Re: [Talk-us] Key:man_made... Outdated language?

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Fairhurst writes:
 > Joshua Houston wrote:
 > > It occurred to me that "man_made" is an outdated term that should be 
 > > phased out from OpenStreetMap language.
 > 
 > FWIW, the lingua franca of OSM tagging is British English: so, colour rather
 > than color, and so on.
 > 
 > man_made is possibly not too different. I can see how it might sound jarring
 > to US ears

Some of us remember that women are humans, too.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Beware Pokemon users

[Russ Nelson]

Bill Ricker writes:
 > The PokeStop was at our exact target,  "1899 MIT Observatory site" which is
 > moderately well known (on the park map, in FourSquare). [1]

 > http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/944663159#map=19/42.44109/-71.08359=D

https://www.ingress.com/intel?pll=42.441303,-71.085092

 > This six year old OSM "man made/man mad/Survey point" is the only online
 > reference to this point i've found ... aside from the PokeGo Gym ... for
 > this disk.

 > http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/6007454#map=16/42.4433/-71.0844=D

https://www.ingress.com/intel?pll=42.441213,-71.084321

They're Ingress portals, well-known to be the source of Pokestops. You
won't be able to visit those links unless you sign up for Ingress,
just sayin'.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Beware Pokemon users

[Russ Nelson]

moltonel 3x Combo writes:
 > While this is only an anecdotal result, there are clearly a lot more
 > spawns on this walk than in the surrounding area (I regularly get
 > 10-15 spawns on this 700m footway, but only 1-2 covering the same
 > distance along the primary to get there).
 > 
 > IMHO, the biggest news here is that (a subsidiary of) Google is using
 > OSM data in a high-profile product.

OR PoGo is using the fact that a bunch of people walk that way playing
Pokemon Go than other places.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] USGS Large-Scale Imagery degraded this month :(

[Russ Nelson]

Paul Johnson writes:
 > On Sun, Dec 18, 2016 at 1:59 PM, Ian Dees  wrote:
 > >
 > > I will try to contact a couple of the folks I know at USGS (maybe they're
 > > still on this list and could respond?), but it might be the case that we
 > > need to request the imagery and build the desired layer ourselves...
 > 
 > Sounds like a plan, if only to save this valuable service for posterity.
 > I'm sure those familiar with me at this point can go ahead and fill in
 > their own frustrated and politically fueled rant about my feelings on this
 > even being something we need to be talking about now...

Does this service degradation apply to the USGS Topographic maps, too?
I've noticed that they load slowly and sometimes not at all.

I can put up some money, if that's what it takes.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] .... finding areas that are underserved

[Russ Nelson]

Markus Fischer writes:
 > I am new to this and the area where I live is very well mapped
 > (probably due to high density of tech workers). Where do I go to
 > start mapping areas that are less well mapped (me aimlessly poking
 > at this does not sound like a good approach)?

Oh, and you can always do some work in Pennsylvania. Here, let's pick
a place at random, Thompson,
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/41.8666/-75.5154

Look at Willow Street against Bing aerial imagery. It's badly aligned.
Look at Main Street. Also badly aligned.
Look at the cemetery west of Main. It's not on the map.
Jefferson, East Jackson, Water, all badly aligned.
Four bodies of water north of the village, all missing.
A little creek coming in from the west and going into a mill pond.

There's LOTS to do, and you don't need to have ever gone to the
place. You can just see it from the air. You can even see where an
intersection has traffic lights -- the aerials are that good.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] .... finding areas that are underserved

[Russ Nelson]

Markus Fischer writes:
 > I am new to this and the area where I live is very well mapped (probably due 
 > to high density of tech workers). Where do I go to start mapping areas that 
 > are less well mapped (me aimlessly poking at this does not sound like a good 
 > approach)?

Any place there aren't a lot of people.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] MapRoulette Rail Crossings challenge

[Russ Nelson]

Martijn van Exel writes:
 > Thanks Mike! Looking forward to fixing more of these. I hope others do too!
 > 
 > On Sun, Oct 30, 2016 at 6:33 AM, Mike N  wrote:
 > 
 > > I've brought back the MapRoulette US Railway crossings challenge with a
 > > slight difference - the remaining tasks are derived from a topological look
 > > at  the OSM data.
 > >
 > > [Crossing Ways: Highway-Railway, US] http://maproulette.org/map/980

Is there a way to limit the results to a bounding polygon? Or if not
that, then a bounding box?

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Way to message a bunch of users at once?

[Russ Nelson]

Jonathan Schleuss writes:
 > Is there a way to email multiple users at once?

Yes and no. I created a hack to mail to geolocated OSM users, but I
feel disinclined to share that. Of course the board of directors can
authorize the sysadmins to send bulk email, but that happens only
rarely.

I designed a system for communicating with users, but never
implemented it. Since it's opt-in, it's not spam. The idea is simple:
allow people to receive notices posted via the OSM user interface to a
particular lat/lon. They do so by adding one or more bounding boxes
for their areas of interest to their OSM profile. If the notice's
location falls in their bounding box, they get the notice in their OSM
Inbox.  Not hard to implement if you know or want to learn
Ruby. Neither of those applies to me.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Proposed import cleanup: NYSDEClands

[Russ Nelson]

Kevin Kenny writes:
 > The rule for coalescing would be to group by facility number, so all
 > the parcels of Burnt-Rossman Hills State Forest would be one relation,
 > while the ones of adjacent Mallet Pond State Forest would be another.

How's that going to work where people (e.g. me) have made changes to
the multipolygon? E.g. https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/32036186
where I didn't want to duplicate the "landuse=forest" as I was adding
landuse= or natural= to its borders?

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] mapRe: (Second attempt) Potential data source: Adirondack Park Freshwater Wetlands

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
 > I have zero knowledge about the Adirondack[s]

I live here. Imagine a park half the size of Austria, with about 130K
people living in it, and 200K people visiting it. Give about 30K of
those people Internet access. Oh, and there are practically no nerds
living in the park, because there are no high-tech jobs.

It's unlikely that anybody will do much in the Adirondacks whether
there's an import or not. If there's an import, at least there will be
something. Something is better than nothing, because at least it's
less wrong.

Just do the import, Kevin.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Railway = racetrack ?!

[Russ Nelson]

Mike N writes:
 > 
 > I've never noticed this sort of oval railyard in the US before.   At 
 >It seems to be some sort of grain depot, but that's the fanciest rail 
 > network I've ever seen for a grain depot.
 > 
 > http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/36.2834/-89.1455

I've seen other Ethanol plants that have similar setups. Yours is only
served by one railroad, but the one that I saw flying cross-country is
located at the junction of two railroads and has connections to both.

Here's another one, in Northern NY:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/43.47883/-76.62964

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Proposal: Sunset ref=* on ways in, favor of relations

[Russ Nelson]

Paul Johnson writes:
 > I was really hoping the latest carto would have included relations and
 > graphical shields myself, since that's almost a throwaway ticklist item for
 > maps (and particularly online maps) the world over these days.

I took the time to create relations for all of my county's routes
because I wanted to see them rendered with graphical shields.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Downgrading 'motorways' around toll plazas?

[Russ Nelson]

Paul Johnson writes:
 > Not looking at this specific example, I might consider a a split to
 > multiple roadways between the medians and a potential downgrade to
 > motorway_link for gates that expect you to stop (such as cash/coin gates
 > versus ETC gates) or are primarily used to toll an offramp/onramp pair of
 > teapot handle ramps.

Is he possibly trying to get OSMAnd (and other routers) to route you
through the main highway? I've seen it do some funky things, like
route you down an exit ramp, through the main road there, and back up
the entrance ramp onto the highway.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Downgrading 'motorways' around toll plazas?

[Russ Nelson]

Jack Burke writes:
 > The Florida Turnpike is a toll road (highway=motorway in OSM) with a
 > standard 70 mph speed limit that drops to 25 mph a few dozen yards before
 > the toll plazas (even for SunPass users).  Having driven on it for years, I
 > would never consider any section of it to be anything less than motorway,
 > even the low-speed toll plazas.

Yeah ... and it should be sufficient (thinking about my previus
message about routing) to lower the speed limit to the plaza
speed. What routing program is going to send somebody through a lower
speed road?

highway=trunk should be set back to highway=motorway.

Besides that, looking at the two toll booths at the Quickway / Thruway
intersection in Harriman, NY, I don't see a big problem with mapping
separate ways for each route through the toll booths. I wouldn't do it
that way myself, but I don't think I object strongly enough to do the
work to revert it back to a single way with lanes=6, 3, or whatever.

Is tunnel=yes optimum for a road that goes through a building? That's
what he's tagged the toll gates as.

But more than any of that, he needs to be responsive to questions
about his edits, and not dismiss concerns.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] New MapRoulette challenge - fix railway crossings

[Russ Nelson]

Clifford Snow writes:
  Anyone want to help on
  http://maproulette.org/#t=fix-railway-crossings/057936J
  
  The rail line run right down the middle of the street. There doesn't appear
  to be an official crossing.
  
  An onsite visit might be in order. Too bad, I was staying just across the
  river a week ago.

Yep, it looks like street-running. I don't see much guidance in the
wiki, other than to suggest that street-running tracks should use the
same nodes as the highway they share. Is it a crossing? Every
cross-street is a level_crossing, even if it's a T as near the location you
cite. I've edited it accordingly.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Railway crossing challenge for MapRoulette

[Russ Nelson]

You might want to remove the NY FRA data from the challenge. I've
already gone through that dataset and added everything that was still
being used as a crossing. Save people from looking at data that is all
correct (modulo my misteaks, of course).
-russ

Martijn van Exel writes:
  Okay, thanks, I’ve been preferring level_crossing myself. 
  
  I will publish the ~90k tasks shortly! Will let you know when it’s done.
  
  Martijn
  
   On Jul 6, 2015, at 9:19 AM, Richard Welty rwe...@averillpark.net wrote:
   
   On 7/6/15 11:02 AM, Clifford Snow wrote:
   From my read of our wiki and wikipedia, the correct term should be
   level_crossing. British English and all. 
   level_crossing is correct. it's what i've been using for years.
   
   richard
   
   -- 
   rwe...@averillpark.net
   Averill Park Networking - GIS  IT Consulting
   OpenStreetMap - PostgreSQL - Linux
   Java - Web Applications - Search
   
   
   ___
   Talk-us mailing list
   Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
   https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
  
  
  ___
  Talk-us mailing list
  Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
  https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Railway crossing challenge for MapRoulette

[Russ Nelson]

Mike N writes:
  On 7/8/2015 2:43 PM, Greg Morgan wrote:
   I see the why Martijn would be hard pressed to exclude crossings that
   are already in the OSM.  He's using the Federal Railway Administration,
   FRA, data as a punch list in this challenge.  Perhaps you can add
   additional features to a crossing in this challenge, if you know that
   bells and whistles exist at a crossing.
  
