob Nickerson]

> Is this process openly documented somewhere?
> Last Sotm WG minutes on
http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes#StateoftheMap_Organizing_Committee
seem to be from 2015.

The process of bidding is described at
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_of_the_Map_2017/Call_for_venues

The SotM working group switched to using GitHub as a way of tracking our
work (we use it for the Issues/Ticket system rather than code) and this is
available to all SotM WG members and all OSMF Board members. We have it set
to private due to the fact that it includes financial information and
personal information (contact details, and info required for the
scholarship programme). Making this available would likely breach data
protection and would expose the contracts/finances of our suppliers.

Having said that, we remain open to people joining the Working Group, am
happy to share info with those organising other OSM events (e.g. regional
SotMs) and are currently investigating how to facilitate knowledge share
across the Local Chapters and Regional Events.

Becoming more transparent would require extra admin work, and given that
our working group members already commit a huge amount of volunteer hours
to the planning of SotM, this is something that we would need help with.

I'm sorry this is not the answer you were hoping for.

Regards,
*Rob*
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[OSM-talk] SotM 2017 planning

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

As promised here is some further info on State of the Map 2017 in Japan.
The easiest way to provide this is to share our "event plan" and our
"timeline of work". You will note that we are a few weeks behind on the
timeline - something we are hoping to recover shortly. As always additional
volunteer support is welcome.

The event plan:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vtLf96aoDQo4FEFgaKyBFS_wB7nkDtcrs6amJeUdTLs/edit?usp=sharing

The timeline of work:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AUiO20V3CAUODwSX9TzImPJ9i774OsONUTlhn8m8-Uo/edit#gid=0

Please note that this is our aim and does not constitute a guarantee to
you. Once we have more certainty we will post to blog.openstreetmap.org.

Should you have any questions please direct them (or at least cc them) to
t...@stateofthemap.org.

Best regards,
*Rob*
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[OSM-talk] SotM 2018 - bids in March

[Rob Nickerson]

All,

As per the SotM 2017 timeline, you will note that we will be seeking bids
for SotM 2018 in March 2017.

This is likely to follow a similar process to last year [1]. Should you be
interested in bidding, we recommend that you contact t...@stateofthemap.org
early (i.e. from now).

Regards,
*Rob*

[1]
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_of_the_Map_2017/Call_for_venues
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Re: [OSM-talk] SOTM EU

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

As noted it's not possible to give a negative response as SotM EU is much
more fluid than the OSMF SotM (there is not a designated group of people to
ask - it just happens when their is appetite).

I can however give the response from the OSMF SotM Working Group as such:

- We received 2 bids this year; one from Japan the other from Italy.
- We worked with both teams to fully explore the options; at times this
included an ambitious programme of two events in one year (comprising a
traditional SotM in Japan and an "unconference" style event in Italy.
- Ultimately this fell through and as such there is no planned European
event from the OSMF SotM Working group.
- As always we are grateful for the bids to host State of the Map (OSMF)
and we are happy to help interested groups prepare future bids.

I hope this clarifies things a bit. I will follow up with a separate emails
on the Japan event and the process for 2018.

Best regards,

*Rob*
p.s. The SotM Working Group is available on t...@stateofthemap.org should
similar questions arise. We do not actively monitor this "talk" mailing
list.
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Re: [OSM-talk] Wikipedia/Wikidata admins cleanup

[Rob Nickerson]

Frederik,

Please don't revert the ones near me. We spent considerable time with a
contributor (not Yuri but someone else) to ensure that my local community
were happy with the proposed edit before it was completed.

All,

May I remind, that whilst we have no mechanism to *properly* vote on the
adoption of new tags, we also have no mechanism to *properly* vote on
whether a mechanical edit can go ahead or not, including mass reverts. With
so few OSMers on this list, the discussion here can miss the true
consensus. That works both ways (approving and rejecting an edit).

A few people on this list does not equate to the voice of the OSM community!

Best,
*Rob*
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Re: [OSM-talk] Maps.me editing

[Rob Nickerson]

On 10 December 2016 at 21:01, Martin Koppenhoefer 
wrote:

>
> it seems sufficiently scalable for deleting stuff like settlements.
> Deletions are hard to spot, 
>

Maybe, but if deletions are hard to spot then shouldn't we be making the
change tracker tools better rather than restricting this type of edit?

Rob
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[OSM-talk] Maps.me editing

[Rob Nickerson]

> With the complaints people have about Maps.me, just imagine how many more 
> there would be if places could be deleted from within the app.


Alternatively, imagine how great it would be if we had many more
people editing OSM, via mobile apps whilst stood at the location they
are mapping! Surely that's the true spirit of the wiki style, on the
ground surveys many wish for. :-)

Rob

P.s. don't forget, no editing software is perfect (desktop or mobile).
The best aim is to help improve the user experience to reduce the
error rate. The alternative is we restrict editing to just those with
"experience" and everyone else can only submit Notes. This doesn't
seem scalable to me.
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[OSM-talk] OpenFest, Bulgaria

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

The following invitation was sent to me to forward on. Looks like a good
event for the technical people amongst us. Call for talks ran until 30th
September, but I'm hopeful we can squeeze a slot in (have asked). The
submission system is still online so hurry if you're interested!

Can somebody please forward this to the local mailing list/community.



*Rob*
--- Begin forwarded message:

We do an event in Bulgaria in November, OpenFest
(http://www.openfest.org/2016/en/). It's oriented towards a somewhat
technical crowd, but caters to all kind of people that work with and
benefit from open source, open technologies, etc.. I think it'll be
interesting if someone from OSM will be willing to come talk about the
project or even do a workshop related to openstreetmap.

The CfP system is at https://cfp.openfest.org/?locale=en
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[OSM-talk] SotM live streams

[Rob Nickerson]

Live streams for SotM are up online. Follow along, tweet and ask questions:
http://2016.stateofthemap.org/

On the program page, click a link to a talk where you can ask
questions and discuss the talk. We will try to keep an eye on these
and ask your questions here at SotM!

-- 
*Rob*

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[OSM-talk] Send questions and discuss State of the Map talks

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all.

OSM is a big community and unfortunately not everyone is able to travel to
State of the Map. To make it easier to feel part of the action we will have
live video and, starting now, you can discuss individual talks. Ask
questions or provide comment direct on the talks page.

Example page: http://2016.stateofthemap.org/2016/openstreetmap-analytics/

We're also on twitter @sotm

We are looking forward to welcoming 400 people in Brussels and the whole
OSM community online :-)

*Rob*
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Re: [OSM-talk] SotM 2016: Brussels

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi,

Attending State of the Map 2016? It's not all about the talks - some of the
best ideas come from the chance meeting / crazy ideas-lab sessions. You can
share your ideas for informal meetings (Birds of a Feather sessions) online
so that you can start to discuss and gather interest:

https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2016/09/06/gather-your-birds-of-a-feather-at-state-of-the-map/

See you in Belgium!

Best,

*Rob*

On 4 September 2016 at 23:42, Rob Nickerson 
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> It is just over 2 weeks until we meet in Brussels for State of the Map
> 2016. This will be our (OSMF's) largest event to date surpassing that of
> Birmingham in 2013.
>
> If you have not done so already please book your tickets:
> https://join.osmfoundation.org/state-of-the-map-2016/
>
> By booking your tickets early you assist us in purchasing the correct
> volume of t-shirts, guidebooks and food.
>
> See you in Belgium!
>
> Regards,
> *Rob*
>
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[OSM-talk] SotM 2016: Brussels

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

It is just over 2 weeks until we meet in Brussels for State of the Map
2016. This will be our (OSMF's) largest event to date surpassing that of
Birmingham in 2013.

If you have not done so already please book your tickets:
https://join.osmfoundation.org/state-of-the-map-2016/

By booking your tickets early you assist us in purchasing the correct
volume of t-shirts, guidebooks and food.

See you in Belgium!

Regards,
*Rob*
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Re: [OSM-talk] OpenDroneMap and Portable OSM (POSM)

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi Dan,

Is the aim that you can send a drone up to collect images and have them
automatically processed, stitched together and added to POSM (for later
upload online)? I can see that being useful for communities the world over.
We (my local team) have talked about testing drones but we aren't a
particularly technical group so would struggle with the image processing.
If POSM did it all for us then that would be amazing!

Looking forward to hearing more about POSM at State of the Map Brussels.

*Rob*
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[OSM-talk] Compare GPX to OSM ways

[Rob Nickerson]

That's neat. Thinking ahead it would be great if that analysis could be run
when capturing GPS tracks (via a Android/iOS app) or when the GPS track is
uploaded to OSM. You'd then get a notification: "Hey, you went somewhere
new: please map it!"

*Rob*
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[OSM-talk] Closing soon! State of the Map early bird tickets and our Brussels hotel deal

[Rob Nickerson]

In case you're not subscribed to our newsletter or the osm blog:

Thanks to the support of our amazing sponsors

we have kept the Early Bird tickets for State of the Map available for as
long as possible. With less than 8 weeks to go until we gather in Brussels
the Early Bird offer will soon come to an end.

