Re: [Talk-GB] UK Project of the week - trace a village off of OSSV?, (Kai Krueger)
On 6 Jun 2010, at 22:31, Matt Amos wrote: +1... or -1 as well? not sure how the arithmetic of these is supposed to work. anyway, i agree with phil. cheers, matt On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 10:13 PM, Phil James peerja...@googlemail.com wrote: At risk of being a fly in the ointment, judging by the largely favourable responses to this idea, I for one would like to register myself as -1. Rant Please don't map an area if you are not familiar with it. I have done some armchair mapping, but only where I am familiar with the area, and feel I can add value to the data I am entering. If you are that desperate for a 'complete' map, go out and do more surveying, or just use OS or other commercially available products. I just feel that blatant, blind copying of OS data is prostituting what I thought Open Street Map was meant to be about./Rant OK, I've got my tin hat on: standing by for incoming... ;-) My strategy is to pick on an area (the four more easterly Suffolk districts initially in my case) and first ensure that all the roads from OS Streetview and OS Locator are included by tracing (I am a good way through that work now). When I have all of the OS road data into OSM I will then promote it within the local papers, both to let people know that it is there and to encourage people to use it, but also to encourage people to fill in the details. I will then fill in the pedestrian and cycling routes for individual places opportunistically when I get the chance to visit the place with a cycle and will be able to add this additional data in a single trip. Personally I think we will get a much better and more complete map faster by using all available resources; when people start using it then their will be increasing interest in fixing any omissions. So.. I think my recommendation is 'stick to your local area but greatly increase your definition of what is local to encompass at least one district or borough, and yes, do use the OS data that is available and then supplement it with the odd day-out to fill in more detail'. When you have completed your local districts then consider adopting a further one but preferably one that you know to some extent. As a company, ITO is very keen indeed to get full UK coverage of the road, pedestrian, cycle networks and schools etc into OSM, in particular for urban areas. We will be producing more tools over the coming weeks to help identify the level of completeness for different places, trends in completeness and others to help increase completeness. Regards, Peter Miller Phil. talk-gb-requ...@openstreetmap.org wrote: -- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 06 Jun 2010 12:07:33 +0100 From: Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com Subject: [Talk-GB] UK Project of the week - trace a village off of OSSV? To: 'talk-gb' talk-gb@openstreetmap.org Message-ID: 4c0b8175.30...@gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hello everyone, I would like to suggest as a sort of Project of the week for the UK for people to pick a random town or village somewhere in the UK that so far has poor coverage and trace it's roads from OS OpenData StreetView. Despite the various claims over the years that the UK road will be road complete by the end of the year, the UK is still a far distance off of that target. I have heard the numbers that so far we have on the order of 50% of named roads (people who are working on OS - OSM comparisons please correct me if I am wrong). Which is by no means a small feat of achieving, but also not as high as one would like it to be. So let us try and accelerate this a bit by everyone picking a small random town or village somewhere in the UK and trace the roads from StreetView. It probably only takes about 10 - 20 minutes for a small village and even a small town isn't too bad to do (if the weather is bad and you can't go out). So with the help of OS data, we can get a big step closer to where we would like to be and use it as a basis to continue to improve beyond the quality of OS data or any other commercial map provider. (If you are convinced already, then no need to read the rest of the email) I know that many people are opposed to armchair mapping or imports (and btw I am not proposing a full scale import here, but manual tracing instead) and so I'd like to counter some of the arguments most likely going to be brought up against this sort of non local tracing: 1) OS data might have mistakes, be outdated and generally not as good as what OSM aims for: Yes, no doubt OS has errors and can be outdated in many places by a couple of years ( I have found more than enough of those myself). Furthermore, all of the OS products released lack many of the properties we are interested in like one way roads, turn and other restrictions,
Re: [Talk-GB] UK Project of the week - trace a village off of OSSV?, (Kai Krueger)