 I was thinking of NY State for example, where all crossings already 
  exist in OSM.  Those would just be empty tasks.   Since they're all 
  points, it should be easy to do a pre-conflation to exclude existing 
  matches.
  
But I haven't looked at FRA data - perhaps it doesn't include GPS 
  location?

It includes everything but 1) the kitchen sink, and 2) whether the
railroad has been abandoned already. :-) The majority of the crossings
that I looked at were for driveway or farm crossings. I added the ones
that look like they still existed, with blocking in the gauge and/or
wheel tracks going up to the crossing.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] cycle.travel US bike routing, and unreviewed rural TIGER

[Russ Nelson]

There's really two kinds of cycling: including trails and unpaved
roads because your bicycle has nobblies and springs, and not. The
first are fine with such roads, and the second very much not. I've
done both types of cycling, and with high pressure narrow tyres
(that's a nod to Richard, so he feels more at home here), gravel roads
are worse than a boot to the head.

Harald Kliems writes:
  Richard, I would somewhat caution against penalizing unpaved roads too
  much. In many areas of the US they actually make wonderful cycling routes,
  whereas the paved alternatives are high traffic and unpleasant to ride on.
  Of course, proper smoothness tagging would help but that will be a long way
  coming. Until then you could consider a user setting to avoid/not avoid
  unpaved roads.
   Harald.
  
  On Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 2:48 PM Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.net
  wrote:
  
   Just as a postscript to this discussion I thought I'd cite an example area.
   If you look here, in Georgia:
  
  http://cycle.travel/map?lat=31.9023lon=-84.0398zoom=14
  
   you'll see that most of the roads are unreviewed TIGER residentials. Of
   those, these are adjacent to each other:
  
   http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359782 - good tarmac, should be
   highway=tertiary
   http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359913 - unpaved road;
   highway=unclassified, surface=unpaved
   http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359784 - probably tertiary, but lousy
   geometry at the S
   http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359783 - whoops, where did the
   connectivity go?
  
   All of this is trivially fixable but right now there's no way of using them
   for routing or sensible cartography. Do dive in - the cycle.travel
   rendering
   makes it obvious which bits need fixing, and you learn to identify the
   roads
   which are likely to be paved through roads and therefore targets to fix.
   It's quite good fun. :)
  
   cheers
   Richard
  
  
  
  
  
   --
   View this message in context:
   http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/cycle-travel-US-bike-routing-and-unreviewed-rural-TIGER-tp5848084p5848589.html
   Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
  
   ___
   Talk-us mailing list
   Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
   https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
  
  div dir=ltrRichard, I would somewhat caution against penalizing unpaved 
  roads too much. In many areas of the US they actually make wonderful cycling 
  routes, whereas the paved alternatives are high traffic and unpleasant to 
  ride on. Of course, proper smoothness tagging would help but that will be a 
  long way coming. Until then you could consider a user setting to avoid/not 
  avoid unpaved roads.brdiv Harald./div/divbrdiv 
  class=gmail_quotediv dir=ltrOn Fri, Jun 19, 2015 at 2:48 PM Richard 
  Fairhurst lt;a 
  href=mailto:rich...@systemed.net;rich...@systemed.net/agt; 
  wrote:br/divblockquote class=gmail_quote style=margin:0 0 0 
  .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1exJust as a postscript to 
  this discussion I thought I#39;d cite an example area.br
  If you look here, in Georgia:br
  br
     a 
  href=http://cycle.travel/map?lat=31.9023amp;lon=-84.0398amp;zoom=14; 
  rel=noreferrer 
  target=_blankhttp://cycle.travel/map?lat=31.9023amp;lon=-84.0398amp;zoom=14/abr
  br
  you#39;ll see that most of the roads are unreviewed TIGER residentials. 
  Ofbr
  those, these are adjacent to each other:br
  br
  a href=http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359782; rel=noreferrer 
  target=_blankhttp://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359782/a - good tarmac, 
  should bebr
  highway=tertiarybr
  a href=http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359913; rel=noreferrer 
  target=_blankhttp://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359913/a - unpaved 
  road;br
  highway=unclassified, surface=unpavedbr
  a href=http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359784; rel=noreferrer 
  target=_blankhttp://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359784/a - probably 
  tertiary, but lousybr
  geometry at the Sbr
  a href=http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359783; rel=noreferrer 
  target=_blankhttp://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9359783/a - whoops, where 
  did thebr
  connectivity go?br
  br
  All of this is trivially fixable but right now there#39;s no way of using 
  thembr
  for routing or sensible cartography. Do dive in - the a 
  href=http://cycle.travel; rel=noreferrer target=_blankcycle.travel/a 
  renderingbr
  makes it obvious which bits need fixing, and you learn to identify the 
  roadsbr
  which are likely to be paved through roads and therefore targets to fix.br
  It#39;s quite good fun. :)br
  br
  cheersbr
  Richardbr
  br
  br
  br
  br
  br
  --br
  View this message in context: a 
  href=http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/cycle-travel-US-bike-routing-and-unreviewed-rural-TIGER-tp5848084p5848589.html;
   rel=noreferrer 
  target=_blankhttp://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/cycle-travel-US-bike-routing-and-unreviewed-rural-TIGER-tp5848084p5848589.html/abr
  Sent from the USA 

Re: [Talk-us] cycle.travel US bike routing, and unreviewed rural TIGER

[Russ Nelson]

Minh Nguyen writes:
  You aren't alone. I stopped bothering with tiger:reviewed tags back in 
  the Potlatch 1 days. It just isn't a well-designed tag:
  
  - not very discoverable to mappers who weren't around in 2008

Makes ways a sickly yellow if you edit using JOSM.

  - doesn't say whether the names, classification, or geometry was 
  reviewed, or whether the review covered the entire way

I remove it when I've checked (usually via field survey, but sometimes
when someone else that I know has been there) that the name is
correct, and ensured that the geometry is correct. I used to just
remove tiger:reviewed, but now I remove all the tiger: tags.

  But I think it'd be unfortunate to totally discount
  tiger:reviewed=no ways.

I think the usual thing to do is check to see if DaveHansenTiger is
still the owner.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] perceptions of OHM and other similar projects

[Russ Nelson]

Marc Gemis writes:
  On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 7:51 PM, Bryce Nesbitt bry...@obviously.com wrote:
  
   The razed sections of the abandoned railway need not confuse anybody.
  
  Or are you requesting a exception for railways ?

Yes, because a railway went from point A to point B, where you can see
it at point A and point B, and the next quesion in any map user's mind
is going to be Well how did it get from point A to point B, and is it
possible to find any remains in-between? Since the answer will often
be yes, it makes sense to leave them in OSM.

I don't really understand this concern with deleting dismantled
railroads from OSM. It doesn't make the database any smaller, since
they'll still be there as a deleted way. In fact it makes the database
larger to indicate that the way is deleted.

I don't see how OSM is improved by deleting specialized data that
isn't even visible on the general map! If you want to clean up the
world, go outside with your GPS and pick up some litter.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] perceptions of OHM and other similar projects

[Russ Nelson]

Marc Gemis writes:
  Sorry, but I'm not trolling. I just want to understand why the railway
  people should get a different treatment.

Because there is a rendering of the data (openrailwaymap.org and the
ITO specialist renderings), and because people CARE.

  If you're argument is to better understand why the landscape is like it is
  now, then that is also true for razed streets [1]  where the road used to
  come closer to the buildings in the north of it,
  or razed buildings [2] where the open area in the forest used to be a
  holiday center.

That sounds like an excellent idea! And those streets can be rendered
on openrazedstreetmap.org and on openbuildings.org. Trouble is that
there isn't really anybody who cares about that. But feel free to add
razed streets (I do), and razed buildings. There's a few railway=rail
sidings which would make more sense if you could see the buildings
they used to serve.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap

[Russ Nelson]

Hans De Kryger writes:
  On Apr 2, 2015 7:08 AM, EthnicFood IsGreat ethnicfoodisgr...@gmail.com
  wrote:
  
   It's apparent to me that consensus will never be reached on whether or
  not abandoned railroads belong in OSM (at least the way it is currently
  configured), given the strong feelings on both sides of the issue.  That's
  why I think moving them to OHM is a good compromise.  I don't like it, but
  I would rather do that than see this data lost forever.  At least in OHM,
  the data still lives, and can always be moved back to OSM later if a
  solution to the problem of historic features can be found.
  
  +1

Okay, but Hans, what Mark wrote is incoherent. The people who want to
delete the dismantled portions of abandoned railroads from OSM want to
delete them. Those of us who want the context of the dismantled
portions to stay next to the merely abandoned or disused portions, do
NOT want to delete them. This is a binary choice: stay or go. There is
no compromise. Framing the choice to delete them as a compromise is
simply a falsehood. With your +1, you are NOT COMPROMISING, you are
saying that true things in OSM should be deleted.

Let's just be clear on that: true things in OSM, which can often be
verified in the field, are being deleted, people are supporting
that, and it's NOT A COMPROMISE.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

[Russ Nelson]

Simon Poole writes:
  The wiki already explains: they hold a trademark for GR which makes
  using the official names of the routes essentially impossible in and

Perhaps French trademark law is different than US trademark law, but
in the US, you can *always* use a trademark truthfully. Thus, you can
call Coke-a-Cola Coke-a-Cola all day long and they can't stop you.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] USA Rail: Calling all OSM railfans! (especially in California)

[Russ Nelson]

John F. Eldredge writes:
  Note that there is a long tradition of encyclopedias, maps, and
  other copyrighted sources deliberately including some bogus facts
  as a way of detecting plagiarism. These bogus facts don't exist in
  real life, only in the copyrighted document, so having them show up
  in a competing document proves that copying took place.

Yes, and if you use a map properly, you find this:

From http://russnelson.com/#network :

Rob Logan found a wonderful poster entitled New York State
Railroad Network. It was published by Frank E. Richards, Phoenix,
New York, and copyrighted 1958 (fair use claimed). Prepared by
R. J. Rayback, and drawn by J. A. Peterson. I did a five-part scan
of it and stitched it together badly (yuck). Still, it's better
than nothing. There's a small one (1333x1200, small is relative)
and a very large one (x6000 pixels, 3MB). Mapmakers
traditionally insert a small discrepency into their maps so they
can detect derivative works. I believe that I've found an error
which is likely their inserted discrepency. They claim that there
is a railroad heading east from Pavilion, NY. It would have to
cross an impossibly steep hill, and I can't find it on either
topographic maps or aerial photos. I contacted Virginia Rigoni,
Town of Pavilion Historian on 11/13/2005 and she assures me that
the only railroad in the town of Pavilion is the well-known
north/south BO line.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] CloudMade's ambassadors

[Russ Nelson]

Kate Chapman writes:
  Thanks for posting this. The first OSM person I ever met was Russ Nelson
  when he was a CloudMade ambassador. It was at a mapping party in Baltimore,
  that really is what sparked further involvement in OSM for me. Prior to
  that I did a bit of mapping in my neighborhood. Thanks Russ!