You have *until 7th August* to grab your price savvy tickets

now before normal prices kick in.

Don’t forget your accommodation though! The number of rooms available in our
hotel deal

drops by half when Early Bird closes so book your room before it’s too late.


Sincerely,
State of the Map Team
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[OSM-talk] State of the Map deadlines this Saturday

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

Don't forget to:

* Submit your session proposal (talk and/or workshop)
* Apply for scholarship if needed

By *this Saturday*!

Links:
https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2016/04/19/propose-your-session-to-state-of-the-map-2016/

https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2016/04/25/we-want-you-at-state-of-the-map-apply-for-a-scholarship/


*Rob*
p.s. We are delighted that HOT Summit will be the day before SotM. If you
want to attend both please note they are separate sign-ups.
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[OSM-talk] Cheap Mapillary setup

[Rob Nickerson]

Based on the new v2 Raspberry Pi Zero:

https://twitter.com/mappamercia/status/732334812703379456

Would love to see one of these up and running. Would be even better if they
were available by State of the Map 2016!

*Rob*
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[OSM-talk] Workshops at State of the Map 2016

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

We want State of the Map 2016 to be remembered as the most interactive SotM
yet. But we cannot do it without your help. Whilst we'll be running around
behind the scenes keeping things on track we need you to offer to host
workshops / interactive sessions. I know there are a bunch of really clever
folk in the OpenStreetMap community so I have absolutely no doubt that you
will be able to come up with some amazing ideas :-D

Submit your workshop ideas now:
https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2016/04/19/propose-your-session-to-state-of-the-map-2016/

Want to chat about your ideas? Contact the SotM working group at
t...@stateofthemap.org

Best regards,
*Rob*
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Re: [OSM-talk] SotM 2016 Accomodation

[Rob Nickerson]

That price is for weekend only. If guests also want to stay Thursday
evening then the price you found is higher than 79.

Also beware any city taxes and breakfast - 79+9.50+4.50=93!! Thus we are
equal cheapest or cheaper depending on which days you decide to stay.

I also checked a bunch of UK booking sites and found nothing cheaper once
breakfast and taxes had been added.

The prices we have are fixed whereas booking sites trend up as availability
falls.

Rob

On Tue, 1 Mar 2016 07:04 Jochen Topf,  wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 29, 2016 at 03:00:04PM +0000, Rob Nickerson wrote:
> > The SotM accommodation deal is a really good one but we do have a limited
> > number of rooms so I encourage you to book up early. As noted the ticket
> > sale will follow shortly and will be a similar price to Birmingham 2013.
> >
> > Details at:
> > http://2016.stateofthemap.org/venue/
>
> There is only a single hotel listed when I click through there, the "Motel
> One".
> Price for a single room is 93 EUR. hrs.de offers the same hotel for 79
> EUR.
> Even if you add the extra breakfast (9.50) that's still cheaper.
>
> Jochen
> --
> Jochen Topf  joc...@remote.org  http://www.jochentopf.com/
> +49-351-31778688
>
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[OSM-talk] SotM 2016 Accomodation

[Rob Nickerson]

Thanks Christine,

The SotM accommodation deal is a really good one but we do have a limited
number of rooms so I encourage you to book up early. As noted the ticket
sale will follow shortly and will be a similar price to Birmingham 2013.

Details at:
http://2016.stateofthemap.org/venue/

Community accommodation ideas:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_2016/Community_info

We work hard to keep the cost as low as possible and the main way we do
this is through sponsorship. If you or someone else is interested in
sponsoring SotM 2016 please contact the team on spons...@stateofthemap.org

Hope to see you in Brussels
*Rob*

p.s. To stick with a commitment we made last year the call for venues for
SotM 2017 opens 1st March (tomorrow). It's super early but this give us
loads of time and the best chance of available venue space :-)
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[OSM-talk] More accurate GPS...?

[Rob Nickerson]

Interesting read if you're in to the tech behind how GPS works:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/16021507.htm

*Rob*
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Re: [OSM-talk] Proposal to close newbies@ list

[Rob Nickerson]

On 11 January 2016 at 19:22, Martin Koppenhoefer 
wrote:

>
> > Am 11.01.2016 um 19:20 schrieb Rob Nickerson  >:
> >
> > Would be happy to see a few other low use mailing lists closed.
>
>
> why?
>

Because they are not benefiting the community but they are a time hog for
anyone who wants to interact with the community. For example, I am
currently helping to set up a UK group. To get started we needed to contact
as many people as possible to raise awareness of this aim. A fragmented set
of communication options makes this harder.

My analogy with retail products: Competition is good, but sometimes I feel
manufactures flood the market so much that it is impossible for the end
user to make an informed decision (not helped by retailers often not
providing good explanations).

It would be nice to see a review of our communication channels (what works,
what doesn't) but the CWG isn't resourced to do that right now.

Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Proposal to close newbies@ list

[Rob Nickerson]

I agree with this proposal. Newbies@ was for non-technical first time users
and other methods are probably more appropriate today. Would be happy to
see a few other low use mailing lists closed.

*Rob*
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[OSM-talk] VisualEditor on the OSM wiki

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi,

Not sure when this happened (some time recently) but I wanted to thank our
wiki system admins for adding the VisaulEditor extension to the OSM wiki.
For those that don't know the extension is a rich text editor for wiki's
and came about following concern over declining new contributors to the
wikimedia projects. It has taken many years to develop this extension but
it is great to see it now being used on the OpenStreetMap wiki (as well as
the WikiMedia sites).

If you have never edited a wiki page before now is the time to try it out.
No longer do you have to remember the wiki syntax to make an edit :-)

*Rob*
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[OSM-talk] Community Conference

[Rob Nickerson]

Fantastic comments so far - it's super to hear people thinking about what
is best as getting SotM and the OSM community right will benefit us all :-D

>Michael wrote:
>Maybe there are too much company employees member of the program committee?

Great concern :-) Just to let you know, the 3 groups concept that I
discussed in my previous email applies equally to the SotM working group
members. We've shared which group we fall in to and will pay attention to
this during the selection process. The stressful bit for me is that
everybody always leaves it to the last minute before submitting their talk
ideas!! :-P

>Frederik wrote:
>I think there's a dangerous metric in the minds of many people, where a
>conference is better if it has a niftier web page, a more exclusive
>conference centre, or attracts more visitors or more sponsorship money.

Thanks Fred. This picks up on a few emails we've shared between ourselves
over the last few months. So that you're updated with the latest: for SotM
2016 we have selected a university as it provides great value for money
compared to the large number of flashy business venues in Brussels. The
working group understands that the purpose of sponsorship is there to cover
as much of the costs as possible so that we can get the ticket price as low
as possible. This is always difficult to get 100% right because ticket
sales and sponsorship is often skewed with most of it coming in during the
last few weeks. The planning for SotM starts months in advance (I would
love to be announcing 18 months in advance so that the regional SotMs have
time to plan without having to worry about date clashes). Any surplus will
go back in to the OSMF.

I'm glad you spotted our nifty website. We have some highly skilled
designers volunteering their time and experience this year - however if
there are members reading this who feel a nifty website puts them off
please speak up. We aim to maintain a community feel during the conference
so if you feel this is not reflected in the website then it would be good
to know this.

>Richard
>But I would really caution against contrasting "corporate" and "community".

+1 It's all about the getting the balance right.

Keep the comments coming folks - this is great stuff :-)

Best,
*Rob*
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Re: [OSM-talk] Community Conference

[Rob Nickerson]

> Steve wrote:
>I’ve heard from a few people thinking of organizing an OpenStreetMap
conference focused on the community, very different from what SOTM has
become.
>
>I’m curious what people here think of the idea?
>

Hi Steve,

It's good to hear from you again and thank you for raising the profile of
State of the Map. For those who have not yet seen we (I currently lead the
SotM group) have just announced the location and date for SotM 2016. Check
out our blog post and the new website where you can sign up for our
newsletter:

https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2015/12/02/here-comes-sotm-2016/
http://2016.stateofthemap.org/

The State of the Map working group has taken on a lot of new members in the
last 12 months (no longer are we reliant on just one or two people). I am
delighted to be able to lead a team that includes members of previous SotM,
SotM EU and SotM US groups. We can also pull on the expertise of SotM LatAm
members when required and have members who have included other events such
as SotM Scotland (I single this one out as it's format is very different
from other SotMs). We are also building better ties with HOT Summit.

