Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
I had a very difficult time trying to convert the hierarchy into terms I understand, and when I took to the wiki, I would come up against contradictory understandings. As for the other contributions you mention? They are less interesting to me, personally, probably because they are usually of minimal interest to me as a map consumer. Scott On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 8:59 PM, Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com wrote: Can I ask where you got this impression from? Perhaps we need to fix the communication... In the vast majority of cases, how roads should be described is decided. Editors like Potlatch and Cloudmade's Mapzen do a pretty good job of describing visually (via icons or words) which tags should be applied to which roads. The general hierarchy of motorway trunk primary secondary tertiary is (hopefully) well understood. The argument seems to be over where people want to draw the lines between those categories, and there are very few (loud) people arguing about it. Either way, applying highway tags to ways is a very small part of OSM: try adding POI, opening hours, parks, bike paths, McDonald's, libraries, town halls, pubs/bars, etc. All of this is very useful data and won't be subject to someone changing a highway tag. -- Scott Rollins, organ...@gmail.com * * *New info, effective 7/25:* 625 South St, Portsmouth, VA 23704 (757) 673-8992 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On 10/2/2011 11:07 PM, Paul Johnson wrote: The swamp, being mostly water, is of course, level, and without any tree cover or hills for nearly a half mile in any direction, and having been using the GPS for pedestrian navigation all afternoon, made me quite surprised to see the geolocation data for the photo (taken just inches above the benchmark) was off by almost half a mile. This is most likely the photo subsystem error - when switched to photo mode it tried to get a new fix, but the photo was taken before the fix. So it just used the last known location (for wherever the photo subsystem gets the location). I've seen this error on the iPhone. Actual GPS accuracy can be observed from the pedestrian navigation app. I have a camera with built in GPS which does the same thing; the GPS can be accurate when it gets a fix, but it takes so long to acquire that it's useless. And if it doesn't get a new fix, it just assigns that last position to the new photo. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On 09/30/2011 10:25 AM, Richard Weait wrote: 1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do? When Cloudmade hosted events, their representatives brought banners, brochures, stickers, loaner GPS units and similar things. I'm not sure GPS units are needed these days (with a smartphone in everyone's pocket), but advertising material - like the tall OSM banners - really make an event look a little more professional. Maybe the OSMFUS should explain OSM as a project a bit better to newcomers? Especially from a US perspective, where we've been spoiled by online maps and free government geodata for a long time. Finally, having a server and development infrastructure for US-specific projects - such as the US-style slippy map mentioned elsewhere - would probably make OSM more attractive to both mappers and developers in the US. I think some of this is already being worked on (Thea, Ian, ...). When ready, make sure that it's clearly documented on the website how these resources are available to users. - Lars ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
In article 4e88732c.6050...@ahlzen.com l...@ahlzen.com writes: When Cloudmade hosted events, their representatives brought banners, I have one of the cloudmade tall banners in Los Angeles. It will go in the trash in a week unless someone aranges to pick it up or pay shipping. (I can't take it when I move.) ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 12:13 PM, openstreetmap-talk...@scd.debian.netwrote: In article 4e88732c.6050...@ahlzen.com l...@ahlzen.com writes: When Cloudmade hosted events, their representatives brought banners, I have one of the cloudmade tall banners in Los Angeles. It will go in the trash in a week unless someone aranges to pick it up or pay shipping. (I can't take it when I move.) Who and where are you (your e-mail address doesn't look familiar)? OSM US can pay for shipping to save it from the trash since we're talking about needing one. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On Sun, 2011-10-02 at 10:20 -0400, Lars Ahlzen wrote: On 09/30/2011 10:25 AM, Richard Weait wrote: 1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do? When Cloudmade hosted events, their representatives brought banners, brochures, stickers, loaner GPS units and similar things. I'm not sure GPS units are needed these days (with a smartphone in everyone's pocket), but advertising material - like the tall OSM banners - really make an event look a little more professional. Never overestimate the accuracy of phone GPS. Google Maps does well with positioning because they're using wifi and cell networks as secondary location sources, the GPS alone is usually off by several city blocks. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On 10/02/2011 02:41 PM, Paul Johnson wrote: On Sun, 2011-10-02 at 10:20 -0400, Lars Ahlzen wrote: On 09/30/2011 10:25 AM, Richard Weait wrote: 1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do? When Cloudmade hosted events, their representatives brought banners, brochures, stickers, loaner GPS units and similar things. I'm not sure GPS units are needed these days (with a smartphone in everyone's pocket), but advertising material - like the tall OSM banners - really make an event look a little more professional. Never overestimate the accuracy of phone GPS. Google Maps does well with positioning because they're using wifi and cell networks as secondary location sources, the GPS alone is usually off by several city blocks. Let me clarify: I'm not sure dedicated GPS units are needed *for mapping parties* these days. The concepts can be taught with pretty basic equipment. Besides, in many areas, what's left to map are details that are better recorded with a notebook than a GPS. I completely agree with you, though. The trace from my cellphone is horrifically bad compared to that of my GPSMap60, so I still use the latter a lot for mapping. - Lars ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On Sun, 02 Oct 2011 15:05:22 -0400, Lars Ahlzen wrote: I completely agree with you, though. The trace from my cellphone is horrifically bad compared to that of my GPSMap60, so I still use the latter a lot for mapping. What phones are you guys using? The TI chips Nokia uses seem to usually get within about 10 feet or better anywhere where there's a reasonable view of the sky. That's not to say it's never off, but the outliers are usually plainly obvious when looking at the track in JOSM. When I go out and map new subdivisions, there is often dirt work shown on the aerial imagery that can be used as a reference, along with the pictures from the phone taken at 5 second intervals, so I can be pretty certain it's close at worst. I could do better with a better GPS, I'm sure, but for your typical suburban-style development the phone seems as good as anything that doesn't involve post-processing. If I were trying to map individual structures, it probably wouldn't be good enough. However, for getting the roads on the map, my N900 works (or more accurately worked, given my recent output) just fine. -Nathan ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
What I still like to use a dedicated GPS for is for georeferencing the photos I take while out mapping. My camera does not have a built in GPS and I prefer to use a dedicated camera over my phone camera which would yield georeferenced images. And maybe even more importantly, to upload the traces to the OSM server (although I badly need to catch up with that). I think that will always remain useful. Martijn On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Nathan Mills nat...@nwacg.net wrote: On Sun, 02 Oct 2011 15:05:22 -0400, Lars Ahlzen wrote: I completely agree with you, though. The trace from my cellphone is horrifically bad compared to that of my GPSMap60, so I still use the latter a lot for mapping. What phones are you guys using? The TI chips Nokia uses seem to usually get within about 10 feet or better anywhere where there's a reasonable view of the sky. That's not to say it's never off, but the outliers are usually plainly obvious when looking at the track in JOSM. When I go out and map new subdivisions, there is often dirt work shown on the aerial imagery that can be used as a reference, along with the pictures from the phone taken at 5 second intervals, so I can be pretty certain it's close at worst. I could do better with a better GPS, I'm sure, but for your typical suburban-style development the phone seems as good as anything that doesn't involve post-processing. If I were trying to map individual structures, it probably wouldn't be good enough. However, for getting the roads on the map, my N900 works (or more accurately worked, given my recent output) just fine. -Nathan ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- martijn van exel geospatial omnivore 1109 1st ave #2 salt lake city, ut 84103 801-550-5815 http://oegeo.wordpress.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On Sun, 2011-10-02 at 20:05 -0600, Martijn van Exel wrote: What I still like to use a dedicated GPS for is for georeferencing the photos I take while out mapping. My camera does not have a built in GPS and I prefer to use a dedicated camera over my phone camera which would yield georeferenced images. Actually, it was georeferencing an image with my phone against a benchmark in a cycleway through a swamp that made me realize how far off smartphones are in terms of GPS. The swamp, being mostly water, is of course, level, and without any tree cover or hills for nearly a half mile in any direction, and having been using the GPS for pedestrian navigation all afternoon, made me quite surprised to see the geolocation data for the photo (taken just inches above the benchmark) was off by almost half a mile. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