I met some neat people while a Cloudmade Ambassador!

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] perceptions of OHM and other similar projects

[Russ Nelson]

Mike  Dupont writes:
  On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 11:08 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
  
   If the two were layers in the same database, or if they have been
   tagged using railway=dismantled and railway=abandoned, then it's no
   problem to look at them, render them, edit them, analyze them
  
  
  I still dont understand why we dont support multiple layers. It would seem
  to be the most logical thing to do and the api could support that so simple
  clients could download a different layers each time.

The problem is keeping them in synch. If you have a node that
represents the same thing (e.g. the end of a bridge way), and it's in
two layers, what happens when somebody downloads layer 1, and moves
the node? How does it get updated in layer 2? Smarter people than me
have thought about it and seen worse problems.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

[Russ Nelson]

Minh Nguyen writes:
  On 2015-04-03 22:25, Russ Nelson wrote:
   Greg Morgan writes:
  * In my case, TIGER isn't all the that bad.
  
   In some NY counties, TIGER is very good. In other places it is like
   Stevie Wonder was in charge of quality control. What I've heard is
   that the maps they were digitizing off were of MUCH lower resolution
   than we have available now.
  
  I wonder if it was even about the resolution in some counties. It's as 
  if the data was traced off a cartogram, or maybe reconstructed from a 
  table of intersections.

Perhaps. There is definitely a trope that you see on TIGER data with
a lot of variance. It is a Y used at an intersection that really
should be a T. I know that when I see that trope, I'm gonna be editing
all the ways attached to it.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap

[Russ Nelson]

Serge Wroclawski writes:
  Propertly boundaries is something that people have wanted, and
  we've resisted putting in OSM, despite it being useful for a
  variety of people.

For much more practical reasons, mostly that they would blow up the
database and introduce a huge number of ways that every editor would
immediately add to the JOSM 'hide' list.

The scale is completely different. The number of railways tagged as
dismantled (or as abandoned which ought to be dismantled) is miniscule
in comparison.

  I see people who want to know what to do when they encounter a
  feature they can't see on the ground.

If it's not TIGER data and it has tags, leave it there. Seems like a
simple rule to me. If you don't understand why the editor added it,
ask them.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap

[Russ Nelson]

Brad Neuhauser writes:
  So, is the argument here that we should no longer delete features that no
  longer exist, just retag them? Is the argument that we generally should
  delete such features, but railways are a special case where we shouldn't?

Yes, they are, because railroads went continuously from point A to
point B, and they leave their mark on the world. Maybe you don't see
it. Maybe I don't see it when I add a railroad=dismantled. But maybe I
can USE THE MAP to do field work to find it. That's why I'm making a
fuss -- because having even dismantled railroads in OSM is
*useful*. It's useful to me, it's useful to railfans, it's useful to
rail-trail creators, it's useful to property managers, it's useful to
surveyors.

I don't understand why people are so eager to delete accurate and
useful data, that people have spent hours, days, weeks, months, years,
and decades adding. I have pre-OSM GPS tracks from mapping old
railroads that date from 2002. I've added them, painstakingly, one at
a time, and joined them into the existing data as appropriate. I've
been mapping railroads since before OSM was a gleam in Steve Coast's
eye.

If you want to know how serious abandonfans are, I've see people go
looking in farmer's fields with a metal detector looking for spikes,
and dig down 12 to find one. I've seen people go into a farmer's field
looking for chunks of coal that fell off coal trains. I've knocked on
people's doors to ask them if they know anything about the railroad in
their backyard.

The evidence of dismantled railroads is out there, and it should be in
OSM to help people find it.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

[Russ Nelson]

Greg Morgan writes:
  * In my case, TIGER isn't all the that bad.

In some NY counties, TIGER is very good. In other places it is like
Stevie Wonder was in charge of quality control. What I've heard is
that the maps they were digitizing off were of MUCH lower resolution
than we have available now.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
  isn't us who must move our flag to make it (even) easier to swamp us
  with (often low quality) third-party data.

You're blowing smoke in a no-smoking zone, Frederik. Looking at BNSF's
system map (or calling up BNSF's public affairs office) to see what
they call their subdivisions is the higest possible quality data,
straight from the horse's mouth. From what you wrote below, it sounds
like you would rather we go out and ask random people Hey, what does
BNSF call this railroad line? You want low quality data, we can get
it that way if you want, but every railroad subdivision will be called
I don't know, the train tracks, the railroad, or BNSF (from
the slightly more knowledgable ones), pick one.

I can try it in Potsdam if you want, but it would just embarrass you
further. I am happy to grant that in the usual case, you may be
correct, but in this case, you're making the late April Fools joke.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] perceptions of OHM and other similar projects

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Welty writes:
  [OHM is] a real database, using the OSM software stack. it's live, and you
  can pan around in it and not see much because it's pretty sparse.

The problem, as I see it, is that railroads are a contiguous
whole. Yet some people seem to think that a railroad should be shopped
up along its length, with part of it appearing in OSM (where you can
see it on the ground), and part of it appearing in OHM (where it has
been bulldozed away).

If the two were layers in the same database, or if they have been
tagged using railway=dismantled and railway=abandoned, then it's no
problem to look at them, render them, edit them, analyze them. But
that's not how it works. The databases are completely separate from
each other. An edit in one isn't made in the other.

So let's say that I'm out doing field work with my GPS (Hi,
Frederik!!), and I see that the railroad that I *thought* was distinct
from the highway, actually *is* the highway. Not dismantled, it's now
the road. So I have to go into OHM, delete it from there, go into OSM,
and add the highway to the railroad's relation.

Oh.

Crap.

Relations are completely broken. Relations only work within the same
database. It becomes impossible to give a single referent to a
railroad, even if a substantial portion of it is still visible, or
even still has tracks.

Look at the West Side Railroad on the east side of Syracuse. There are
still tracks in Canal Street. Very well, that's in OSM tagged
disused. Further down Canal Street there are no tracks. So in OHM
tagged dismantled. East of Canal Street you can see the embankment,
so in OSM tagged abandoned.

I realize that some people just don't care about railroads. I'm 57, I
know what a foamer is, I try not to be one. All I want is to be left
alone with my model railroad to share with my fellow foamers. All I
ask is that you not delete abandoned railroads from OSM.

Please, if anybody thinks I'm being ridiculous, going overboard,
suggesting a strawman that nobody actually wants, please say so.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap

[Russ Nelson]

EthnicFood IsGreat writes:
  It's apparent to me that consensus will never be reached on whether or not
  abandoned railroads belong in OSM (at least the way it is currently
  configured), given the strong feelings on both sides of the issue.  That's
  why I think moving them to OHM is a good compromise.

In what way is giving the deletionists what they want a compromise??

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap

[Russ Nelson]

Greg Troxel writes:
  More seriously, a wave of deletionism is really bad for the project in
  terms of morale.

+1

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap

[Russ Nelson]

Mike N writes:
  On 4/1/2015 10:51 PM, Russ Nelson wrote:
   I don't have an awful lot of use of OpenHistoricalMap because it's a
   faux-layer.
  
  What if OpenRailwayMap could pull from OpenHistoricalMap to do a 
  complete rendering, even though it's a faux-layer?

Presumably they would do exactly that. The problem is that once you
have two different representations of the same thing, in separate
databases, they get out of synch with each other. Say that you're
trying to use OSMAnd to find where a railroad went out in the field
(which I do all the time). You get to a point where OSMAnd switches to
OHM, and OHM has gotten out of sync (say, because the aerial
photography got better). Now you're lost because the the railroad is
no longer connected. It's off wherever.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] USA Rail: Calling all OSM railfans! (especially in California)

[Russ Nelson]

Simon Poole writes:
  Am 02.04.2015 um 05:20 schrieb Russ Nelson:
   Maps with insufficient creative content to be
   copyrightable.
  
  They may exist, but are you seriously saying that we (as in individual
  mappers and the OSM community as a whole) should make that determination?

No, that would be up to a judge, and if you're talking to a judge,
you're already losing even if you're winning. No, my point was to make
the caution less absolute.

   There are maps which are canonical sources of facts about the world,
   such as a BNSF map naming subdivisions. No one can own a fact about
   the world, because it's a fact. Just like you can't patent math. Same
   idea. You can copyright a collection of facts. You can copyright the
   arrangement of facts. You can copy the presentation of facts. But you
   can't copyright the individual facts.
  
  While is true that you can't own a fact in isolation, the problem is
  they are rarely presented in that form.

I'll bet if you called up the railroad's public relations office and
said What do you call the line between towns X and Y?, they would be
happy to tell you. There seems to be a certain amount of anal
retentiveness around copyright, as if it is absolute protection
without restriction.

  What you seem to be saying in your above statement, followed by stevea's
  battle call to actually do so,  that wholesale extraction of facts from
  any source is unproblematic

I'm sorry if you think I said that. A typical railroad system map will
name two, three, ten or twenty lines. Said line names will be
uncreative and derivative (e.g. the line that runs through my town
goes up to the St. Lawrence River and is called the St. Lawrence
Subdivision).

Now, copying railroad logos to use as shields?? Absolutely not. Belt
and suspender lawyers will have advised their railroad customers to
claim their logos as both copyrighted works AND trademarks. Some
railroads are well-known to object to (say) their logo appearing on a
model railroad car. You could use the trademark without pause as a
shield, but I wouldn't advise using the logo on a shield without
permission.

Balance is needed, and I saw absolutely no balance in the posting I
was replying to.

  BTW you live in the country of software patents which -is-
  essentially patenting math.

BTW, you can't patent math. Seriously. Precedents out the wazoo.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap

[Russ Nelson]

Mark Bradley writes:
  Hello list.  I have been communicating with a mapper who says he has been
  deleting abandoned railroads (the ones where the infrastructure is totally
  removed).

Oh dear. The deletionists have migrated from Wikipedia to here. How do
we stop them? Isn't it bad enough that the main map doesn't render
abandoned railroads anymore? Now he has to be deleting them? Exactly
who are they hurting by keeping them in the database?

How about doing the *right* thing, and mark them as railway=razed or
railway=dismantled (I use the latter but I've seen the former).

  As the premise of OSM is to only map ground-verifiable features
  (other than certain boundaries), I didn't want to argue with him,

Oh, I'd be HAPPY to argue with him. I can point to all sorts of ways
to tell that a railroad used to go through, that most people don't
know about. Certain types of fenceposts, property lines that line up
with nothing but the railbed, back yards that are too deep, roads
that are S-shaped for no obvious reason, houses that line up with
nothing but the railbed. I could go on and on.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] USA Rail: Calling all OSM railfans! (especially in California)

[Russ Nelson]

Paul Norman writes:
  Without some kind of license giving permission, you cannot use other 
  maps with OSM.

