Re: [Talk-GB] Adding a further 250, 000 UK roads quickly using a Bot?

[Dair Grant]

Ed Avis wrote:

> I suggest, but cannot prove, that seeing an entirely blank canvas doesn't
> entice you to start adding to the map, which must necessarily involve adding
> small bits at a time.

Actually, seeing a blank canvas in my local area was exactly my motivation.

But everyone is different, as proved by us having had the exact opposite
reasons for starting. :-)


> However, we do have some real-world evidence.  There are towns which have been
> blank for a long time on OSM.  If a blank canvas were a good way to encourage
> contributors, they would have been filled in by now.  The fact that they are
> still missing suggests that the strategy of deliberately leaving an area blank
> and hoping for somebody to go out and survey it from scratch is not always
> effective.

Part of that problem is that we have no way to distinguish "this area is
unmapped" from "this area is under-mapped" - they both look blank.

If you could rewind time to the start of OSM, an import strategy I think
would have been useful would have been to start with a set of towns and
create straight lines between them for roads.

That makes it obvious there's something there, and that it can be improved,
without having the "tiger effect" of going from an empty map to one which
looks complete but is full of bad data.


>> If you want a 1:1 copy of the OS data, why not just use the OS data?
> 
> What I want (and I think what others want) is a map in machine-readable form
> which corresponds to the real world.  The source it originally came from does
> not matter.

At the data level, no. But for the longer term impact on motivation, I think
it does.

Things change over time of course, so perhaps people who were interested in
mapping "by hand" will drift away and people who're more interested in
automated maintenance will come in.

But I can't say the latter sounds like a very interesting thing to spend my
free time on.


-dair
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Re: [Talk-GB] Adding a further 250, 000 UK roads quickly using a Bot?

[Dair Grant]

Peter Miller wrote:

> There is suggestion raised by a number of people, but refuted by others that
> imports reduce the number of contributors.

It has been denied, not refuted. I think the closest there is to real data
on the effect is:



Personally I feel the impact of road network imports is more substantial
than of any other kind.

Importing bus stops or post boxes feels like a step forward, importing a
road network feels like a step back (why that should be the case, I don't
know: perhaps due to the greater visibility of roads on the default map).


-dair
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Re: [Talk-GB] Adding a further 250, 000 UK roads quickly using a Bot?

[Dair Grant]

Ed Avis wrote:

> Lastly, I don't believe that adding data from external sources discourages
> contributors.  Quite the opposite.  It is a blank canvas that puts people off.
> The way to bring in contributors is to show a map with a few missing details
> that are so tempting to fix 'just one thing'...

Is there an example of a road import that has led to an increase in
contributors? I thought that in most cases it had the exact opposite effect.

IMO the blank canvas is what pulls people in: an area that's 90% already
there finds it harder to attract new mappers as it already "looks done"
(filling in all the footpaths, post boxes, pubs, etc, is something you tend
to do once you're already hooked).

Comparisons to a reference source like OS are still valuable, but more as a
way to prioritise mapping: a vague heatmap of patchy areas is more
motivating to me than than an exhaustive list of streets.

If you want a 1:1 copy of the OS data, why not just use the OS data?


-dair
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[Talk-GB] [Edinburgh] Road Names

[Dair Grant]

Hi,

At this week's Edinburgh meet-up we discussed the Council's public road name
list, and how to cross-reference it with OSM to check coverage/identify
missing roads.

Unfortunately the council data is only available as a set of tabular PDFs,
which is hard to do anything useful with, so I've converted them into a
single csv file:

  

I won't have time to do anything with it for a while, but have put it up in
case anyone else from Edinburgh wants a go (the script is on github in case
other councils have a similar problem).


Sorry for spamming all of -gb, as this is pretty local to Edinburgh, but
there's no talk-scot and everyone is on talk-gb.

Having said that, we also discussed having a mapping party in/around
Penicuik on April 10th, so for anyone in central Scotland/visiting the area
then I think Bob will be sticking the details for that on the Edinburgh page
on the wiki.


-dair
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Re: [Talk-GB] Adding blocks of payphones

[Dair Grant]

Mike wrote:

> What's the best way to add blocks of payphones to the map?  I assume adding
> each one would be crazy.  I've looked at the tagging and there doesn't appear
> to be a way to tag blocks of phones.  How do people deal with this?

I tag them individually, as presumably you'll want to record the number for
each phone on the appropriate node?


-dair
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[Talk-GB] Birmingham Apostrophes

[Dair Grant]

Hi,

Mappers in Birmingham might need to revisit some streets shortly:

  

It does seem a bit back to front - "we are constantly getting residents
asking for apostrophes to be put back in" somehow turns into it being a good
idea to take them all out...


-dair
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