As the SotM group is essentially a re-boot (we all know that no SotM
occurred/is planned in 2015), my primary focus for this year is to ensure
that the group is built back up and that the 2016 conference goes ahead
without any hiccups. All looks good so far. With the foundations in place
the group is able to start thinking more strategically about "what is
SotM". In the blog post and the upcoming sponsorship pack, you will see
reference to our aim of bringing (1) data contributors, (2) data users and
(3) core/tool-chain software developers together. This is a first look a
the aim of State of the Map and the people it serves. We recognise that at
a very high level the members of the OpenStreetMap community will belong to
one (or more) of these 3 groups (or in the case of academia, have an
interest in studying one or more of these groups). Our aim is therefore to
be able to bring these groups together in an environment that enables them
to celebrate the successes of OpenStreetMap, share ideas and plan for the
future. Working together we benefit each other and ultimately the
OpenStreetMap project.

As with all things the challenge is getting the balance between the groups
and the size of the conference right. Some will prefer small gatherings,
whilst others enjoy the larger events. You will have noticed in the OSM US
elections discussions about whether bigger (of which group??) and better is
working for the community and we are very much listening to the views of
others as they are shared.

Can I encourage you to share your views too. If you explain your thinking
in the form of "The conference should be more focused on the community as
this will lead to ..." this will greatly help and I can see what can be
done to help. Feel free to encourage the others who you have been speaking
to, to share their views on this too.

Best wishes,


*Rob*
P.s There is already a placeholder for a call for venues for 2017 on the
OSM wiki and I have scheduled some time in our plan to look again at the
function of SotM. We want this to work for the community and for
OpenStreetMap so please do share your views with us either via this mailing
list, via t...@stateofthemap.org, or directly to myself on this email
address.
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Re: [OSM-talk] State of the Map 2016 Brussels: When? (Was: Help us make a logo! and win tickets to State of the Map 2016!)

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for your concern. The SotM working group is in good shape and we are
currently dotting the last few i's and crossing the last few t's before we
announce the date of SotM 2016 in Brussels. Please accept my apology for
the delay. We have some folk who buy travel tickets/accommodation shortly
after the announcement so we need to ensure that everything is finalised
before announcing. We are looking at September so still plenty of time to
organise a great conference.

Best
Rob
- SotM-WG lead
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Re: [OSM-talk] Help us make a logo! (and win tickets to State of the Map 2016!)

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

Don't miss out on your chance to win tickets to State of the Map 2016! All
you need to do is have a go at designing a logo for the competition.
Deadline is 23:59 UTC (before midnight) on Saturday 15th August 2015

>  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_2016/Logo_brief
>
Good luck :-)
Rob
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[OSM-talk] Help us make a logo! (and win tickets to State of the Map 2016!)

[Rob Nickerson]

The State of the Map working group is pleased* to announce a call for logo
designs. We need your help to build a strong recognisable logo for State of
the Map 2016 (SotM) conference taking place in Brussels, Belgium. The
conference is the OpenStreetMap Foundation’s annual gathering of the OSM
community, interested parties and others.

We’ve put together a Design Brief which outlines what we’re looking for in
a logo. Entrants can be an individual or team of people, even a design
company.
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_2016/Logo_brief

The deadline for entries is 23:59 UTC (before midnight) on Saturday 15th
August 2015 and we can’t wait to see your all your wonderful entries!

Good luck!

Rob,
On behalf of the SotM WG

* In fact we're delighted - this has been something we've done for previous
SotM's and it is always amazing to see your logo ideas :-D
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Re: [OSM-talk] Can wikidata links help fight name inflation?

[Rob Nickerson]

> Andy wrote:
>For example, when processing OSM data for my own use I'll try and drop
unsigned names and refs from roads (there's no point in saying "turn left
on Foo Street" if "Foo Street" does not appear on the sign).
>
>

I hope you've not deleted any of the data I added. Just because it doesn't
have a sign doesn't mean it doesn't have a name. Approaches I've used to
find out its name is to ask a local (usually retired, long standing members
of the community are good for this) and researching via council
files/public records. Removing names just because they are not "on the
ground" is taking the rule too far and wastes the effort people have put it
to the map. It is tagging for the routing engine - we should adopt another
method to stop routing engines announcing "turn left to xxx" where xxx is
unsigned. Example a signed:name=no tag.

Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Can wikidata links help fight name inflation?

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi Fred,

Great question.

I feel that we should link to wikidata and this is a good example of why.
There are lots of things that are in wikidata that are not suitable for
OpenStreetMap tags but could be used by creative folk in a data & maps
mashup. Looking at the entry for London [1] I see population over time,
previous mayors, sister cities and even a list of notable people who were
born there. It also has all the language names via it's links to wikipedia
articles in each language.

For the name:ru example do we know how these were added? Was it by just a
few people? If so we could ask them if they'd be happy for their
contribution to be added to wikidata under it's CC0 license. This could be
a nice little way of promoting ties between wikidata and OSM and hopefully
we'd both benefit from a few more contributors.

Concerns include whether wikidata pages get removed if they are not deemed
to be noteworthy enough. One solution would be work with wikidata to create
a tool that queries OSM for use of a wikdata Q value before removing
suspected non-noteworthy pages. My other concern is around licenses. We
should not dictate that "this data is not for OpenStreetMap, please use
wikidata" if the contributor prefers OSM's share alike and attribution
license.

Best regards,
Rob

[1] http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84
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Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging FOR the renderer

[Rob Nickerson]

>when a mapper invents something new, they can add tags for
>colour, opacity, line colour, line width, line opacity - for areas and
>similar attributes for lines and points (colour, opacity, size etc.) and
>obviously tags for name and description etc. What do people think to this ?
>

The people behind the default map render have put a lot of work in to
trying to develop a map style which works well for the average OSM mapper.
To have anyone come along and add their own styling for any map feature
they like would be chaos. We'd end up in a map style edit war!! Also even
if a mapper found a style and colour that worked for the default
OpenStreetMap render, it wouldn't work with other map styles (Humanitarian,
MapQuest, etc..).

I know you'd love to have a map that renders everything but you will not
get that from OpenStreetMap. As all the data is available there is nothing
to stop you setting up your own map renderer and doing as you please
(although good luck making it look anything other than a mess).

I'm sure folks will be happy to point you in the direction of guides for
setting that up. Perhaps look at MapBox Studio first.

Regards,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] Learn Rails

[Rob Nickerson]

Code academy have added Ruby on Rails, which is what OpenStreetMap uses for
the website.

Learn via their online interactive learning.

http://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-rails

You never know, you could be contributing to OpenStreetMap code soon after
:)
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[OSM-talk] Case study: Lloyds TSB (Was: Chain Store Cleanup)

[Rob Nickerson]

Andy Mabbett wrote:
>I suppose it depends whether we want to map what (sometimes incorrect)
>store signs say, or what the stores actually are.
>
>I favour the latter, but if you want the former, I have a list defunct
>shops whose signs are still visible, which you can add
>
>Another issue to consider is that either method will incude some
>errors. Which will include fewest, and which will inconvenience our
>users less? How long will it take for all our entries for Domino's to
>be manually updated, even after the signs are changed?
>

I also favour the latter too. I feel this is an area where the "on the
ground rule" is too strong.

For an idea of how long it takes to *manually update* shop names take a
look at Lloyds TSB in the UK. In September 2013 the bank split into two
separate banks and they were quickly rebranded as Lloyds and TSB. As it was
impossible to say which branch became a Lloyds and which branch became a
Lloyds so a mechanical edit wasn't possible.

Almost 2 years later we still have 400 "Lloyds TSB" in OpenStreetMap [1]
and this is despite the fact that a tool was developed for the UK mappers
to help them find the remaining incorrect instances of Lloyds TSB. Without
this tool I expect there would be many hundreds more.

I don't want to say the UK mapping community is dead, but it is not big
enough to manage the volume of data we already have in OSM. Any tools that
can help this situation (tools to compare to external data sources, QA
tools, Maproulette type tools, apps for Android, Windows phone and iOS, and
yes, mechnaincal edits) would be welcome in my eyes.

We need to grow our community and our toolset.

Best,
Rob

[1] http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org.uk/search?q=name%3Dlloyds+tsb
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Re: [OSM-talk] Chain Store Cleanup

[Rob Nickerson]

On 1 May 2015 at 20:26, Johan C  wrote:

>
> 2015-05-01 13:36 GMT+02:00 Rob Nickerson :
>
>> >I think eventually chains will see the >light, and publish their
>> locations in an >open format compatible manner. At >that point a quick
>> cross check with >OSM would clear up most of the >issues.
>> >
>>
>> Agree. Has anyone actually asked the retail chains?
>>
>> That's a good question Rob. 'Seeing the light' possibly means maintaining
> your own platform/apps as a business. I did ask McDonald's back in 2012, I
> got the following reply: "We put focus on optimizing this McDonald's app
> and want to keep the management of the associated database as efficiently
> as possible. Keeping databases for others makes that ambition tricky. With
> the McDonald's app we also communicate information about McDonald's
> products, actions, nutrition values, different locations and opening times
> of the restaurants and the McDrives. Also, restaurant renovations and
> therefore temporary adjusted opening hours are regularly incorporated into
> an update. For the above reasons, we will not consent to the inclusion of
> McDonald's restaurants in Openstreetmap."
>
> Of course I was disappointed, because I still believe OSM can be the best
> platform. On the other hand, McDonald's has a point. Breaking the answer
> down: 1) It's not efficient trying to maintain more than one database 2)
> that single database serves more purposes than just geocoding 3) Other
> databases do not have the same quality.
>

Glad to hear that you have had a go at contacting one of these big chains.
Their response is disappointing but I think we need to be looking at some
potential solutions and better explaining the benefits of being on
OpenStreetMap to them.