April Fools! Yes, you can. There are many kinds of public domain maps
whose republication needs no license. For example, in the US all maps
published before the magic date, whatever year it is we're up to
now. Maps copyrighted but not renewed. Maps published without a
copyright before 1988. Maps with insufficient creative content to be
copyrightable.

There are maps which are canonical sources of facts about the world,
such as a BNSF map naming subdivisions. No one can own a fact about
the world, because it's a fact. Just like you can't patent math. Same
idea. You can copyright a collection of facts. You can copyright the
arrangement of facts. You can copy the presentation of facts. But you
can't copyright the individual facts.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap

[Russ Nelson]

Minh Nguyen writes:
  On the ground, meanwhile, you'd tend to find no trespassing signs
  on railbanked ROWs, no?

Railbanked railroads should always be tagged as railway=abandoned. The
whole point is that they *haven't* been dismantled or razed or
destroyed or whatever word you want to use for a railway that doesn't
exist anymore. Legally, it's still a railroad right-of-way whether it
has tracks or not. Even if a farmer has plowed it up, or someone has
built a house on it, it's still legally a railroad right-of-way.

Some dude in Whiteport, NY (right next to Whiteport School), thought
that the railroad behind his house had been dismantled / destroyed /
razed / whatever. He cut down the brush, and started mowing
it. Eventually he put an above-ground swimming pool on it. Poor
bastard now has a fence about five feet behind his house keeping him
off the railroad right-of-way, now part of the Wallkill Valley Trail.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap

[Russ Nelson]

Brad Neuhauser writes:
  I understand keeping a feature in OSM if there is a remnant of the
  railroad, but there are areas where everything has been replatted, regraded
  and redeveloped, yet there is still a razed feature in OSM (for one small
  example, see https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit?#map=16/38.8663/-94.7943).
  This seems like a good candidate for moving out of OSM to OHM.

What problem would be solved by this action? Making the map more
correct? But the map *already* doesn't render abandoned railways,
much less razed railways. It serves to make OpenRailwayMap less
correct. That can't be a good thing. It makes the ITO subject-specific
maps less correct. That can't be a good thing.

I can understand if someone deletes a railway by hitting the wrong
key. I can understand if someone deletes a railway that is tagged
incorrectly as disused or abandoned when it should be tagged as
dismantled. I can understand if somone goes to the location of an
abandoned railway, and doesn't see the evidence that an expert
sees. But surely the person who made those mistakes will not be
unhappy if his mistake gets reverted and the tagging (if incorrect)
gets fixed.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
  Hi,
  
  On 03/31/2015 08:04 AM, Natfoot wrote:
   There is so many situations where to his naked eye on the ground he may
   not be able to see it.  To a person like myself I can still find the
   signs on the earth of where the railroad once was.
  
  Then map the signs that *are*, but not the railroad which - as you
  correctly say - once *was*.

That doesn't make *any* sense, Frederik. The signs are only there
because the railroad was there. We are not making a map as a random
collection of fencelines, and embankments and cuts and
shadows-on-farmers-fields and trees-on-stone-walls. That's complete
nonsense. There *used* to be a railroad there and that's *why* there's
a fenceline and embankment etc.

Maps are for understanding, not collections of unrelated elements.

I don't have an awful lot of use of OpenHistoricalMap because it's a
faux-layer. OSM doesn't have layers (for better or worse), and trying
to create them by using a completely separate database is a purposeful
attempt to #FAIL. Since my goal isn't failure, but instead success,
we're going to keep dismantled railways in OSM.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] USA Rail: Calling all OSM railfans! (especially in California)

[Russ Nelson]

stevea writes:
  I have run into devotees of old_railway_operator=* and respect the 
  tag by leaving it be where I encounter it, though I don't go out of 
  my way to add it unless I have absolute positive knowledge of it 
  (rarely to never).

Yeah, it's an NE2 thing which he added automatically by changing the
name of abandoned railroads to old_railway_operator. He's technically
correct because the branch of a railroad, the name it goes by, is
often not the name of the company who operated it. The line that goes
south of Lake Ontario in NY was called the Hojack, but was operated
by New York Central.

It would be nice if map renderers, when presented with an abandoned
railroad that has no name, rather than follow the USGS practice of
saying Abandoned Railroad Bed, would look for name= first,
old_railway_operator= second, and only if those two are absent,
rendered the railway as a dotted line labeled Abandoned Railroad Bed
just like the USGS does.

  In California, rail is approximately early alpha.  For the USA as a 
  whole, I'd say rail is even before that, in an early development 
  phase.

New York rail is 99% done. I say 97% because I need to hit some
railroad yards in Buffalo still.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Boundaries and verifiability (was Re: Retagging hamlets in the US)

[Russ Nelson]

Serge Wroclawski writes:
  It's entirely possible that the names the locals use for that river
  differ from the  government dataset, in which case, OSM would prefer
  you use the local name as the primary name, and not the official one.

This is the USGS standard for naming in their topo maps.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Your opinion about SOTM US

[Russ Nelson]

stevea writes:
  but TIGER data in general just need serious and sustained attention 
  until consensus emerges that they don't.

What about this: I've noticed, at least in NY, that some of the
counties are excellent, and some are much less so. What about creating
a persistent tiling of the US which starts with county borders, and
splits the county up into sections which are managable in a half-hour's
time (say). The editor visits a site which accesses the JOSM remote
control protocol. They fix up the TIGER date and indicate Yes, I'm
done or Needs more work, and after a couple of Yes votes, it gets
taken out of rotation.

As a stetch goal, it could only give you tiles close to your home,
or allow you to specify a region of interest and only give you tiles
within that region.

Is anybody interested in using such a service?

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Your opinion about SOTM US

[Russ Nelson]

Alex Barth writes:
  What do you think are the big topics and challenges for OpenStreetMap as
  we're about to go into the second decade? What does this mean for State of
  the Map?

For OSM in the US? Finding and fixing the badly-digitized TIGER
data. I've got it mostly under control in NY, but I still find bits
and pieces of it left. And when I go looking in neighboring states, I
shudder.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Best practices for outdoor mapping party

[Russ Nelson]

Alex Barth writes:
  It would be great to have this topic at State of the Map US as a talk,
  workshop or a mapping party http://stateofthemap.us/

Whoa! We could have a mapping party to talk about mapping parties!
Awesome!

I expect to be there. I will bring my Columbus V-990, which is the
most awesome piece of mapping hardware in existance.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Stump the rail experts

[Russ Nelson]

Length doesn't matter. It's how the FRA classifies it. Between
Saratoga Springs and North Creek, the Saratoga and North Creek
Railroad is a common carrier. The Sanford Lake Branch, which continues
without pause from the SNC from its MP0 just a bit north of North
Creek goes 23 miles up to Tahawus (the former community and
equally-former titanium mine). The Sanford Lake Branch is an
industrial spur owned by the owners of the mine.

(We will not go into the fact that it was carved through several
wildernesses protected by the New York State Constitution as Forever
Wild by the federal government during WWII. When NYS objected, the
feds said more or less Don't you know there's a war going on??)

Charlotte Wolter writes:
   Here's one that could provoke all sorts of opinions about tagging.
   The Springerville Subdivision off the main BNSF line. 
  which parallels I-40 across Arizona (those mile-long trains you 
  frequently pass), is about 60 miles long. So, it seems like a real 
  subdivision. But, as near as I can tell, it primarily goes to one 
  mine in the Springerville area. There are a couple of others like 
  that, though their names escape me at the moment. So, is it a 
  subdivision or a lead? Is the usage industrial (probably more 
  research needed)? And we'd have to find out who really owns it. Hmmm.
   This could be fascinating
  
  Charlotte
  
  
  Charlotte Wolter
  927 18th Street Suite A
  Santa Monica, California
  90403
  +1-310-597-4040
  techl...@techlady.com
  Skype: thetechlady
  
  
  
  ___
  Talk-us mailing list
  Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
  https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Anyone from New York State around?

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Welty writes:
  this might have been a changeset that needed to be reverted back then, but
  it appears any damage is largely corrected now and reversion is no longer
  in order.

Except that Moodna Creek is completely gone, as are some other creeks.

We need better 'diff' tools to catch vandalism like this.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Abandoned railway

[Russ Nelson]

Paul Norman writes:
  On 8/29/2014 9:41 PM, Russ Nelson wrote:
   And then I can point you to oddly connected roads, and a
   lack of buildings, or new buildings.
  Those things should certainly be mapped, but there are other projects to 
  put historical data.

Don't render them, then. Oh, wait, that's what you're already
doing. I'm not understanding the problem here.

If you want to start deleting things from OSM, the first thing that
should be deleted is your access.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Abandoned railway

[Russ Nelson]

Mike N writes:
  On 8/30/2014 4:33 AM, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
   Seriously, OSM in the US, outside a few cities, is still way beyond broken.
   You can open it at any random location and the map is just fictional. (I
   did, just now:http://www.osm.org/edit#map=13/36.1938/-103.6446  .
  
Landing on the high plains desert in the west does not make a good 
  case that OSM in the US is broken.

That's a fair objection to that specific example. You are correct that
it is not representative. Pick some place in Pennsylvania, if you
want. Every time I cross over the border from New York into
Pennsylvania, I shudder.

If $X has the time to make OSM worse by deleting things, then $X
surely has the time to do some armchair mapping to add things.

If you're bored because your country is completely mapped, come visit
the US. Pick any state's list of rivers and streams (other than NY)
from Wikipedia, and start clicking. I'm happy to help anybody who
wants to add to OSM.  Verstehen Sie?

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Abandoned railway

[Russ Nelson]

Paul Norman writes:
  On 8/28/2014 10:56 PM, Hans De Kryger wrote:
   Is this abandoned railway really need at all? The last person to touch 
   it was NE2. 
  If there's no trace on the ground, delete it. If it's still there but 
  without tracks, use railway=dismantled (e.g. a bed).
  
  By the looks of it, a lot of it goes through farm fields that have 
  obliterated any sign of it.

If there's no trace on the ground, use railway=dismantled
(e.g. completely dismantled). If it's still there but without tracks,
use railway=abandoned (e.g. a bed).

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Abandoned railway

[Russ Nelson]

Volker Schmidt writes:
  I would be a little bit more careful:
  
  If no bits of the railway survive, remove it. But if some bits are still
  there (e.g. buildings converted to different use, some pieces of railway
  bed, ...) it may be useful to maintain also some abandoned and now
  invisible objects in the database in order to be able to understand the
  former structure.

Yes, exactly. I can point you to places where there are no bits of a
railway left. And then I can point you to oddly connected roads, and a
lack of buildings, or new buildings. How would you know why those
things were that way if the railway that went through there has been
deleted?

And both abandoned and dismantled railways are rendered
on specialized maps like OpenRailwayMap.org. They serve a purpose in
the database.

It's BAD ENOUGH that abandoned railways aren't rendered on the osm.org
map at *some* zoom level. It's tolerable that dismantled railways
aren't rendered. It's intolerable to recommend deleting something from
the database just because *you* fail to see it.