Hi, On 10/01/2011 04:24 AM, Nathan Edgars II wrote: That consensus is very hard to reach :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:State_route_naming_conventions_poll/Account Are any of the people mentioned by username on that page involved in OSM today? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 3:07 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, On 09/30/2011 08:36 PM, Mike N wrote: Really? Are there people who say I'd rather not map because there is no consensus on the roads tagging? Are those people the 20,000 missing mappers in the US? It is more like I don't see anyone using the map except for Skobbler, so why should I invest my time? And what are the obstacles to usage? inconsistent tagging. Yes,but are the only meaningful uses of the map really those that depend on cross-state consistent road tagging? I find that hard to believe. And even if it were so - it may be that Greece and Norway are different countries, and they certainly have different authorities responsible for road naming and design, but you can simply grab your car and go from Greece to Norway without even having to show an ID to anybody - and yet nobody in Greece has claimed that inconsistent road tagging within Europe was an obstacle to usage. If every state in the US had its own consistent tagging scheme, that might be a valid analogy. However, that's not the case. There's no reason that a US chapter can't working on a tagging scheme which has nuances specific to each of the states. In fact, I would think that a consistent US-wide tagging scheme necessarily *would* have differences between states. I assume by consistent we mean compatible, not identical. On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 1:28 PM, Peter Dobratz pe...@dobratz.us wrote: Yes, OSMF US shouldn't mandate a certain tagging scheme, but they could certainly help to facilitate a consensus among the community. No one can mandate a certain tagging scheme. However, OSMF US (or any other group of editors) *could* come up with a well thought out, consistent tagging scheme, implement stylesheets and/or scripts to make that tagging scheme work in Mapnik, and then map it in a few wide-ranging example areas. I guess you could call that facilitating a consensus. But it's not what came to mind when I first heard that phrase. The tagging scheme in the US is inconsistent. Patches welcome. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On Sat, Oct 1, 2011 at 7:49 PM, Scott Rollins organ...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 2:23 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.orgwrote: Really? Are there people who say I'd rather not map because there is no consensus on the roads tagging? Are those people the 20,000 missing mappers in the US? Yes. I'm one of them. I jumped in with both feet, when I first found OSM. I lived in Canada at the time, and I walked around a village of 1,000 people on my birthday and learned how to turn those GPS tracks into roads. But years later, I still don't know what the right way is (because the community still doesn't agree on what that means), and I don't feel like wasting hours of my life doing something that will likely be undone because my idea of the way things should be doesn't match whatever eventual consensus emerges (or because the next person to come along thinks things should be done differently). That these questions STILL haven't been settled after this many years leaves me with doubts that OSM will ever be anything more than a toy in this country. I keep mostly listening to this list, hoping for the day when I'm proven wrong, because I want to work for a project with these goals, but not if I'm going to waste my time because nobody can make the most basic of decisions: how roads should be described. Can I ask where you got this impression from? Perhaps we need to fix the communication... In the vast majority of cases, how roads should be described is decided. Editors like Potlatch and Cloudmade's Mapzen do a pretty good job of describing visually (via icons or words) which tags should be applied to which roads. The general hierarchy of motorway trunk primary secondary tertiary is (hopefully) well understood. The argument seems to be over where people want to draw the lines between those categories, and there are very few (loud) people arguing about it. Either way, applying highway tags to ways is a very small part of OSM: try adding POI, opening hours, parks, bike paths, McDonald's, libraries, town halls, pubs/bars, etc. All of this is very useful data and won't be subject to someone changing a highway tag. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
As someone currently in the OSM US group, I thought I'd share what I hoped we could accomplish: On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 9:25 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote: I'd like to see more discussion and guidance for the US local chapter. So, questions for the community: 1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do? I want OSM US to improve the map as much as possible by doing the following: - Let as many people in the US know about OpenStreetMap as possible - Draw more people to social events - Make it easier for new mappers to contribute - Facilitate the use of OpenStreetMap data - Demonstrate the breadth and depth of OSM data by rendering a US-specific map - Distribute data in formats and pieces that are easily digestible by data consumers 2) Why should this be done by the local chapter, and not by individual mappers? A local chapter can present itself to potential donor organizations and interested mappers as a group rather than a cabal of disorganized mappers. 3) Why should this be done by the local chapter and not by the OSMF? The OSMF is already busy enough. Having an organization that can focus on a particular area means it can be more successful. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