Tackling the benefits of being in OSM first. I would point out that because
OpenStreetMap provides a rich database of geographic features there are
many apps that use OpenStreetMap's data. For example Maps.Me uses OSM in
it's SatNav style app for iOS and Android. Their app also displays
clickable points of interest including fast food outlets. Right now
OpenStreetMap includes some McDonald's stores (as contributed by our
community) but may be missing some. If McDonald's was to provide locations
of all stores then we could update our map data and as such all apps that
use our data would pick up these additional stores when they next update.

As for tackling some of their concerns then first the opening hours
concern. We could offer to link to their website for each store via
opening_hours:url=http://bigchainstore.com?storeid=12345 . As for keeping
the database up to date this is where we would benefit from more conflation
tools. For example it would be great if we had a tool that compares
BigChainStores data dump month 1 against BigChainStores data dump month 2
(should be easier as most entries will be the same). We would also want a
tool that compares BigChainStores data dump against what's already in OSM.
Currently there is no user firendly tool to do this (you end up back in
traditional GIS solutions which tend to go over my head).

I think we can get there but we'd need someone to help in regards to the
comparison tools.

Best,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] Open community (was: Chain Store Cleanup)

[Rob Nickerson]

Fred wrote:
>I don't think that is something that >really advances the quality in OSM,
and >I would encourage you to grab a >notepad and venture outside to do
>some mapping. That way you wouldn't >be scripting world-wide cleanup
>operations but who knows, you might >actually add real value to OSM.
>

Hi Andrew,

My local community would love to have move people involved in OpenStreetMap
- with or without notepad.

We are mostly a bunch of "on the ground mappers" so we lack is someone with
the skills to write scripts that help us identify problems in OSM data and
help us to make use of new exciting third party datasets (e.g. by building
tools to help us merge/"conflate" this data).

Unfortunately OSM is not good at attracting software developers but we
could really do with lots more devs :-)

Best,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] Chain Store Cleanup

[Rob Nickerson]

>I think eventually chains will see the >light, and publish their locations
in an >open format compatible manner. At >that point a quick cross check
with >OSM would clear up most of the >issues.
>

Agree. Has anyone actually asked the retail chains?

I haven't because I don't want to suggest that we will do anything with the
data until I know we have the right tools in place to match entries in
their database and in OSM. I'm sure it's an easy task but I don't know how
to do that. I'd also like to see community support in place so that we can
merge in some of their attributes (phone number, opening hours, etc). This
could be a bigger challenge!

Regards,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] Next: Relation name (WAS: Removing redundant routing instructions)

[Rob Nickerson]

Ok a few people are agreeing that a relation is needed to assist the
routing engine to provide higher quality instructions (with routing left
unaffected). That's good.

I'd like to get something in the wiki and ideally get it approved (this is
not an invite to talk about the wiki or the approval process - I've heard
it all before).

Question: Should I revive the "through_route" proposal or start a new one
under a different name, say "route_continues" (or just "continues") so as
to avoid any ambiguity with the use of "through route" in general language?

Cheers,
Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Removing redundant routing instructions

[Rob Nickerson]

>There already is a "through_route" relation, to show the path of the
>through route. It might not be well documented, but it is used (I
>believe)by mkgmap.
>
>There was a proposal, which was eventually rejected:
>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/through_route
>
>IMHO it was rejected as it was seen as a hint for the router, not as an
>aid to navigation, and people don't understand the difference.
>

Yeah I'm aware of that. In fact my example has been sat on my computer
since that proposal and I've only just got back to looking at it!!

This is in effect a revival of that proposal with a quite different
example. I picked a different name as Through Route has a meaning in the UK
- it means a route that takes you past a town whilst avoiding the congested
city centre. If you think we should revive the through_route proposal then
I'm happy with that instead.

I'm not sure I get your point about "hint for router" versus "aid for
navigation". I suspect this may stem from the don't tag for the renderer
rule. If we look at the end use case the aim is to get a routing engine
that provides an optimal route with user friendly route instructions. I
can't believe this is an easy tag and as such I would expect the routing
developers to be raising issues they cannot solve via code alone. This is
one area where I would like my SatNav not to spew redundant instructions.

Best,
Rob

p.s. Is highway=motorway_junction a "hint for router" or an "aid for
navigation"?
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[OSM-talk] Removing redundant routing instructions

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

In the UK (particularly in rural areas) it is common to find a road that
turns 90 degrees to the left or right without a junction (that is the road
just continues and white lines mark it as such). Meanwhile another road may
come in from the other side with a 'give way' style junction.

Although the road continues round the bend "SatNav" systems often think it
is a junction and tell you to "turn right/left in 100 yards/meters".

I wonder whether it is possible to indicate this in OpenStreetMap so that
routing engines can omit this redundant instruction.

== Example picture ==

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6J5ZA1hu93bZmx2NTIxaHdfMUE/view?usp=sharing

In the example Oban Road [1] turns to the right to become the northern
section of Sydnall Road. All main routers tell you to turn right. In my
opinion this is a redundant instruction (or could be better worded). I've
tried to add extra nodes so that the road naturally bends but the main
routing engines still tell you to "turn".

== Question ==

Could we benefit from a new route relation? For example a "route_continues"
relation? Would others find this useful?

Regards,
Rob

[1]
http://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=osrm_car&route=52.45362%2C-1.48598%3B52.45341%2C-1.48944#map=18/52.45332/-1.48771&layers=Q
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[OSM-talk] Routing over areas

[Rob Nickerson]

Interesting article for any routing experts:

http://anitagraser.com/2015/04/17/routing-in-polygon-layers-yes-we-can/

Rob
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[OSM-talk] SotM 2016: Call for venues - Last Week

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

Just one more weekend until the call for venues for State of the Map 2016
closes. We've also got the website up and running thanks to Tom H and the
Operations Working Group. I'm getting excited and we still have a long way
to go!

www.stateofthemap.org

Regards,
Your SotM team
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[OSM-talk] Taginfo challenge

[Rob Nickerson]

>Simply fixing the tags would do nothing >but mask the bad data.
>

Not necessarily as fixing the tag could also result in the data being
rendered therefore making it more visible for people to come in and fix (if
a local community of OSMers exists).

There are arguments on either side but I do feel that point blank
resistance to these sort of proposals does not help OSM in the long run. If
we work together we could develop a great set of tools - for example:

* Automated detection of imports (based on an assessment of the changeset).
* A "find similar" mode to help people to manually assess and fix possible
tag errors (a sort of maproulette on steroids that creates tasks based on a
users behaviour rather than a list of predefined tasks).

For now though it would be good to link taginfo to maproulette in some way.

Rob
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[OSM-talk] Call for Venues for State of the Map 2016 - now open!

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

It's emails like this that I really enjoy writing but Richard's beat me too
it :-(. Ah well I had it written anyway so might as well hit send :-)

---

The state of the map working group are delighted to announce that the call
for venues for 2016 is now open!

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_2016/Call_for_venues

This is much earlier than in previous years which means that you are free
to propose any dates within 2016. If there is an exciting event going on in
your city that OpenStreetMappers may be interested in, then why not align
the conference to this.

The State of the Map working group is here to help you. We're an expanded
team compared to the last few years and are looking forward to receiving
your bids. In 2014 we were south of the equator in Buenos Aires, in 2016 we
could be in your home country! So lets celebrate hitting 2 million
registered users*, share experiences and ideas, and plan for the next 10
years of OSM.

See you in 2016...
-- State of the Map, working group

* don't worry - you won't have 2 million people turning up on your doorstep
looking for somewhere to stay!
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Re: [OSM-talk] Quality of OSM Notes

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi Bryce,

I don't think people read the text above OSM's notes submission form
anyway. I fall in to the camp of "less is better". Mapbox blogged about how
they do it recently. I really like the big "describe what's wrong" header
as it achieves so much in so few words (and I'm sure if it made sense
without it mapbox would drop the word "what's" too :-) ).

I wonder if the mapbox guys have a breakdown of the notes they receive -
what is their quality note to junk ratio?

https://www.mapbox.com/blog/streamlining-map-feedback/

Best,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] Routing on osm.org

[Rob Nickerson]

Congratulations to all those who were involved in getting
directions/routing on openstreetmap.org :-)

Worth the wait and will hopefully encourage mappers to contribute more turn
restrictions and other routing related info.

Cheers,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] Spring 2015 (Was: "guide to vandalism” in OSM?)