At risk of being a fly in the ointment, judging by the largely favourable responses to this idea, I for one would like to register myself as -1. Rant Please don't map an area if you are not familiar with it. I have done some armchair mapping, but only where I am familiar with the area, and feel I can add value to the data I am entering. If you are that desperate for a 'complete' map, go out and do more surveying, or just use OS or other commercially available products. I just feel that blatant, blind copying of OS data is prostituting what I thought Open Street Map was meant to be about./Rant OK, I've got my tin hat on: standing by for incoming... ;-) Phil. talk-gb-requ...@openstreetmap.org wrote: -- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 06 Jun 2010 12:07:33 +0100 From: Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com Subject: [Talk-GB] UK Project of the week - trace a village off of OSSV? To: 'talk-gb' talk-gb@openstreetmap.org Message-ID: 4c0b8175.30...@gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hello everyone, I would like to suggest as a sort of Project of the week for the UK for people to pick a random town or village somewhere in the UK that so far has poor coverage and trace it's roads from OS OpenData StreetView. Despite the various claims over the years that the UK road will be road complete by the end of the year, the UK is still a far distance off of that target. I have heard the numbers that so far we have on the order of 50% of named roads (people who are working on OS - OSM comparisons please correct me if I am wrong). Which is by no means a small feat of achieving, but also not as high as one would like it to be. So let us try and accelerate this a bit by everyone picking a small random town or village somewhere in the UK and trace the roads from StreetView. It probably only takes about 10 - 20 minutes for a small village and even a small town isn't too bad to do (if the weather is bad and you can't go out). So with the help of OS data, we can get a big step closer to where we would like to be and use it as a basis to continue to improve beyond the quality of OS data or any other commercial map provider. (If you are convinced already, then no need to read the rest of the email) I know that many people are opposed to armchair mapping or imports (and btw I am not proposing a full scale import here, but manual tracing instead) and so I'd like to counter some of the arguments most likely going to be brought up against this sort of non local tracing: 1) OS data might have mistakes, be outdated and generally not as good as what OSM aims for: Yes, no doubt OS has errors and can be outdated in many places by a couple of years ( I have found more than enough of those myself). Furthermore, all of the OS products released lack many of the properties we are interested in like one way roads, turn and other restrictions, POIs, foot and cycle ways and all the other things that make OSM data such a rich and valuable dataset. So yes, the OS data will clearly not replace any of the traditional OSM surveying techniques or be the end of things. But it can be a great basis to build upon. As a comparison, have a look (assuming you have a timecapsal ;-)) at what the data of e.g. central London looked like in 2007. It already had surprisingly many roads, but hardly any POIs or other properties that we aim for now. Most of that came later in many iterations of improvement. A single pass of OSM surveying is not any better than the OS data per se. Also given that the errors introduced by tracing OS data are exactly the same type of errors introduced by manual OSM surveying, i.e. misspellings in roads, missing roads, outdated roads, ... We need to have the tools to deal with this kind of maintenance anyway. It is the iterations that make OSM data what it is, not the first pass ground survey. Creating a blanket base layer from OS data allows us to much better focus on the aspects that do distinguish us from every other map data provider with having to waste as little as possible resources on the stuff everyone else has too. 2) large scale imports and tracing hinders community growth: This perhaps is the more important of the two arguments, as indeed what distinguishes us from everyone else is the community and without the community and its constant iterations and improvements, OSM data will bit rot just as much as all other data. However I don't think there is any clear evidence either way of what non local mapping does to communities and it remains hotly debated. The negative effects claimed are usually of the form a) The area looks complete, there is nothing more to do, so why bother. Or, it isn't as much fun to add a POI than a whole new village on a blank canvas. b) I put in all this effort into mapping an area
Re: [Talk-GB] UK Project of the week - trace a village off of OSSV?, (Kai Krueger)
+1... or -1 as well? not sure how the arithmetic of these is supposed to work. anyway, i agree with phil. cheers, matt On Sun, Jun 6, 2010 at 10:13 PM, Phil James peerja...@googlemail.com wrote: At risk of being a fly in the ointment, judging by the largely favourable responses to this idea, I for one would like to register myself as -1. Rant Please don't map an area if you are not familiar with it. I have done some armchair mapping, but only where I am familiar with the area, and feel I can add value to the data I am entering. If you are that desperate for a 'complete' map, go out and do more surveying, or just use OS or other commercially available products. I just feel that blatant, blind copying of OS data is prostituting what I thought Open Street Map was meant to be about./Rant OK, I've got my tin hat on: standing by for incoming... ;-) Phil. talk-gb-requ...@openstreetmap.org wrote: -- Message: 1 Date: Sun, 06 Jun 2010 12:07:33 +0100 From: Kai Krueger kakrue...@gmail.com Subject: [Talk-GB] UK Project of the week - trace a village off of OSSV? To: 'talk-gb' talk-gb@openstreetmap.org Message-ID: 4c0b8175.30...@gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Hello everyone, I would like to suggest as a sort of Project of the week for the UK for people to pick a random town or village somewhere in the UK that so far has poor coverage and trace it's roads from OS OpenData StreetView. Despite the various claims over the years that the UK road will be road complete by the end of the year, the UK is still a far distance off of that target. I have heard the numbers that so far we have on the order of 50% of named roads (people who are working on OS - OSM comparisons please correct me if I am wrong). Which is by no means a small feat of achieving, but also not as high as one would like it to be. So let us try and accelerate this a bit by everyone picking a small random town or village somewhere in the UK and trace the roads from StreetView. It probably only takes about 10 - 20 minutes for a small village and even a small town isn't too bad to do (if the weather is bad and you can't go out). So with the help of OS data, we can get a big step closer to where we would like to be and use it as a basis to continue to improve beyond the quality of OS data or any other commercial map provider. (If you are convinced already, then no need to read the rest of the email) I know that many people are opposed to armchair mapping or imports (and btw I am not proposing a full scale import here, but manual tracing instead) and so I'd like to counter some of the arguments most likely going to be brought up against this sort of non local tracing: 1) OS data might have mistakes, be outdated and generally not as good as what OSM aims for: Yes, no doubt OS has errors and can be outdated in many places by a couple of years ( I have found more than enough of those myself). Furthermore, all of the OS products released lack many of the properties we are interested in like one way roads, turn and other restrictions, POIs, foot and cycle ways and all the other things that make OSM data such a rich and valuable dataset. So yes, the OS data will clearly not replace any of the traditional OSM surveying techniques or be the end of things. But it can be a great basis to build upon. As a comparison, have a look (assuming you have a timecapsal ;-)) at what the data of e.g. central London looked like in 2007. It already had surprisingly many roads, but hardly any POIs or other properties that we aim for now. Most of that came later in many iterations of improvement. A single pass of OSM surveying is not any better than the OS data per se. Also given that the errors introduced by tracing OS data are exactly the same type of errors introduced by manual OSM surveying, i.e. misspellings in roads, missing roads, outdated roads, ... We need to have the tools to deal with this kind of maintenance anyway. It is the iterations that make OSM data what it is, not the first pass ground survey. Creating a blanket base layer from OS data allows us to much better focus on the aspects that do distinguish us from every other map data provider with having to waste as little as possible resources on the stuff everyone else has too. 2) large scale imports and tracing hinders community growth: This perhaps is the more important of the two arguments, as indeed what distinguishes us from everyone else is the community and without the community and its constant iterations and improvements, OSM data will bit rot just as much as all other data. However I don't think there is any clear evidence either way of what non local mapping does to communities and it remains hotly debated. The negative effects claimed are usually of the form a) The area looks complete, there is nothing more
Re: [Talk-GB] UK Project of the week - trace a village off of OSSV?, (Kai Krueger)
On 6 June 2010 22:13, Phil James peerja...@googlemail.com wrote: ...I just feel that blatant, blind copying of OS data is prostituting what I thought Open Street Map was meant to be about./Rant OK, I've got my tin hat on: standing by for incoming... ;-) Phil. I've got a lot of sympathy for that view. The UK map owes a huge amount to individuals trudging along the streets and footpaths/paths/etc of Britain. Mapping Parties have created community, and were responsible for the detailed mapping of many areas. But. OpenStreetMap is a project to create and provide free geographic data, such as streets maps, to anyone who wants them. That is why I contribute. Blatant, blind, copying of OS Data allows us to provide more detailed geographic data which satisfies the aim of the project. The OS data is been treated as a replacement and hard work isnt being deleted. The OS data is only being used to add data that is not currently present, or to mark up blunders. I have no emotional attachment to the data gathering process, whether it be Mapping Parties, Yahoo tracing, or imports. They are simply a means to an end, to be discarded if a better method comes along. The big question is whether importing OS Data means we'll never see the addition of data normally providing by OpenStreetMap streetwalkers. I'd like to think that an almost complete Streetmap will mean a massive increase in use of OpenStreetMap and those new users will add the missing POI. Jason ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] UK Project of the week - trace a village off of OSSV?, (Kai Krueger)
On 7 June 2010 05:18, Jason Cunningham jamicu...@googlemail.com wrote: The OS data is been treated as a replacement and hard work isnt being deleted. The OS data is only being used to add data that is not currently present, or to mark up blunders. Oops, That should have read The OS data is not being treated as a replacement. Thats what happens if you been up all night looking for bats! I'm now now off to get a good days sleep. Jason ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