I'd like to see more discussion and guidance for the US local chapter. So, questions for the community: 1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do? 2) Why should this be done by the local chapter, and not by individual mappers? 3) Why should this be done by the local chapter and not by the OSMF? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:25 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote: 1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do? Come up with a consistent way to tag roads for the country. Somehow get a consensus from current mappers about how tag US/state/county/whatever highways. Update this page http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_roads_tagging and then remove There is conflicting information on this topic at several places. Specifically, on the Way: ref=??? highway=??? name=??? Add Way to Relation type=route route=road name=??? network=??? state_id=??? ref=??? modifier=??? direction=??? For exit Node: highway=motorway_junction name=??? ref=??? exit_to=??? Once we know how to map what we have, then we can document in the wiki specifically how every numbered road should be documented. 2) Why should this be done by the local chapter, and not by individual mappers? Every individual mapper can have their own idea about how these things should be tagged. As it is right now, mappers look at the conflicting information on the wiki and then make an educated decision, only to have someone come in later and change the tags on the roads, often leaving the map in an inconsistent state. I think there may even already be a committee setup to tackle this very issue: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Working_Groups/US_Tagging 3) Why should this be done by the local chapter and not by the OSMF? Though there may be some global consistency with road tagging, standards need to be established for each country. Road tagging is often influenced by US states making designations and signing each road accordingly. These signs do not necessarily have an international equivalent. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
I believe that the core tasks of the US Chapter should be 1) to support and help grow the community, and 2) engage with existing and potential professional users to stimulate awareness and adoption. Defining the map itself should not be among them, this is and should always be a community effort, even though it is sometimes a cumbersome process. If you're saying that the Chapter could do something to support reaching a consensus or define the issue more clearly, such as facilitating a working group or a wiki clean-up, I could not agree more. But I don't see the Chapter going in and defining a definitive (is there even such a thing?) tagging scheme for roads. That would have the Chapter claim a mandate that it was never given and would only serve to divide the community rather than strengthening it. Martijn On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Peter Dobratz pe...@dobratz.us wrote: On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:25 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote: 1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do? Come up with a consistent way to tag roads for the country. Somehow get a consensus from current mappers about how tag US/state/county/whatever highways. Update this page http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_roads_tagging and then remove There is conflicting information on this topic at several places. Specifically, on the Way: ref=??? highway=??? name=??? Add Way to Relation type=route route=road name=??? network=??? state_id=??? ref=??? modifier=??? direction=??? For exit Node: highway=motorway_junction name=??? ref=??? exit_to=??? Once we know how to map what we have, then we can document in the wiki specifically how every numbered road should be documented. 2) Why should this be done by the local chapter, and not by individual mappers? Every individual mapper can have their own idea about how these things should be tagged. As it is right now, mappers look at the conflicting information on the wiki and then make an educated decision, only to have someone come in later and change the tags on the roads, often leaving the map in an inconsistent state. I think there may even already be a committee setup to tackle this very issue: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Working_Groups/US_Tagging 3) Why should this be done by the local chapter and not by the OSMF? Though there may be some global consistency with road tagging, standards need to be established for each country. Road tagging is often influenced by US states making designations and signing each road accordingly. These signs do not necessarily have an international equivalent. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- martijn van exel geospatial omnivore 1109 1st ave #2 salt lake city, ut 84103 801-550-5815 http://oegeo.wordpress.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