[Rob Nickerson]

> Pierre wrote:

>We have to think of OSM as a global community where not all countires are 
>equal with access to internet and computers. Often, people have smartphones 
>and could contribute.
>Adding a note with photo would greatly help. The @osmthis Twitter tag let's do 
>this. But it is uneasy then to communicate with these persons.adding @osmthis. 
> The same functionality in OSM would be fantastic. But with anonymous notes, 
>we cannot contact these people and obtain clarification.  Then the risk that 
>notes stay open for a long period since incompleted.
>
> Pierre
>

Spring 2015. #Spoilers. ;-).
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[OSM-talk] Change: How mature is OpenStreetMap?

[Rob Nickerson]

There have been a couple of threads on OpenStreetMap’s mailing list this
month to do with change. The first, entitled “Request for feedback: new
building colours in openstreetmap-carto”, is all to do with a change to the
way the default map style *looks* on openstreetmap.org. The second, “MEP –
pipelines”, refers to a mechanical edit of the OpenStreetMap *data*. Both
have been met with some level of resistance – but is this proportionate?

Head over to
http://www.mappa-mercia.org/2015/01/change-how-mature-is-openstreetmap.html
and find out what I think :-)

Your thoughts?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this – where is OpenStreetMap in its
maturity and what level of change is appropriate? Is there anything you
would like to see changed? And is there anything that must stay the same?
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Re: [OSM-talk] Skybox for good imagery test

[Rob Nickerson]

>This is not what Skybox has stated publicly (later), 
>see>https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2014-November/008053.html
> 
><https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2014-November/008053.html>
>
>This may or may not be in conflict with what Mikel wrote, but in any
>case there is more than enough fuzziness to sit quiet at this point in time.
>
>Simon
>

Thanks Simon, I hadn't seen that. Will speak with Mikel.

Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Skybox for good imagery test

[Rob Nickerson]

Just to pick up on your point about HOT. Google has confirmed that Imagery
released under Skybox for Good can be digitized into OSM under OSM's
license. This applies to all imagery whether the imagery was captured
following a request from HOT or any other organisation.

Currently we have the following statement:
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2014-October/071318.html

Whilst a more formal written text is sitting with Mike Collinson and we
hope to have him and LWG ok it soon.

Best,
Rob

p.s. Any comments on alignment very welcome especially if evidenced with
GPS traces. :-D
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Re: [OSM-talk] Request for feedback: new building colours in openstreetmap-carto

[Rob Nickerson]

I would be tempted to go a little bit darker - not much but right now the
proposal looks very washed out against the background and the contrast
between buildings and churches is very stark.

But in general this is a good idea.

Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Is there some loop trip founder?

[Rob Nickerson]

Take a look at http://walks.io/ as a good starting point.

Regards,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] 176k Wikidata tags to add to OSM

[Rob Nickerson]

>You need to follow the Mechanical Edit Policy:
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mechanical_Edit_Policy 
>> <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mechanical_Edit_Policy>
>
>This might actually be an import, since there's another data source.
>Either way, your proceed needs more documentation and review to be in
>line with the various guidelines.
>
>- Serge
>

Hi Serge,

I've started to produce that page now:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mechanical_Edits/wikidata

So far I've included comments from August and November.
I need to review the Sep-Oct comments on talk mailing list.

Regards,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] Project #OSMselfie

[Rob Nickerson]

Nice idea. Too often our communications are faceless and I wonder if this
in any way has an effect on the tone of the discussions (that is, would we
be more polite if we could 'see' the person we are talking too)?

Rob

p.s. The more time I spend on the mailing lists, the more I see them as a
tool that suits software developers* rather than a diverse community of
people we aim to grow.

* By which I mean software developers like a communication channel that is
very terse and to the point (as it is efficient for their workload) and
they know this so don't see short replies as negative like others may. Face
to face hack events provide a chance to speak at greater length.
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Re: [OSM-talk] Your chance to host State of the Map 2015

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi Michael,

The call for venues is opened by the OSMF board not the SotM team (in
reality it is Henk and he sits on both teams).

We've opened it earlier this year due to feedback from SotM Birmingham. At
this stage the most important thing is to demonstrate that you have a local
team able to support. A venue would be great but not essential (hopefully a
year in advance in a large city still leaves lots of suitable venues left).

Rob

P.s If it turns out to be too much of a challenge I guess the deadline will
just have to slip back beyond SotM 2014.
On 28 Oct 2014 01:53, "Michael Kugelmann"  wrote:

>  On 15.10.2014 19:46,  Rob Nickerson wrote:
>
>   Hi list members,
>
>  State of the Map conferences are a great way to bring the community
> together, reach out to new members and promote innovation. I am delighted
> to see that the OpenStreetMap Foundation have committed to continuing State
> of the Map in 2015.
>
> The OSMF annual SOTM complements local SOTMs {EU, US, Scotland, etc} and
> to me one of the big benefits is that the Foundation remains committed to
> taking SOTM to new places. Now it's your chance to host :-)
>
>  The call for locations for SOTM 2015 is now open:
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_2015/Call_for_venues
>
>  So why are you still reading this, get bidding :-)
>
>  Regards,
>  Rob
>  SotM 2013 (Birmingham) local team
>
>
> this email is addressed to the SOTM working group of the OSMF. Maybe "
> t...@stateofthemap.org" is the wrong email-adress because I don't want to
> address the persons working at the 2014 conference. But there is no other
> address given at the web page of the OSMF...
>
>
>
> The issue I want to raise: I'm a litte astonished about the timeline given.
> * the CFL was opened on the 15th of October
> * the CFL closes on the 2nd of November
> This is just about two weeks to make the foundations of a big worldwide
> conference??? Don't you think this might be somehow a little short?
>
> You could argue "you had one year to get things right". OK, but how
> realistic is this? For most of the conferences run voluntarily it is
> difficult to have planings going along longtime in advance, w/o a trigger
> usually nothing starts.
> And If you say "but we want to announce the location for 2015 at the 2014
> conference": then you simply should have opened the CFL earlier...
>
>
> Just my 2 cents,
> Michael.
>
> PS: IMHO 4 weeks seems to be a really good timeframe for a CFL for the
> SOTM...
>
>
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[OSM-talk] Skybox release aerial imagery

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi list,

Google (through their acquisition of skybox) have released some aerial
imagery under the Cc-by licence:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/10/26/skybox-for-good/

Can someone just remind me - are we able to use this in OpenStreetMap? If
yes, please forward to the HOT mailing list as it is of value to them.

Finally we should be very proud of what we as a community have achieved.
The work that we, HOT and those who have already made aerial imagery
available (bing, digital globe, etc) have achieved to date is so
significant that other big players are following in our footsteps. This is
a great day :-)

Best,
Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Applications to the Local Chapter Agreement

[Rob Nickerson]

Thanks Jói,

I was never seriously expecting there to be any conflicts over geographic
"territory" and I'm confident that you are best placed to know of any other
groups in your area. My question was more out of curiosity - I'm glad I
asked because I've discovered new groups I was unaware of :-)

All the best,
Rob



 *Jóhannes Birgir Jensson*
*Thu Oct 23 08:47:05 UTC 2014*
--

On behalf of the Icelandic applicants we are fairly sure that we are the
only ones representing our area and we will strive hard to include
others who will be or are interested in the area.

We have a small blurb in English about us on our webpage, the OSM
affiliation would be presented under OpenStreetMap á Íslandi (in
Iceland) where applicable.
http://www.hlidskjalf.is/english/

Regards,
Jói, current chairman
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[OSM-talk] Simon Poole resigns

[Rob Nickerson]

I've only spotted this on OSMF-talk so far but feel it should be shared
here:

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2014-October/002773.html

I'm still reading through the OSMF-talk mailing list, but so far it looks
like Simon has not yet provided any reason (which is fine for now as heat
of the moment messages can turn out to be very bad).

Thank you Simon for your work and input into the OSMF Board.

Regards,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] AGM announcements

[Rob Nickerson]

Simon wrote:

>The scheduling issue is real and it flatly wouldn't have been possible to
formally
>announce in time (which would have had to been 60 days back to give
>enough time to avoid the cut off without undue haste). The solution to
>this will likely be to disassociate GM scheduling from the SOTM event so
>that we can plan the GM well in advance.
>

Indeed the task of organising the SotM program is a challenging one making
it difficult to provide an exact time early on (a few more days earlier
could be possible, but not 60).

What is however possible is to confirm the day. It was probably always
going to be the Saturday as the Friday before is a paid conference day and
we like to have the last day to reflect on what the new membership means
for the Foundation.

I often feel that we let perfection get in the way of getting on and doing.
Sometimes perfection is a good thing, but in this case I feel we could have
got an initial message out with the formal confirmation following.

Best,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] A Better Map<\strike> community

[Rob Nickerson]

Kate Chapman wrote:

>
> What would you like the board to do to recognize the work of the
volunteers?
>

Hi Kate,

Personally I don't want a pat on the back, but I would like to more
prominently see the OSMF board actively supporting the community.