I fear that the deletionism infection has jumped from Wikipedia to
OpenStreetMap.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] exit_to vs destination

[Russ Nelson]

Paul Norman writes:
  It's not impossible - but the devil is, as always, in the details. You 
  can obviously limit it to only cases where there is a motorway with a 
  motorway_link branching off and no left/right tags, but it's not just that.

Thinking about all the exit_to's that I've added, the vast majority of
them could be converted without changing the value from an exit_to on
a motorway_junction into a destination on the associated
motorway_link.

And at that point, wouldn't motorway_junction be moot, since there
ought to be one everywhere a motorway and motorway_link join?

  If that link itself then has a Y branch (e.g. to turn left or right), it 
  will need splitting because it's unlikely both branches will lead to the 
  same place. There are probably other cases.

If it were really possible to mechanically convert all exit_tos into
destinations then there would be no point in doing so. So don't worry
about the fact that not all of them will be converted.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Fwd: USBRS WikiProject seeks volunteer mappers

[Russ Nelson]

Simon Poole writes:
  Route USBR 10 nicely illustrates my point about GIGO. It starts of in
  untouched TIGER country and continues.

Best way to get something mapped is to draw attention to it. That's
what Steve is trying to do. Can we move on now, and stop calling this
an import? Permissionless innovation -- that's what OSM is all
about. If you see something, map something (to abuse New York City's
supposedly trademarked If you see something, say something phrase).

Stop with the stop energy already!

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Fwd: USBRS WikiProject seeks volunteer mappers

[Russ Nelson]

Simon Poole writes:
  Am 02.06.2014 06:28, schrieb Russ Nelson:
   . Let's say that I follow this
   route on my bicycle using a cue sheet and keep a GPS track. Then I load
   my GPS track into JOSM and create a relation and call it USBRS #47 (or
   whatever). How is this an import??
  
  While not quite what you intended,

No, that's exactly what I intended. I think that nobody would be
complaining if I did the above. How, then, does it suddenly become an
import if I skip the step where I bicycled the portion of the route I
am entering? I cannot see how it does.

I'm not arguing about the quality of the route chosen by AASHTO. Maybe
they did a good job, maybe they didn't. I'm saying that the negative
characteristics of an import are completely absent from this project:
   o imports create a whole new set of nodes.
   o imports can have copyright issues.
   o imports can be non-human-scale.
   o imports can be data dumps that don't get maintained.
   o imports make bulk changes to the database.

If an import is completely signed in every case, that doesn't solve
any of the problems caused by an import.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Fwd: USBRS WikiProject seeks volunteer mappers

[Russ Nelson]

Serge Wroclawski writes:
  My opinion is that this is a single data source issue. Unlike other
  data that we collect, there is nothing in the ground indicating the
  existence of this as a route. There's no sign indicating where the
  route is, so there's be no way to collect this data other than by
  looking at an external dataset and either importing or tracing.

You're just a little bit insane, Serge. Let's say that I follow this
route on my bicycle using a cue sheet and keep a GPS track. Then I load
my GPS track into JOSM and create a relation and call it USBRS #47 (or
whatever). How is this an import??

  I think that's an import, because it's taking external data and
  applying it to OSM without even the potential for ground validation.

You're twigging this as an import because there aren't any signs on
the ground. What if I post my cue sheet on a sign? Again, how does
this become an import?

It bears none of the problems of imports:
  o imports create a whole new set of nodes.
  o imports can have copyright issues.
  o imports can be non-human-scale.
  o imports can be data dumps that don't get maintained.
  o imports make bulk changes to the database.

This is nothing like that. Your *only* reason for calling this an
import is because there aren't any signs. Yet. That reason isn't good
enough to call it an import.

  We have a lot of data that we could include in OSM that would be
  useful.

Everything that people care about having in a map is useful. You don't
care about this. Fine. Somebody else doesn't care about something you
want in OSM. Imagine *cooperating* with other people.

  I think that this kind of data doesn't belong in OSM.

And when you see it on OpenCycleMap? Does it belong there? Should we
fork the database now, so that we have a Serge OSM and a Nelson OSM
and a USBRS OSM? Remember what I said earlier: a little bit insane.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] USBRS WikiProject seeks volunteer mappers

[Russ Nelson]

Serge Wroclawski writes:
  Since there is no signage for these routes, this is an import and should be
  following the import guidelines.

Huh? I'm assuming that there is a list of roads and intersections
which comprise the bicycle route. Why would that necessarily be
imported? And how do you import a route, anyway? I didn't know anybody
had software to do that.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] State ref tags on ways

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Weait writes:
  - the concurrency of US1 and US 9, where ref=1-9 isn't numeric, but is
  right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Route_1/9

Interestingly Google Maps, when pronouncing directions, calls that US
One To Nine.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Russ Nelson]

Alex Barth writes:
  http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lxbarth/diary/21221

Another aspect of where the ODbL hurts us: Because we are using a
restrictive license, we cannot argue against other parties that use a
restrictive license. Look at New York State's GIS
Clearinghouse. Individuals not welcome. For-profit corporations not
welcome. OpenStreetMap users  not welcome. NY government entities?
Welcome! Non-profits? Welcome!

We can't argue against that on principle because we're just as bad.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Importing addresses from TIGER

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Welty writes:
  the NY stuff listed that comes from the NY GIS clearinghouse
  is problematic; the clearinghouse agreement isn't
  OSM compatible* so you have to negotiate with the
  individual data providers (which are frequently the
  County GIS departments). those negotiations are
  frequently not very easy.

In an email conversation with the contacts for the NYSDECLands data,
they agreed with me that the data is a list of facts about the
world. That means that it's not copyrightable -- even if they try to
claim a copyright anyway, you can't enforce a copyright on something
that is not material subject to copyright. Unfortunately, that
exchange was recorded on a computer that went back to Cloudmade, and
so is probably lost to history.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Currently available good GPS for use with OSM mapping in the USA?

[Russ Nelson]

Joseph R. Justice writes:
  To that end, I am wondering if anyone here would wish to offer suggestions
  on GPS devices that are currently available in the US which I should
  consider.

I highly recommend  the Columbus V-900. It's quite accurate, has a
battery that lasts all day long, and has a button to tag a waypoint,
and another button to record a voice note. I have software which turns
their log file into a GPX file that JOSM will use to play back the
voice notes. It's small enough to keep in your pocket all day long.

It comes with a charging cable that will cause it to turn on and start
logging. If you charge it with a regular USB cable, it just
charges. So if you want, you can leave it in your car, plugged in all
the time, and it will record all your trips.

It has a few flaws, but the voice recorder is so awesome that I hardly
notice them.

$90 from Amazon: 
http://www.amazon.com/Columbus-Bluetooth-Driverless-waypoints-Compatible/dp/B001JJRBU8/ref=pd_cp_e_0

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Admin borders in the US

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Welty writes:
  what i favor is going to a multi layer approach where some
  layers of OSM are ground verifiable things and others may
  not be.

E.g. the current openstreetmap.org and my suggestion of
closedstreetmap.com.

The difficulty of layers, as it has always been, is keeping them in
synch with each other. Sometimes logical layers and physical layers
need to line up with each other.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Baltimore County GIS Data is now public domain

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Weait writes:
  Your use of public domain in the subject is potentially confusing,
  since there is no reliable method for you to declare that the data is
  in the public domain.  Please see the wiki article linked.

If someone claims that their copyrighted work is in the public domain,
and then tries to enforce the copyright on you, you present the
declaration to the judge, the judge is going to declare that there is
no copyright to be infringed, and everybody goes home having spent a
minimal amount of time and money on what is ultimately foolishness.

It's much more likely that the US will invade Canada to get your
recipe for poutine.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Shields are up!

[Russ Nelson]

Phil! Gold writes:
  I would not at all object if people put together similar references for
  other states with diverse county sign styles.  :)

Wikipedia to the rescue?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County_routes_in_New_York

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Best way to tag mile and interpretive markers?

[Russ Nelson]

Ian Dees writes:
  Thomas, I'd caution against placing nodes every mile and tagging them
  highway=milestone unless there's something more notable about them. Mile
  markers could be computed from the length of the way and all the extra data
  might not be useful.

Mile markers on railroads are not necessarily a mile apart. Nor are
they necessarily all present. Nor are they obviously numbered from the
beginning of whatever they mark. For example, the Catskill Scenic
Trail has mile markers which are left over from its being the Ulster 
Delaware railroad. They are marked K # which is enormously useful if
you're the railroad and want to know how far it is to Kingston, but
more of an arbitrary identifier for users of the trail.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US

[Russ Nelson]

Serge Wroclawski writes:
  The real lesson of the ambassador program was that running mapping
  parties in other cities than your own results in press (sometimes),
  results in various size turnout, but has no track record of creating
  sustainable community.

Except for MappingDC, for which you can take more credit than me.

  That is how you create a long term sustainable community.

Agreed.

  I'm trying to reach out to groups outside the direct NYC area (less
  than two hours away) to see if we can run combined events.

Hey, I couldn't pull people from Brooklyn into Manhattan. It's too
far. New Yorkers are very parochial.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Steady increase in the number of mappers in the US

[Russ Nelson]

Clifford Snow writes:
  I'd like to suggest that we adopt a goal of increasing the number of active
  mappers in the US. I'm not sure how we accomplish it, but I'd like
  to solicit suggestions and feedback.

Use of OSM data drives editing of OSM data, as long as people know
it's editable. We discovered that effect when I was still at
Cloudmade. So my suggestion is to look at the way OSM data is used and
make sure that the people who are the end consumers of that data know
that they can contribute to the accuracy of the map.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Removing US Bicycle Route tags

[Russ Nelson]

Are these bicycle routes being labeled USBR-## ? If they're not, I
don't see the problem. If they are being labeleed USBR-## incorrectly,
well, that's incorrect. I haven't read in detail every message on this
thread -- are there example USBR bicycle routes in OSM that we could
look at?

KerryIrons writes:
  Again, a number of points of clarification are needed.
  
  First, there is a single body in the US for assigning numbers to US Bicycle
  Routes.  AASHTO owns the process, just as they do for all federal highways
  in the US.  There can be any number of state and local bicycle routes,
  proposed or implemented, but those are not USBRs until AASHTO approves
  designation.
  
  The process for doing this can vary but it culminates with a state
  department of transportation submitting an application to AASHTO to approve
  proposed numbering.  Once AASHTO approves (they have never declined an
  application) the route is officially a USBR.  While AASHTO encourages
  signing of USBRs there is no signing requirement so a route can exist on
  paper (and on the Internet) but not have any signs posted.  When a project
  is initiated to get a section of a USBR approved within a state, the first
  step is to define a proposed route, but there can be many revisions to that
  route as it gains local jurisdiction approvals (required) for each route
  section.  There is no problem with showing these proposed routes on OSM but
  tagging them with USBR numbers can create significant work for the approval
  process team due to ruffled feathers at the local jurisdiction level.
  