Yes, OSMF US shouldn't mandate a certain tagging scheme, but they could certainly help to facilitate a consensus among the community. Peter On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Martijn van Exel m...@rtijn.org wrote: I believe that the core tasks of the US Chapter should be 1) to support and help grow the community, and 2) engage with existing and potential professional users to stimulate awareness and adoption. Defining the map itself should not be among them, this is and should always be a community effort, even though it is sometimes a cumbersome process. If you're saying that the Chapter could do something to support reaching a consensus or define the issue more clearly, such as facilitating a working group or a wiki clean-up, I could not agree more. But I don't see the Chapter going in and defining a definitive (is there even such a thing?) tagging scheme for roads. That would have the Chapter claim a mandate that it was never given and would only serve to divide the community rather than strengthening it. Martijn On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Peter Dobratz pe...@dobratz.us wrote: On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:25 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote: 1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do? Come up with a consistent way to tag roads for the country. Somehow get a consensus from current mappers about how tag US/state/county/whatever highways. Update this page http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_roads_tagging and then remove There is conflicting information on this topic at several places. Specifically, on the Way: ref=??? highway=??? name=??? Add Way to Relation type=route route=road name=??? network=??? state_id=??? ref=??? modifier=??? direction=??? For exit Node: highway=motorway_junction name=??? ref=??? exit_to=??? Once we know how to map what we have, then we can document in the wiki specifically how every numbered road should be documented. 2) Why should this be done by the local chapter, and not by individual mappers? Every individual mapper can have their own idea about how these things should be tagged. As it is right now, mappers look at the conflicting information on the wiki and then make an educated decision, only to have someone come in later and change the tags on the roads, often leaving the map in an inconsistent state. I think there may even already be a committee setup to tackle this very issue: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Working_Groups/US_Tagging 3) Why should this be done by the local chapter and not by the OSMF? Though there may be some global consistency with road tagging, standards need to be established for each country. Road tagging is often influenced by US states making designations and signing each road accordingly. These signs do not necessarily have an international equivalent. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- martijn van exel geospatial omnivore 1109 1st ave #2 salt lake city, ut 84103 801-550-5815 http://oegeo.wordpress.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
Peter Dobratz wrote: Yes, OSMF US shouldn't mandate a certain tagging scheme, but they could certainly help to facilitate a consensus among the community. I'm definitely of the small government party for what OSMF (and by extension local chapters) should do. But one of the roles of OSMF, as part of its support and encourage mission, is to help cut through blockages that are holding OSM back. I think you could make a case that OSM in the US is being held back by the community's failure to agree on a common tagging scheme for roads (about five years after every other country settled on one, and with no sign of it being resolved any time soon). Ideally this should be done by, as you say, facilitating a consensus, but if that hasn't worked then it may be time to consider something more forceful. But I'm from the Old Country, feel free to ignore me if you have a better plan. :) cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/What-does-the-community-want-from-a-US-local-chapter-tp6847994p6848697.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
Hi, On 09/30/2011 07:48 PM, Richard Fairhurst wrote: I think you could make a case that OSM in the US is being held back by the community's failure to agree on a common tagging scheme for roads Really? Are there people who say I'd rather not map because there is no consensus on the roads tagging? Are those people the 20,000 missing mappers in the US? Ideally this should be done by, as you say, facilitating a consensus, Personally I'd think a per-state consensus would already be quite good. Greece and Norway use different tagging schemes - so why would anyone be held back if Texas uses something other than Alaska? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