For example, In my view we are long overdue some work to the community
portals of OSM. We've had iD and the redesign of the main website, but
communication channels have seen little attention recently and in my
opinion are not supporting a healthy community.

Earlier today I read the scope of the CWG [1]. I quote:

"The group will do some analysis of the different channels, and areas where
problems can be seen, e.g. signal-to-noise ratio of community discussions,
and possibly develop some ideas for making improvements."

I would like to pick this up and push it forward bringing in aspects such
as diversity, a code of conduct, some way to tackle the increasing levels
of spam on the OSM Diary feature and making community discussion a more
prominent feature accessible via the front page. However I am only willing
to do this if I can see that my effort has a chance of actually going
somewhere. This means that if we were to identify some requirements such as
a need for funding to build something, or getting a change to the main
website, or (shock-horror) sending a single email to all registered members
asking them if they'd like to join a email subscription, I would at least
be heard by the board. Right now I'm not sure I would.

(In regards to that last one I know I wouldn't be supported because I've
raised it before and got nowhere. And getting a sotm banner on osm.org can
be an uphill battle too!)

Regards,
Rob

[1] http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Communication_Working_Group
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[OSM-talk] Applications to the Local Chapter Agreement

[Rob Nickerson]

Simon,

I note in [1] that there are now three applications to the Local Chapter
Agreement [2] and these are being processed now.

In light of the current discussions on transparency and holding the board
to account, can I ask whether it possible to disclose these just in case
there are any other local groups that feel they represent the geographic
regions included in the first three applications.

Also I'm curious :-)

Best,
Rob

[1]
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/osmf-talk/2014-October/002697.html
[2] http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Local_OSMF_Chapters
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[OSM-talk] SotM 2014 program and AGM

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

The program for SotM 2014 is now available. This includes the date and time
of the Annual General Meeting of the OSM Foundation.

SotM:
http://stateofthemap.org/program

AGM:
http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings/14

I'd like to thank everyone involved in pulling this years program together,
including all who submitted a talk for consideration, the evaluation team,
and the local sotm team for putting the final program together (it's no
small task to try to put talks of a similar theme together within the
limits of time and available rooms).

Best,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] Adding Wikidata tags to 70k items automatically

[Rob Nickerson]

>On 27 August 2014 17:47, Edward Betts at 4angle.com> wrote:
>
>> I'd like to annotate these 70k objects in OSM with a Wikidata tag
>> automatically.
>
>Can we now move forward with this?
>

Yes please :-)

I'll admit to losing track of the thread. Last thing I recall Edward was
working on some adjustments based on a constructive review of his work.
Assuming these are resolved then let's push forwards.

Rob
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[OSM-talk] Fwd: Re: Your chance to host State of the Map 2015

[Rob Nickerson]

Meant to send that to list.

-- Forwarded message --

>
> On 17 Oct 2014 00:59, "Paul Johnson"  wrote:
> >
> > Crud, I guess Tulsa's out...
> >
>
> Nowhere is rules out. At this stage we're seeking proposals. From my
experience with organising SOTM 2013, I would say that the main thing is to
have a local team willing to help. This only needs to be a few people and
support is available (it's just that a local team is important as someone
needs to go check that the venue etc is okay).
>
> Ideas of venues would also be good but not essential. Henk has kicked off
the process earlier this year to give more time to work on securing a venue.
>
> Rob
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[OSM-talk] Your chance to host State of the Map 2015

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi list members,

State of the Map conferences are a great way to bring the community
together, reach out to new members and promote innovation. I am delighted
to see that the OpenStreetMap Foundation have committed to continuing State
of the Map in 2015.

The OSMF annual SOTM complements local SOTMs {EU, US, Scotland, etc} and to
me one of the big benefits is that the Foundation remains committed to
taking SOTM to new places. Now it's your chance to host :-)

The call for locations for SOTM 2015 is now open:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/State_Of_The_Map_2015/Call_for_venues

So why are you still reading this, get bidding :-)

Regards,
Rob
SotM 2013 (Birmingham) local team
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[OSM-talk] How best to create a "single point of interest" online map with OSM data?

[Rob Nickerson]

>
>* Ways disappear on the map (they don't get a pin: >zoom in on the map to
see two hidden toilets).
>

This was a problem we had with the Mappa Mercia pub example. Turned out
overpass can export centre points and following an update to uMap we posted
a new guide:

http://www.mappa-mercia.org/2014/09/extracting-centroids-from-openstreetmap.html

Hope this helps.

As for the issue of too many points, one option is to have uMap collect
data dynamically (as per our guide) and restrict to only showing data when
at a certain zoom level or above (with clustering at lower zoom levels).

Best,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] The problem of mapping temporary features

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi all,

Back in January/February of this year parts of Somerset, UK were flooded.
This data was added to OpenStreetMap. Today a diary post on OpenStreetMap
pointed me to a  map rendering (MapSurfer). The map still shows the flooded
area despite the fact that the waters have now retreated and the data has
been removed from OpenStreetMap [1].

This is a good example of why we need to be very careful mapping temporary
features. Many data users update infrequently.

Suggestions of how to get the balance right are welcome.

Regards,
Rob

[1] http://osmapa.pl/#lat=51.0220&lon=-2.8997&z=10&m=ms
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[OSM-talk] Adding Wikidata tags to 70k items automatically

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi Fred,

The question of notability rules in Wikidata also crossed my mind.

At this stage we are asking the question is it worth linking existing OSM
data to existing wikidata via an automated process? The key word here is
automated - we are already manually adding the tags (20k so far) to OSM. As
such your question is less related to the import, but more related to the
long term database/tagging strategy in OSM. The import may however speed up
how quickly we need to start answering questions of where non-geographic
data lives (OSM or wikidata).

Like you, I see a lot of benefit of holding some data in wikidata. Picking
up the restaurant example we have always said that things like reviews
(including its food hygiene rating here in the UK) doesn't belong in OSM. I
have no urgent desire to start adding this sort of data to wikidata (or any
database) as I concentrate my time on mapping new things, but if I was to
add this to wikidata the question of notability rules would then be top of
my list - no point doing something if it then gets deleted as it is deemed
not notable!

Summary: Good question and some long term thinking required but the import
will, at most, only make this thinking need to be done sooner. We'll have
to cross this question even if this import doesn't occur.

Regards,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] Adding Wikidata tags to 70k items automatically

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi All,

Lets just step back and reflect on this for a minute. I have reviewed the
replies on this mailing list and there are a mixture of supportive
comments, a few negatives and the remainder may suggest something but are
neither negative or positive.

Lets look at the issues raised:

1. Licence compatibility
Resolved in [1]

2. Accuracy of what's in Wikidata
Remember it has to also match something in OSM. The tag enables people to
use wikidata to enhance their maps but this remains optional.

3. Keeping it up to date
An API rather than an import was suggested but this would not work with
existing tools (e.g Overpass) and we are adding wikidata tags to OSM
anyway. When ways are split in OSM mappers already have to deal with
existing tags - I don't see how this would be any different. Very few
imports have a good strategy to keep them up to date (this doesn't mean
that we should continue to turn a blind eye - just that we need to be fair
to Edward's hard work)

4. Bridges identified as a problem case
Suggest not automating bridges.

5. OSM vs Wikidata/Wikimedia Commons
"It will surely not call people to contribute in OSM but rather directly in
wikidata !"

On this last point we need to focus on what is best for OSM now and not
cloud our vision with any historic matters between OSM and Wikimedia
Commons. Our strategy is to:

"create and distribute free geographic data ... because most maps you think
of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use,
holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected
ways"

To me there are a few things that stand out:

* Create and distribute - We aim to build our contibutor base and grow our
user base. Working with the wikidata team will show that we are an open
community.
* Geographic data - there are some parts that just don't suit OSM's model
(we even have a maximum character limit on tags), linking to wikidata would
help in this regard.
* Restrictions - We have our own restrictions (verifiable on the ground,
not changing to frequently) in OSM. A link to wikidata allows us to
continue with these restrictions but still allow people to get at
interesting non-geographic data.
* Unexpected ways - Links to wikidata open up a wealth of rich data
allowing new innovative ideas.

In my mind this is a good move and should be supported. Point 3 above could
be resolved by running the script regularly to see if there are any new
matches. There have also been some good suggestions on this list such as a
KeepRight style (i.e. QA) map where problematic objects (e.g. script finds
more than one match) can be manually reviewed, confirming whether the
script conflicts with any existing wikidata tags in OSM, checking whether
the script would add a wikidata tag to an object when there is already a
different object in OSM with that wikidata tag, and a check on the 400m
distance rule [2].

Are these things possible Edward?

Regards,
Rob

[1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2014-August/070634.html
[2] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2014-August/070667.html
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[OSM-talk] Adding Wikidata tags to 70k items automatically

[Rob Nickerson]

Simon,

My understanding is that this is only looking at a very small subset of
wikidata (based on a list of wikipedia categories). As such an API would
only give you a partial view (70k) objects. We want to match as much as
possible and therefore people will continue adding wikidata tags to OSM
manually. At which stage you end up with some wikidata tags in OSM, an API
based on Edward's work, and no doubt lots of overlap and wasted effort.