  You can look at the USBR corridor plan at
  www.adventurecycling.org/routes-and-maps/us-bicycle-route-system/national-co
  rridor-plan/  The corridors are roughly 50 mile wide area in which a route
  could be defined.  Just because a corridor exists does not mean that any
  specific road/street/trail has been defined as part of the route.  On the
  corridor map, a solid dark line means the route is approved by AASHTO, a
  shadowed and colored line means that the corridor exists but no route is
  defined, and a grey line means that a corridor could be added along that
  path.  A corridor is a concept for future development of a route.  It is not
  a route.
  
  It should be noted that there is a lot of history to the USBRS that explains
  the heretofore slow pace of route implementation.  It is inaccurate and
  unfair to blame any one organization for that slow pace.  As of now there
  are 5,600 miles of designated routes and many more are being developed.
  
  As to whether the concerns I have raised are a mountain or a molehill, I
  would simply say that those who want to ignore the political realities of
  getting a route approved need to walk a mile in the shoes of those doing the
  actual work.  Spending hours explaining why a route is not going through a
  given community, even though there is a map somewhere showing that it does,
  is not seen by a project team as a good use of their time.  Spending hours
  trying to convince a community to accept a route when they feel it is being
  shoved down their throat because it appeared on a map before they ever heard
  about it is not a good way to spend time either.
  
  My only goal here is to keep the OSM efforts in synch with the efforts of
  various USBR project teams across the US.  There is no point in creating
  extra work for the project teams or for OSM mappers.
  
  
  Kerry Irons
  Adventure Cycling Association
  
  -Original Message-
  From: Greg Troxel [mailto:g...@ir.bbn.com] 
  Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2013 7:02 PM
  To: Frederik Ramm
  Cc: talk-us@openstreetmap.org
  Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Removing US Bicycle Route tags
  
  
  Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org writes:
  
   An argument *against* having proposed routes is the verifiability - we 
   usually try to have data where someone on the ground could easily 
   check the correctness by looking at signs. Since proposed routes are 
   unlikely to be signposted, having them in OSM is questionable.
  
  I see verifiability as having a broader sense.  In the case of officially
  proposed USBR routes, someone who is local can look up the government
  documents, meeting minutes, or whatever and determine if the route numbering
  authority has in fact put the route into proposed status.  That's
  essentially what Kerry is talking about.  That's beyond looking at signs,
  but some things on the map aren't obvious from standing near them - official
  names are a complicated mix of signs on the ground, meeting minutes from
  naming authorities, 911 or tax databases, etc.  To me, the point is that one
  can determine an answer by observing evidence, and reasonable people can
  discuss the total evidence and come to rough consensus.
  
   On the other hand, I take exception at the original poster's apparent 
   insistence on routes approved by AASHTO. Whether or not a certain 
   route has been approved by a certain third 

Re: [Talk-us] User Cam4rd98 gun-jumping new highways + adding fictional alignments

[Russ Nelson]

Ian Dees writes:
  I've tried a couple times to reach out to this user with no response.

This seems like a problem to me. Perhaps we (that is to say, the
people who have the permission to stop an account from uploading) need
an intermediate step between locking an account, and permitting random
editing. Maybe we need a status intermediate between having an account
locked, and having an account which is marked read-only? Your account
is marked as read-only. Please read your INBOX for more
information. That would catch the id and potlatch users. Then we just
need JOSM to show a similar error message when it tries to log you in.

Or maybe a 'moderation' facility, whereby somebody's changeset needs
to be human-reviewed before it goes into the database? If somebody has
proven themselves to make troublesome edits, this seems like an
expensive yet effective way to help them.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] OSM Data Quality

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Welty writes:

  3) in the US (and you did ask on talk-us), identifying and dealing
  with the shaky Tiger data from the 2007 tiger import. some of this
  has been done, but it's an ongoing effort and is one of those
  things that is easier to say than it is to do

I've been adding lakes and ponds to New York State. I have a list of
points and names[1]. I'm using the lat/lon to point me to a lake/pond
which is in this list. I trace it using bing aerials, and look at the
(public domain) USGS topographic maps to add the name. I'm making good
progress. It's taken me since August of last year, and I'm now into
the S names.

It's fun! For a small pond or lake, it takes less than 30 seconds to
add it.

So, what if we could automatically identify misaligned TIGER ways and
make a list? Then people could take a few minutes, grab a few ways and
armchair fix them.

I've been working on finding and fixing them in New York State. I've
probably got more than half -- maybe 60% fixed. Hopefully even
70%. And I'm just one mapper (well, and you're another mapper who's
done a ton, plus there's a few more I'm sure). My main difficulty
right now is finding areas of misalignment. I've gone through entire
counties and aligned every road I could find, but I'm sure I missed a
few.

It doesn't have to be a perfect process; it just needs to be easy and
quick to use. It's okay if a few already-fixed roads get pointed to,
as long as it's not too many, and it's okay if a few unfixed roads get
skipped, as long as it's not too many.

The better we can make the map data, the more people will want to use
it to make maps and the more people will want to fix That One Last Flaw.

[1] I'm not sure of the copyright license on the list, so I'm using it
to point me to the general area of a lake or pond, and digitizing it
de novo.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Google Maps being praised for removing I-5 colasped bridge quickly

[Russ Nelson]

Paweł Paprota writes:
  Sure but have you ever seen a link to OSM object (way/relation/node) in 
  the internet?

Sure. I link to them all the time (warning, these are all associated
with railroads, so if you're not a railfan, click at your peril!):

This search:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/s/openstreetmap%20%22russell%20nelson%22
yields:

In which I give instructions on how to make your own similar links:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/adUrTxQcFdu

https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/QWSPRQfGmfF
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/GHVeUbUUe1f
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/F21WCHtVFMZ
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/2pyBNZA5xTG
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/PbN8gt8jq2f
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/LJ72jibjbcY
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/Wughutz9aZR
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/PAqbT8BAgbz
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/EbwvTgSFG4o
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/EUonnp8r2Rq
https://plus.google.com/u/0/102355438470080501971/posts/7ySW2GZnuJ3

http://railroad.net/forums/search.php?st=0sk=tsd=dsr=postskeywords=openstreetmap

https://www.facebook.com/groups/abandonedrails/permalink/592687384098114/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/abandonedrails/permalink/592649574101895/
https://www.facebook.com/groups/abandonedrails/permalink/591138054253047/?comment_id=591147230918796offset=0total_comments=2
https://www.facebook.com/groups/abandonedrails/permalink/589269787773207/

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] RAGBRAI Mapping

[Russ Nelson]

Toby Murray writes:
  Hmm... I might look at doing something similar for Biking Across
  Kansas. Not sure if these event routes really belong in OSM as a route
  relation though. They do not indicate a route that should be generally
  preferred for bicycles. It is just specific to a single event and only
  to event participants. So this seems like a case of tagging for the
  renderer.

It's only once a year, and RAGBRAI is a really big deal, attracting
thousands of riders. Seems like a reasonable thing to have in the map,
to me.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] RAGBRAI Mapping

[Russ Nelson]

KerryIrons writes:
  I hope you are aware that the RAGBRAI route changes every year.  And that is
  not just adjustments to the route but rather completely different routes
  each year.  While routes may repeat after a few years, if you did the
  RAGBRAI route every year you would eventually show a large fraction of the
  east/west roads in Iowa as being bicycle routes, or at least RAGBRAI.

That wouldn't be such a horrible thing. I was tasked with the job of
finding bicycle rounds around Grinnell, and let me tell you, it was
quite a chore. The vast majority of roads, even around a college town,
were dirt roads (now marked in OSM as unpaved, of course). Trying to
paste paved routes together took me hours of work every day.

Would have been much easier if I had been able to look for RAGBRAI
routes, even if they were from previous years.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] parcel data next steps

[Russ Nelson]

SteveCoast writes:
  If anything parcels will be hard. That's a good thing. If we want to take 
  the easy route we should give up now.

Well, as Josh points out, parcels are not necessarily related to
anything on the ground. They could be, e.g. my property lines are
co-incident with stone walls, barbed wire, and split-rail fences
except where they don't.

And the source of parcel data is going to be external to OSM -- almost
certainly the county clerks's real property office. And it's not a
physical description of the property anyway -- it's a legal
description of it. Having the physical features perfectlty mapped
wouldn't help.

So the chief value, I think, of getting this into OSM is more,
rather, getting it into OSM format, and aggregating it on a single
server. That is an fton of value, and is a worthy goal.

I don't believe that there's any sensible or valuable way to get it
into OSM itself. I only say this because I tried it. Bought a copy of
Oneida County's parcel data, put it into OSM format. Loaded it into
JOSM, and ... It didn't really make any sense when merged in with OSM
data. As a separate layer, it makes sense.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] parcel boundaries and associated data in OSM

[Russ Nelson]

Brian Cavagnolo writes:
  We really want a nationwide consolidated, standard parcel database to
  build upon.

Indeed.

  Is parcel data useful to OSM?

Yes.

  Can parcel data possibly be kept up to date?

No.

  Does parcel data meet the on the ground verifiability criteria?

No. Not really. Part of my property has stone fencelines as property
lines. The back part of my property is forested wetland, and there is
no practical way to discern property lines on the ground.

  Can tools be adapted to accommodate parcel data density?

Some will work now. Here's the problem: This data is maintained by
someone else. As they change it, OSM will need to be updated. And any
updates made by *any* editor will be non-authoritative.

BUT! There is a solution: put them into a parallel database to OSM,
say, http://closedstreetmap.com. This has three pleasant effects:
  o You're not tied to ODbL licensing, so you can have a more free
license.
  o When you get a new data dump, you can completely nuke the old one
and replace it with the new.
  o You don't have users making changes that nobody visiting the
county real property office will fine.

On the downside:
  o When a property line is tied to a feature, there's no way to
associate them with each other.
  o Users of the data need to download from two locations.
  o You're not using the ODbL, so that people making collective works
have to comply with all the licenses.

These characteristics are shared by the unsolved 'OSM Layers' concept.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Turn restriction dispute

[Russ Nelson]

Michal Migurski writes:
  I'm familiar with his work and have run afoul of his views in the
  past, most recently when I performed a large scale edit to US route
  relation tags, some of which he did not agree with. I don't know if
  any were reverted. Nevertheless, I don't see the value in running
  him out on a rail without more actual evidence of malice, detailed
  precedents from other bans, and some expectation that the OSMF
  could help here. These days I'm happier with NE2 than I am with the
  foundation, believe it or not.

His malice is encapsulated in his inability to work with other
people. For example, I dislike a particular global modification to my
work that he has made. I know that he has more spare time than me to
pursue his ideas, and so I haven't bothered to fighting on it, because
I know he will fight me, and I know he will win.

So I have resigned myself to allowing OSM to be a little bit worse
because of him. How many other people have made the same decision? How
much worse is OSM because of NE2? Does this outweigh his positive
accomplishments?