In summary I'm not sure an API is a good strategy. Instead I support the
proposed import.

Regards,
Rob

P.s. I consider myself part of the UK local community and, without
rereading the old thread, I felt there was some support and some against,
with the topic fizzling out. Its clear that a locality check resolves some
of the issues and I'm pleased to see this has been included. Thanks for
pulling this together :-)
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Re: [OSM-talk] Tagging of private roads

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi Matthijs,

Spotted the following sign related to your "tagging of private roads"
discussion the other day. Enjoy :-)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6J5ZA1hu93beGxtSTVGeUR2aFRqQzdaYXNGR0d6WlBhQXFr/edit?usp=sharing

Rob
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[OSM-talk] UK public footpaths (was: Upcoming openstreetmap-carto changes)

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi,

Public footpaths in the United Kingdom have been discussed at length and
are detailed on the wiki:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/UK_public_rights_of_way#Tagging_Access_Provisions

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/UK_access_provisions

In summary, for a Public Footpath:

* tag the highway as per what it physically looks like (e.g. highway=track,
highway=service, highway=footway)
* then add designation=public_footpath to describe the legal designation of
the way.
* Access tags are then optional. In the case of a public footpath
access=no/private + foot=designated/yes would be a valid way of tagging
(i.e. close off access to all transport types and then overwrite for people
on foot, as per the access hierarchy)

The exception to the rule is if you tag the route as highway=path. In this
case access tags are required.

Regards,
Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Wiki VisualEditor (Was: Wiki translate extension)

[Rob Nickerson]

>> extension moved from requiring mediawiki 1.23 to requiring mediawiki 1.24
>> which is still in development.
>
>Can't you just use the old version that worked with 1.23?
>

VisualEditor is still in development. MediaWiki provide an extension so
that non Wikimedia sites can start to use it but as of June 2014 this
extension has required mw 1.24

https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Extension%3AVisualEditor&diff=1021728&oldid=1021727

Any version that worked with mw 1.23 was considered unstable and hence
Grant was unwilling to install it for OSM's wiki. I don't blame Grant - he
works hard to keep everything up and running and as such a "stable" version
is a reasonable request. If anything it's the visualeditor developers who
need to hurry up and stop pushing the requirements up - mw 1.22, mw 1.23,
mw 1.24, ... when will it stop!!

Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] Wiki translate extension

[Rob Nickerson]

In my opinion we should try to keep the different language pages as similar
as possible - that is, they should aim to be just translations of one
another. My reason behind this is that OpenStreetMap is a community and
data project. We need to work together and use common tagging so that
developers can build tools based on OSM data. We should avoid an
OpenStreetMap for people who can speak English, one for those that can
speak French, etc...

If there is country specific information about a tag then I would like to
be aware of it, as it could be useful for other countries/languages too.
That could be as simple as copying it to the English[1] language page
(marking it as requiring translation) or if it's longer providing a link on
the English language page.

Also worth noting that a lot of the translations haven't stayed up to date.
This works both ways - English page updated, translations not updated, or a
non-English page updated and not copied back to the English page (in any
language). I'd encourage people to copy between the pages even if they just
mark the text as needing translating.

Regards,
Rob

[1] You could also copy it to other language pages, but at a bare minimum
the English page as this is considered the "Main" page/OSM's default
language.
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Re: [OSM-talk] Wiki translate extension

[Rob Nickerson]

>What we really need is people actually editing the Wiki in the first
>place and in my opinion the best way to get people to do so would be a
>better editor: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor
>

There's an issue for this on trac [1] but the main problem is that the
extension moved from requiring mediawiki 1.23 to requiring mediawiki 1.24
which is still in development.


[1] https://trac.openstreetmap.org/ticket/4920
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Re: [OSM-talk] Come back Osmarender, all is forgiven!

[Rob Nickerson]

Andy,

I think there is a lot of positives in the new rendering as well. I for one
am delighted to see some life back in the "standard" map style, this way
new tags can be (and have been) added to the rendering rules. So it's a mix
- some things are improved, some things are added, and a few things get
removed.

As for a "show it all map", I guess this is where Vector Tiles may help in
the future. Meanwhile we have a lot of rendering options available, it's
also easier than ever to create your own, and tools like Overpass Turbo
allow you to on-the-fly checks of the data.

Best,
Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] We need a name!

[Rob Nickerson]

Yeah, I've been thinking OHM Buildings, but there's an ownership issue with
that. At the moment we are branding it as " an OpenHistoricalMap
project". However there is a lot of close work going on between the OHM and
Wikimaps communities at the moment with many folks looking for much tighter
integration. So then it becomes " an OpenHistoricalMap and Wikimaps
project".

I personally would have loved to see much more integration between OSM and
OHM. Over the next decade I'm sure more people will realise this when the
city landscape changes and they see themselves removing old buildings from
OSM. I'd also like to see more cooperation between Wikimaps (which is part
of Wikimedia) and OSM. So then the name becomes " an
OpenHistoricalMap, OpenStreetMap and Wikimaps (Wikimedia) project"!!

So really, the name shouldn't refer to any of these 3 projects, that way we
don't need to change the name as things evolve. :-)

Rob


On 19 June 2014 23:13, Clifford Snow  wrote:

> Open Historical Map which already has a website www.openhistoricalmap.org
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 18, 2014 at 1:04 PM, Rob Nickerson 
> wrote:
>
>> A few OSM members interested in historic maps are working on our own
>> version of the New York Public Library "Building Inspector". If you've not
>> yet tried it out, go take a look - it's a great site:
>>
>> http://buildinginspector.nypl.org/
>>
>> So, the core function they are asking contributors to do is to check
>> (inspect) and fix the rough building outlines produced by the computer
>> script. Our version will be the same but will cover any city and any
>> library we can get good maps for. But we need a name.
>>
>> Current names suggested are:
>>
>>- Historic Map Marker
>>- Old Map Marker
>>- OHM Buildings
>>- Historic Map Inspector
>>- Building Surveyor
>>- Historic Building Constructor
>>- Historic Building Fixer
>>- Ghost Mapper
>>- Ghost Building Mapper
>>- Ghost Brick
>>- Ghost Bricks and Mortar
>>- Houses and History
>>- Historic Map Booth
>>- Old Building Kiosk
>>- Historic Building Outliner
>>
>> We're after your thoughts - which name works best? Is there some amazing
>> name we haven't thought of yet?
>> Best,
>> Rob (RobJN)
>>
>> p.s. You're more than welcome to help in other ways. We're on the
>> historic mailing list if you want to follow the progress.
>>
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>
>
> --
> @osm_seattle
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Re: [OSM-talk] We need a name!

[Rob Nickerson]

I've had a couple of responses off list. These are:

* Constructing the past
* something with "crowd" in it?

Thanks, for these good ideas. Any more suggestions?

Rob


On 18 June 2014 21:04, Rob Nickerson  wrote:

> A few OSM members interested in historic maps are working on our own
> version of the New York Public Library "Building Inspector". If you've not
> yet tried it out, go take a look - it's a great site:
>
> http://buildinginspector.nypl.org/
>
> So, the core function they are asking contributors to do is to check
> (inspect) and fix the rough building outlines produced by the computer
> script. Our version will be the same but will cover any city and any
> library we can get good maps for. But we need a name.
>
> Current names suggested are:
>
>- Historic Map Marker
>- Old Map Marker
>- OHM Buildings
>- Historic Map Inspector
>- Building Surveyor
>- Historic Building Constructor
>- Historic Building Fixer
>- Ghost Mapper
>- Ghost Building Mapper
>- Ghost Brick
>- Ghost Bricks and Mortar
>- Houses and History
>- Historic Map Booth
>- Old Building Kiosk
>- Historic Building Outliner
>
> We're after your thoughts - which name works best? Is there some amazing
> name we haven't thought of yet?
> Best,
> Rob (RobJN)
>
> p.s. You're more than welcome to help in other ways. We're on the historic
> mailing list if you want to follow the progress.
>
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[OSM-talk] We need a name!

[Rob Nickerson]

A few OSM members interested in historic maps are working on our own
version of the New York Public Library "Building Inspector". If you've not
yet tried it out, go take a look - it's a great site:

http://buildinginspector.nypl.org/

So, the core function they are asking contributors to do is to check
(inspect) and fix the rough building outlines produced by the computer
script. Our version will be the same but will cover any city and any
library we can get good maps for. But we need a name.

Current names suggested are:

   - Historic Map Marker
   - Old Map Marker
   - OHM Buildings
   - Historic Map Inspector
   - Building Surveyor
   - Historic Building Constructor
   - Historic Building Fixer
   - Ghost Mapper
   - Ghost Building Mapper
   - Ghost Brick
   - Ghost Bricks and Mortar
   - Houses and History
   - Historic Map Booth
   - Old Building Kiosk
   - Historic Building Outliner

We're after your thoughts - which name works best? Is there some amazing
name we haven't thought of yet?
Best,
Rob (RobJN)

p.s. You're more than welcome to help in other ways. We're on the historic
mailing list if you want to follow the progress.
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Re: [OSM-talk] [Talk-GB] Fwd: Adding links to Wikidata (and Wikipedia?)