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Turn restriction dispute

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Welty writes:
  NE2 asked me to share this diary entry with the list:
  
   http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/NE2/diary/18600

That's interesting, but I'll note three things:
  o the tire tracks with one exception turn left, and
  o the one set of tire tracks that goes left-right was left by a
car skidding its tires, implying that the movement was done
surreptitiously, in haste.
  o There are fewer things you can do when a policeman is watching
than not.

The point behind turn restrictions is that a routing algorithm is
going to be looking for them to create a route. While it's fine that
NE2 is willing to make that turn on a lazy Sunday, would he send his
mother that way?

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Turn restriction dispute

[Russ Nelson]

I think that what he would say to the judge, when defending his
traffic ticket in court, was that he *did* make a left ... and then a
quick right. Since at no time did he move against the flow of traffic,
he might prevail. There's a traffic light at that intersection, so it
seems safe enough, if a bit unconventional.

But isn't that our beef with NE2? That he makes edits which he thinks
are obvious, but which we think are unconventional?

Paul Johnson writes:
  So he's conveniently ignoring the left turn only arrow there preventing a
  straight-on movement?
  
  
  On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 5:09 PM, Richard Welty rwe...@averillpark.netwrote:
  
   NE2 asked me to share this diary entry with the list:
  
   
   http://www.openstreetmap.org/**user/NE2/diary/18600http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/NE2/diary/18600
  
   richard
  
  
  
   __**_
   Talk-us mailing list
   Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
   http://lists.openstreetmap.**org/listinfo/talk-ushttp://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
  
  div dir=ltrSo he#39;s conveniently ignoring the left turn only arrow 
  there preventing a straight-on movement?/divdiv 
  class=gmail_extrabrbrdiv class=gmail_quoteOn Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 
  5:09 PM, Richard Welty span dir=ltrlt;a 
  href=mailto:rwe...@averillpark.net; 
  target=_blankrwe...@averillpark.net/agt;/span wrote:br
  blockquote class=gmail_quote style=margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px 
  #ccc solid;padding-left:1exNE2 asked me to share this diary entry with the 
  list:br
  br
              a href=http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/NE2/diary/18600; 
  target=_blankhttp://www.openstreetmap.org/u/uuser/NE2/diary/18600/aspan
   class=HOEnZbfont color=#88br
  br
  richard/font/spandiv class=HOEnZbdiv class=h5br
  br
  br
  __u/u_br
  Talk-us mailing listbr
  a href=mailto:Talk-us@openstreetmap.org; 
  target=_blankTalk-us@openstreetmap.org/abr
  a href=http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us; 
  target=_blankhttp://lists.openstreetmap.u/uorg/listinfo/talk-us/abr
  /div/div/blockquote/divbr/div
  ___
  Talk-us mailing list
  Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
  http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Turn restriction dispute

[Russ Nelson]

Paul Johnson writes:
  Looking through the making turns section of the Florida driver's manual,
  the maneuver NE2 proposes and the argument you're giving to explain it
  still doesn't work.

Mercy, Jesus, Mary, Mother of God!! I can't believe we're arguing the
minutia of Florida traffic law here!

What is the conservative approach? What is least likely to get someone
a ticket or get them in an accident? What do most drivers do at this
intersection? There's no sign? But there are road markings.

Put the turn restriction back in. And NE2, if you're reading this?
Leave it there.

And Paul? For the love of God, stay out of Florida. Don't kick the
bear and then wonder why he's biting you.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Turn restriction dispute

[Russ Nelson]

He's banned from (at least) this list. Consequently, you cannot expect
him to discuss this issue here.

We had a discussion of whether to ban him from editing in the past,
which never really got resolved. It just died out. Yes, he's done a
lot of editing, and yes, some of his edits have been fruitful, but no,
some of his edits have been less than helpful. I wouldn't miss him if
he were gone.

I vote, not that anybody called for a vote, to ask him to leave.
-russ

Paul Johnson writes:
  A minor update, since NE2 refuses to handle this as a community:
  
  Me: I'm no longer accepting input on this outside of the mailing list. If
  you want to have any further opinion on this, post to the thread in
  talk-us.
  NE2: You know I can't do that. By refusing to discuss you forfeit.
  Me: I'm not going to have this discussion with you someplace you can
  unilaterally
  declare victory independently in a vaccuum, that isn't how OpenStreetMap
  works. You need to follow the thread and sort out your differences with the
  moderators.
  
  Again, since the consensus is this restriction is a valid one despite what
  NE2 is suggesting, I intend to revert the deletion.  Not sure who our
  dispute management authorities are these days (since I'm not sure it's DWG
  or not), but I'd like to know how to keep them in the loop on this.
  
  
  On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 6:23 PM, Apollinaris Schöll ascho...@gmail.comwrote:
  
   I looked a bit more and in many jurisdiction it's illegal anyway to go
   around a traffic jam  by exiting a freeway and go back direct on the next
   onramp. Even more reason to have a restriction. Tested Google maps and it
   will make a big detour to avoid this illegal straight on.
  
  
  
  
   On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 3:59 PM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org wrote:
  
   Good point, though was hoping someone in the Orlando area other than NE2
   could weigh in (since this is a rare example of me chasing a Mapdust bug
   out to his area).
  
  
   On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 5:31 PM, Apollinaris Schöll 
   ascho...@gmail.comwrote:
  
  
  
   On Fri, Feb 8, 2013 at 12:58 PM, Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.orgwrote:
  
   NE2 is going on the World according to NE2 bender again, need a
   ruling on this relation before I revert:
   http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/2249811
  
   Turn in question is southbound World Drive at Buena Vista Drive in
   Orlando, http://binged.it/128OlwZ.  Despite left turn only markings on
   the southbound approach and a flush median gore preventing a straight-on
   movement, NE2 is of the opinion, and removed the relation, on the excuse
   that Anyway, I've deleted the turn restriction, since I cannot recall
   having seen any signs prohibiting the movement, and you have not seen 
   any
   such signs because you have not been there. Never mind that the left
   turn only sign is clearly marked on the pavement. He questioned the 
   legal
   standing of the marking since it omits ONLY, despite the fact that
   section 4.2.1 of the Florida Traffic Engineering Manual requires ONLY 
   to be
   omitted in situations such as the ramp in question (a straight/left 
   arrow
   would be required for a through-or-left-turn lane).
  
   Who's right?
  
  
   You. it's clearly signed on the pavement. We are no lawyers to challenge
   his interpretation in court. So as long as no one gets a ticket and wins
   the court case it's the right thing to have a restriction.
   And NE2 is known for fighting just for the fight. I come across tons of
   crap from him in areas he has never seen. I fix it and don't even 
   consider
   to contact him.
  
  
   ___
   Talk-us mailing list
   Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
   http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
  
  
  
  
  
  div dir=ltrdiv stylespan style=font-family:#39;Helvetica 
  Neue#39;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:23pxA minor update, 
  since NE2 refuses to handle this as a community:/span/divspan 
  style=font-family:#39;Helvetica 
  Neue#39;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:23pxdiv
  span style=font-family:#39;Helvetica 
  Neue#39;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:23pxbr/span/divMe:
   I#39;m no longer accepting input on this outside of the mailing list. If 
  you want to have any further opinion on this, post to the thread in talk-us. 
  /spandiv
  span style=font-family:#39;Helvetica 
  Neue#39;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:23pxNE2: You know I 
  can#39;t do that. By refusing to discuss you forfeit./span/divdiv 
  stylefont face=Helvetica Neue, Arial, sans-serifspan 
  style=font-size:14px;line-height:23pxMe: /span/fontspan 
  style=font-family:#39;Helvetica 
  Neue#39;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:23pxI#39;m not 
  going to have this discussion with you someplace you can/spanspan 
  style=font-family:#39;Helvetica 
  Neue#39;,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:14px;line-height:23px /spanspan 
  

Re: [Talk-us] parcel data in OSM

[Russ Nelson]

Steve Coast writes:
  Waze, last time I looked, was 5 times larger than OSM. Today, probably 10.

Nobody ever tells me about Waze.

  Today it's hard to convince any consumer they should do so over
  google or waze.

Go to anybody who travels through bad cell coverage. Show them OSMAnd
on a Nexus 7. And it will do routing through the boonies.

Explain that OSMAnd doesn't need an expensive cell data
connection. OSMAnd has gotten MUCH easier to use lately with
downloaded data. That's it's strongest feature.

  If you want people to use the map, it needs addressing.

Yes. And then ... we can kill Garmin because we have as-good maps on
better hardware. And then we can kill tile-based cell data maps
because we have infinite detail maps with no cell data connection.

OSMAnd running on a Nexus 7 is better and cheaper (capex and opex)
than anything else on the market. If only we had addressing.

And then we need to make it easy to edit the map through OSMAnd. It
has a POI capability, which I haven't (yet) used, mostly because
everywhere I usually go is already mapped. :)

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] parcel data in OSM

[Russ Nelson]

Serge Wroclawski writes:
  The result is that the data quality varies *a lot* and no one
  should take it (or any data source) as gospel, just as OSM data is
  not gospel.

New York State has 62 counties, and only have bad TIGER data in about
8 of them. The rest are frankly, gorgeous.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] parcel data in OSM

[Russ Nelson]

Steve Coast writes:
  On Dec 31, 2012, at 6:24 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
  
   Steve Coast writes:
   Waze, last time I looked, was 5 times larger than OSM. Today, probably 10.
   
   Nobody ever tells me about Waze.
  
  You live in upstate New York, dude. :-)

I have a 100Mbps Intarwebs connection. I talk to a lot of people.

But even my local friends have never once said Waze. Then again,
they've never said OSM either. Nor, even, Google Maps. Maybe the
assumption is that I know everything? But you'd think that somebody
would be enthusiastic about contributing to one or the other. If so,
they haven't told me.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] parcel data in OSM

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Welty writes:
  On 12/31/12 9:38 PM, Steve Coast wrote:
   On Dec 31, 2012, at 6:24 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
  
   Steve Coast writes:
   Waze, last time I looked, was 5 times larger than OSM. Today, probably 
   10.
   Nobody ever tells me about Waze.
   You live in upstate New York, dude. :-)
  
  beyond upstate. Russ might as well be Canadian

Poutine FTW!

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] parcel data in OSM

[Russ Nelson]

Serge Wroclawski writes:
  Steve suggested we need addresses. He didn't ask for a crazy huge
  import.

Well, he kinda did. The TIGER data has addresses. The original import
didn't include them. We *could* triple the size of the data in the USA
by creating address ways alongside the TIGER ways. Eventually we will
triple it, if only by hand.

The real question about this import (which is technically feasible),
is whether we can fix the errors with less effort than it will take to
input them by hand. Speaking as someone who has done importing and
hand editing, I think we should do the import ... of course only in
areas where there aren't already addresses.

   When 98% of the data in US was already imported, it seems a kind of
   late to be even having this discussion.

The common wisdom around OSM is that if we had vast areas of
emptiness, people would have sprung into action to create a useful
map. My experience went the other way: I looked at the emptiness and
said Geezums, we have the TIGER data, why don't we start with that??

And as much as I curse the darkness of TIGER inaccuracy, I've found it
easier to light a light using the TIGER data.

  work on Free geodata an imports, that you might be happier working on
  something like CommonMap, which has a different approach than OSM

CommonMap is defunct.

  As for this fighting, I see very little fighting. I see a lot of
  passionate arguments being made.

Yup.

Oh, and about the parcel data? It's too big for the value it
creates. I say this precisely because I created import files for
Oneida County's parcels, and ... it was too big for the value it
created. It's more useful as an overlay, like you see at
http://tile.osm.osuosl.org/tiles/ny_oneida_parcels_2008/preview.html#14/43.1839/-75.4517

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] parcel data in OSM

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
  I think that is more than a theory. Weren't you the one who proposed to 
  import some kind of park boundaries, years ago, and implement mechanisms 
  to make the geometry un-changeable - reasoning that any change being 
  made by mappers could only be for the worse?

Yes, I did, and I was wrong. It *does* make sense to import such
boundaries into OSM and let people edit them.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] parcel data in OSM

[Russ Nelson]

Ian Dees writes:
  Frederik's point is that you should only map things that other mappers can
  verify or improve on. Since you can't verify borders and boundaries or
  otherwise make them any better than the government data after they're
  imported, they don't belong in OSM.

Anybody can verify that the data is accurate by checking it against
the original. Next objection?

No, seriously, I *do* use the governmental data that Frederick and
apparently Ian is objecting to, and I use it by loading it out of
OSM.

This is not a new discussion, and we didn't come to a conclusion
satisfactory to all parties the last N times we had it.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] parcel data in OSM

[Russ Nelson]

Ian Dees writes:
  The moment it makes its way in to OSM it becomes incorrect. There is
  *absolutely* no way to improve the data once it's in OSM, so it should not
  be in OSM. Period.

That's a great theory, but I don't think many people subscribe to
it. Of course anybody can improve on imported data by tagging it, even
if its location is already perfect in every way, which, being a
database created by humans, is not even remotely likely.

There is no point in having this discussion again unless you're going
to bring up something new. So far, not. OSM is a big tent with room
for lots of data and lots of opinions. You're welcome to express
yours, but you're not welcome to claim it is or should be the ruling
opinion.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] identifying TIGER deserts

[Russ Nelson]

Michal Migurski writes:
  Also, what's the deal with the Massachusetts TIGER import?

Massachusetts had already made an improved version of the TIGER data,
so the decision was made to import that instead.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] identifying TIGER deserts

[Russ Nelson]

Michal Migurski writes:
  Ah, good to know. Any idea what the approximate date and importing
  account were?

MassGIS Import somewhere around 10/13/07.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Imports - an attempt to explain

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
  My, very personal, answer to this is that OSM is part of a greater 
  movement of collaborative productivity, where people all over the world 
  can and do join forces to create something great, something of value. 

Okay. Can you see how judicious imports *are* that collaboration and
joining of forces? For example, I live in St. Lawrence County,
NY. (http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/87775). I've been
most places in the county, and an familar with it generally. It's
mostly empty. Most of the counties inside the Adirondack park are even
more empty. Ain't no people there to make the map better.

Now, if I can get the data to make the map better, why, that *is* me
collaborating with the other mappers in my area. Which is to say,
me. But because it's local to me, I've backed it up with field work,
and so I can say that the data is in pretty good shape, and I'm happy
that it's there.

I also map railroads in New York State. My only collaborator is
NE2. I've imported a lot of my existing maps into OSM. Again, ain't
nobody else doing it, and I'm not going to sit on the data that I
created over the course of years, and not import it just because you
think I should sit around and wait for somebody else to show up to
help me.

Do I want people to help? Only if they're going to actually help, and
not pessimize the work I've done by, oh, say, changing useful
non-controversial tags like name= to a tag that they invented. That
is, of course, the downside of this wonderful collaborative
productivity.

Now, the flip side of your idea of collaboration is that I knew about
OSM, knew that my county was largely empty, and knew that TIGER would
be a great starting point. So I DID NOT do any editing until TIGER got
uploaded. Your theory is great, but I'm a refutation of it. I'm also
only one person, so you might be mostly right. I just don't think so.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Imports - an attempt to explain

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Welty writes:
  and that's the kind of thing good imports can accomplish. and this
  sort of project can build the community too -- i plan to document
  what is being done for quality assurance, confidence testing, etc.,
  quite thoroughly so that others can have a path to do it where they
  live.

I love this project. It gives people a hook -- a reason to
contribute to OSM where they live.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Importing highway surface tags

[Russ Nelson]

Adam Franco writes:
  * Has anyone located a good source for state or national road surface data?

It's very likely that this data is only available on a
county-by-county basis. New York State has pushed the counties to put
(at least) their parcel data online, but it's not funded, nor is there
a single method for doing so.

Not to discourage you, but I'll bet you'll find that the data you seek
is avaialble in at least N+1 forms, where N is the number of counties
in Vermont.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Role of the Wiki

[Russ Nelson]

Scott Rollins writes:
  I'll just say that, whether bug or feature, this message perfectly
  encapsulates why I am unwilling to spend my time working on OSM. I don't
  want to waste my time, and by not having a good place to learn what to do,

Scott, what Fred said! You don't need to be an expert in all things
OSM to be able to contribute one thing to OSM. You could, for example,
just put in some park benches (amenity=bench), or a foot path through
a local town park (highway=footway), or some fire hydrants
(emergency=fire_hydrant). Or trace some buildings (building=yes).

The main point is for you to contribute the things that you love, to
share them with other people. I'm a railfan, so I've added every
railroad in New York State that ever existed to OSM (except most
trolley lines, because they usually don't show up anymore). And maybe
I've done some things wrong, but nobody has complained to me yet, and
if they do, I'll re-do whatever's wrong simply because I want OSM to
be the best map of NY railroads anywhere.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Imports

[Russ Nelson]

Ian Dees writes:
  All actions have consequences. Did importing TIGER hamper the OSM community
  building in the US or did poor advocacy? Maybe it was the existing vast,
  free data ecosystem? Maybe it was simply the sheer size of the country?

You are asking a question that the opponents of imports don't need to
ask, because imports are bad a priori.

I'd like to see them run an experiment. Fork the database, take every
untouched TIGER way out of OSM, and then try to build a user community
around this new database free of icky, stinky bad imported data. If
imports are harmful to the community, then removing them should cause
the community to bloom and blossom.

Or, with less sarcasm, it was not my observation that having the TIGER
data in the U.S. dissuaded anyone from contributing to OSM.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Operation Cowboy running

[Russ Nelson]

Matthias Meißer writes:
  as most noted, the Operation cowboy mapathon with focus on the USA 
  started today!
  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Operation_cowboy

Putnam County in New York State needs a lot of love still. Lots of
misaligned roads.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Difficult USA mapper(s)

[Russ Nelson]

Jeff Meyer writes:
  On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 2:04 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
  
  
   Right. So what do you think of the set of rules that I posted a bit ago?
  
  Well... I like mine better. ('natch!) Pursue the truth  agreement  do
  no harm. is a little easier to remember and covers all the cases covered
  by the 5 rules put forth.
  
  It seems that, if followed, rules 3-5 will almost certainly create more
  confusion than they resolve.

People like simple rules because they're simple. But when you go to
figure out what the rules mean, you have to interpret them. What is
agreement? Agreement with you and your buddies as to how to tag?
Agreement with existing tags? Agrement with the documentation in the
wiki? Agreement with some book that somebody wrote once? Agreement
with Steve Coast (all hail the master)?

If you don't start with good rules, you'll have to invent them, under
pressure and with people yelling at you. Which is kinda what we're
doing here, now.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Difficult USA mapper(s)

[Russ Nelson]

Anthony writes:
  I agree that DWG has the authority to act, here.  But as I understand it,
  the authority of DWG comes from OSMF, not from the OSM community.

The DWG is specifically asking if it should have the authority to
act. Please read the beginning message of this thread.

  Additionally, now would be a good time to work toward more formal standards
  for tagging.  While I disagree that mappers should be bound by unwritten
  convention, I do think it would be useful to adopt RFC-style agreed upon
  tagging standards.

No. Never have, don't need to. What we *do* need are several rules for
tagging:

 1) Don't change somebody else's edit unless you are acting on
evidence you can produce to the DWG.
 2) If you're remote, don't change somebody's edit if they're
local. Instead, ask them if you should make a change.
 3) Tag according to the documentation in the wiki.
 4) Don't change the documentation in the wiki.
 5) Document how you tag in the wiki (which is only necessary if #3 or
#4 keep you from tagging in the manner you believe correct).

These rules would reduce the amount of coordination needed and
conflict produced betweeen editors.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] Difficult USA mapper(s)

[Russ Nelson]

Jeff Meyer writes:
  - An overarching code of behavior could be very helpful to empower the less
  aggressive mapper. Maybe something simple like: Pursue the truth 
  agreement  do no harm. It gives the oppressed some simple question to ask
  the difficult mapper. Each of the segments of the code could be defined
  separately.
-- It seems to me that changing tags without a resolution of truth in a
  community is clearly destructive

Right. So what do you think of the set of rules that I posted a bit ago?

  - The concept of any tag being ok is exciting for many of us, but also a
  little scary to many newcomers, who would like to be sure we are doing
  things properly. So, I think more standardization in tag convention would
  be helpful, but that's probably fodder for another (and many older) threads.

There *is* standardization -- the set of Key and Tag descriptions in
the Wiki. Everybody should edit the way they describe. If they are
ambiguous, then you should look at the way people are using the tags,
and put that into the wiki. If people aren't tagging consistently,
then you should ask for help.

The whole point is that everything in the database should have a clear
meaning. It's okay if there are two different ways to enter the same
thing. Yes, that makes life harder on data consumers, but as long as
they can understand what a tag means, they can figure out what that
means for their usage of the map. Chances are good that 
highway=path/bicycle=yes and highway=cycleway will get rendered the
same way.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us

Re: [Talk-us] My personal Difficult USA Mapper situation update

[Russ Nelson]

Sam Iacullo writes:
  This email will be divided into two parts. The first contains specifics
  about the email that touched off the discussion about mapper issues, which
  I will call COMPLAINT'. If you want to skip this section for my
  opinion/commentary about the issue at large, you can scroll down to MY TWO
  CENTS

The complaint and your proposed solution don't match up. The problem
with NE2's editing is that he has his own interpretation of how things
should be done, AND it conflicts with other people's interpretion AND
he is not willing to change this practice.

Your solution, however, is directed at novice users. NE2 isn't a
novice. He thinks he knows better than other people.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
Talk-us mailing list
Talk-us@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us