[Rob Nickerson]

Nice idea. I guess overpass is another great tool tgat could be used to
retreive data.

Wikipedia tags left as is? Absolutely. This is a data creation thing only.
We wouldn't remove or change any existing tags.

I speak theoretically of course. At the moment this is just an idea, hoping
to spark some interest amongst osm developers.

Rob

On 17 Jun 2014 23:24, "John Packer"  wrote:

To make this process smoother, it could be good to do things such as
retrieve the target object location according to Nominatim and show the
wikidata page or preferably the wikipedia page on X language to confirm
that's the correct object, and perhaps even show the tags on that object in
Level0L or some other format.

And just to check: Such a script wouldn't remove the wikipedia tags from
those objects, correct?
It wouldn't be good to remove it, because the wikipedia tag is
well-established and supported by many applications, and support some cases
that aren't supported by the wikidata tag.



2014-06-17 19:06 GMT-03:00 Rob Nickerson :

> >
> > >To continue your example, there could be "St Nicolas's", "St Nicolas's
> > >Church Gardens", and...
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Re: [OSM-talk] [Talk-GB] Fwd: Adding links to Wikidata (and Wikipedia?)

[Rob Nickerson]

>To continue your example, there could be "St Nicolas's", "St Nicolas's
>Church Gardens", and "St Nicolas's Gift Shop" all near each other. Which
>one should the wikipedia page "St Nicolas's Church" match?
>

Great to see support for the idea. I think it's been a bit of a complex one
that hasn't been grasped that well. In terms of your reply above, hopefully
none of these would be tagged as amenity=place_of_worship and therefore
would not be picked up by my example. If they *are* tagged as
amenity=place_of_worship then we have a bigger problem!!

A script that flags these up for human interaction would be a great start
(one for maproulette?) but I'm hoping under tight controls we will find
that the level of accuracy is high enough to consider automation. I'm not
here to force automation on anyone so lets just focus on a script that
flags potential matches for now.

Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] [Talk-GB] Fwd: Adding links to Wikidata (and Wikipedia?)

[Rob Nickerson]

Archer wrote:
> I understood your further post in this manner: you want to take the
>Wikipedia link and add with a script or bot the associated Wikidata-ID.
>This would add the Wikidata ID Q3038 to both OSM objects place=island and
>boundary=administrative of Heligoland because both objects in OSM could
>link to the same Wikipedia article.
>

Hi Archer,

I don't think that is what Andy is proposing. My understanding is that the
script would look for objects in wikidata that have a location
(lat/longitude) and some wikidata tags that help us to identify the object
(e.g. that it's a church and it's name is "St Nicolas's"). The script would
then look for a similar object in OSM assessed according to the
lat/longitude in OSM and other OSM tags (name=St Nicolas's, and
amenity=place_of_worship). It would then flag the match for a human to
check, or if accepted, automatically add the wikidata tag if the level of
certainty matches some threshold.

This way we are adding wikidata to objects that may not have any wikipedia
tag in OSM. The wikidata may include links to an appropriate wikipedia page
(in multiple languages).

The questions we are trying to answer are:

   - Is this worth the effort?
   - What are the risks of introducing bad data and how can we
   reduce/eliminate this?
   - Do we have anyone in the OSM or WikiData/Wikimedia Commons community
   that would be willing to help write the script?

My answers are:

   - Yes, we benefit from the linked data and all the great resources on
   Wikimedia Commons. We stand to gain a lot from being open to the ideas of
   the Wikidata/Wikimedia Commons community.
   - I'm open to hear what people have to say.
   - In OSM, possibly, but there's more work than devs. We may have more
   luck looking on the Wikimedia Commons community.

Regards,

Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] openstreetmap-carto updates

[Rob Nickerson]

Great work :-)

It's wonderful to see all the activity on the mapnik-carto rendering rules
and justifies the time spent rewriting the code to Carto. A big thank you
to Andy Allan for kicking that off. His "just-do-it" approach was exactly
what was needed at the time. I found out at SOTM just how popular this was
(sorry for the room fiasco Andy) so I'm sure there will be a lot of other
people who are equally delighted to see this latest update. Thanks to all
involved.

Best,
Rob
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[OSM-talk] This has to stop: User Diaries Spam

[Rob Nickerson]

Am 14.05.2014 14:46, schrieb Pieren:
> I would suggest to remove the diary feature
> completely.

In my opinion that would be a big step in the wrong direction. In fact we
should be expanding the community side of OSM.org as the community should
be at the heart of the project. Things like mailing lists and IRC are
simply not known about by average Joe.

I'm glad to see the Google Summer of Code project as a good first start:

http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/project/details/google/gsoc2014/ukasiu/5724160613416960

Rob
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[OSM-talk] Info on SOTM (WAS: No new information on the SOTM since January 2014)

[Rob Nickerson]

Hi Gonzalo, Henk,

Thanks for the update. Having helped organise last year I had no doubt that
SOTM 2014 would be going ahead - the OSMF, Henk and the SOTM Working Group
are all behind it.

Let me know if you need help with anything (announcements, blogging,
tweeting or something that I can do from here in the UK). I'll send you
some tips and the feedback results from last year - although I expect Henk
may have done that already.

Best wishes,
Rob
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Re: [OSM-talk] No new information on the SOTM since January 2014

[Rob Nickerson]

The OSMF key functions are available online [1] and they're very bare bones
- the OSMF is hands off*. The two biggest points that relate to SOTM are:

   - Provides a vehicle for fund-raising to support the project. The
   foundation can accept donations for the OpenStreetMap Project and allocate
   those donations to OpenStreetMap Project activities.
   - Organizes the annual conference, State-of-the-map

Based on the observations of last years SOTM (which I helped organise) the
main comments that were fed back to the board were that (1) relying on SOTM
to provide all the funding OSMF requires over the duration of a year is no
longer guaranteed, and (2) the SotM Working Group, and in particular the
local team based in the host city, felt that finding sponsorship should be
a task that is more suited to the OSMF and the SOTM remote team (i.e. the
regulars). The OSMF have taken these comments on board.
Please remember that SOTM 2014 is 2 months later than last year and as such
there is LOTS of time. We're ahead of last years schedule. In fact one of
the other comments we fed back last year was that there was a calendar
clash with SOTM US (the Call for Presentations fell during SOTM US). This
year we won't have that problem. I would expect there will be more
announcements post SOTM FR and SOTM US.

Best regards,
Rob

[1] https://blog.openstreetmap.org/about/
* If anyone would like the OSMF to expand their role then they can put
themselves forward for election.
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Re: [OSM-talk] No new information on the SOTM since January 2014

[Rob Nickerson]

Oh, I should add that this years SOTM is two months later than last years,
and as such the schedule will naturally shift back. Last year Birmingham
was announced Feb 11th, and the first meeting was Feb 20th. The website
went live March 13th and the Call for Presentations hit the site on April
23rd. The conference was in early September.

Based on these dates (if you add two months to each to reflect that SOTM is
two months later) we are still ahead of last years schedule.

Regards,
Rob


On 4 April 2014 22:59, Rob Nickerson  wrote:

> >SOTM EU and US, combined with the OSMF focus on being more of a
> theoretical body have reduced the profit and motivation in doing a SOTM to
> approximately zero. I hope it still happens, but I'd be >surprised.
> >
> >It might be better to run a SOTM South America, or something.
> >
> >Steve
> >
>
> "OSMF organised conferences (State Of The Map) should continue to be at
> least self-financing."
> http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_Minutes_2013-12-10
>
> As long as this continues then I see no reason to believe that SOTM will
> stop (especially this years which has already been confirmed to be held in
> Buenos Aires):
> https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2014/01/12/buenos-aires-hosts-sotm14/
>
> Hold tight, these things take time to organise. If you are able to help,
> then get in touch with Henk who will appreciate the help.
>
> Rob
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] No new information on the SOTM since January 2014

[Rob Nickerson]

>SOTM EU and US, combined with the OSMF focus on being more of a
theoretical body have reduced the profit and motivation in doing a SOTM to
approximately zero. I hope it still happens, but I'd be >surprised.
>
>It might be better to run a SOTM South America, or something.
>
>Steve
>

"OSMF organised conferences (State Of The Map) should continue to be at
least self-financing."
http://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_Minutes_2013-12-10

As long as this continues then I see no reason to believe that SOTM will
stop (especially this years which has already been confirmed to be held in
Buenos Aires):
https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2014/01/12/buenos-aires-hosts-sotm14/

Hold tight, these things take time to organise. If you are able to help,
then get in touch with Henk who will appreciate the help.

Rob
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