Personally I'd think a per-state consensus would already be quite good. Greece and Norway use different tagging schemes - so why would anyone be held back if Texas uses something other than Alaska? Simply put, Greece and Norway are different countries. When I drive across the border into California, we still use the same nomenclature for roads. Having 50 committees to decide the naming is another way of saying it will never happen. When I was on the Bike/Ped committee in my town (not this one) the traffic engineers referred to AASHTO for standards. (See transportation.org.) My guess is they have standards for it already. I'd start by finding out if that's true and then put their names into the wiki as the starting point. Asking Portland Metro for help would be a good idea, I will write to them directly in a moment but I am pretty sure they read this list. I know looking at the Brit names in OSM that they don't work here, we are two countries separated by a common language. -- Brian Wilson Corvallis Oregon ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Brian Wilson br...@wildsong.biz wrote: Personally I'd think a per-state consensus would already be quite good. Greece and Norway use different tagging schemes - so why would anyone be held back if Texas uses something other than Alaska? Simply put, Greece and Norway are different countries. When I drive across the border into California, we still use the same nomenclature for roads. Having 50 committees to decide the naming is another way of saying it will never happen. When I was on the Bike/Ped committee in my town (not this one) the traffic engineers referred to AASHTO for standards. (See transportation.org.) My guess is they have standards for it already. I'd start by finding out if that's true and then put their names into the wiki as the starting point. Asking Portland Metro for help would be a good idea, I will write to them directly in a moment but I am pretty sure they read this list. I know looking at the Brit names in OSM that they don't work here, we are two countries separated by a common language. This is an interesting thread, but I don't think we need to have a discussion about tagging consistency on this thread. Consider Advocate for tagging (especially highway) consistency added to the list of things a US chapter should do. Can we think of anything else? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
Brian, just to save you the trouble, the closest there is to a standard is the FHWA Highway Functional Classification System. There's a wiki page [1] and lengthy discussion about its pros and cons on this page if you want to wade through [2]. Definitely would be a new thread if you want to continue that discussion... Brad [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Functional_Classification_System http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Functional_Classification_System [2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:United_States_roads_tagging On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 1:45 PM, Brian Wilson br...@wildsong.biz wrote: Personally I'd think a per-state consensus would already be quite good. Greece and Norway use different tagging schemes - so why would anyone be held back if Texas uses something other than Alaska? Simply put, Greece and Norway are different countries. When I drive across the border into California, we still use the same nomenclature for roads. Having 50 committees to decide the naming is another way of saying it will never happen. When I was on the Bike/Ped committee in my town (not this one) the traffic engineers referred to AASHTO for standards. (See transportation.org.) My guess is they have standards for it already. I'd start by finding out if that's true and then put their names into the wiki as the starting point. Asking Portland Metro for help would be a good idea, I will write to them directly in a moment but I am pretty sure they read this list. I know looking at the Brit names in OSM that they don't work here, we are two countries separated by a common language. -- Brian Wilson Corvallis Oregon ___ 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] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
Hi, On 09/30/2011 08:36 PM, Mike N wrote: Really? Are there people who say I'd rather not map because there is no consensus on the roads tagging? Are those people the 20,000 missing mappers in the US? It is more like I don't see anyone using the map except for Skobbler, so why should I invest my time? And what are the obstacles to usage? inconsistent tagging. Yes,but are the only meaningful uses of the map really those that depend on cross-state consistent road tagging? I find that hard to believe. And even if it were so - it may be that Greece and Norway are different countries, and they certainly have different authorities responsible for road naming and design, but you can simply grab your car and go from Greece to Norway without even having to show an ID to anybody - and yet nobody in Greece has claimed that inconsistent road tagging within Europe was an obstacle to usage. In the US, there may be minor differences from state to state, but we expect products to work seamlessly everywhere. Maybe I am missing something but I feel that over here we have products that work pretty well, in Greece and in Norway and everywhere in between, and we certainly don't have a unified tagging scheme. I think this is a strawman. There's tons of people who like to claim that OSM cannot be used for something, and then suddenly someone comes along and makes it work. There are those who sit back and wait until someone finally provides the proper preconditions for them to go to work, and there are those who pull up their sleeves and do the work anyway. I think that it is always more important to make things easy for mappers; users - and especially commercial users - should be our second priority, not our first. Because they stand to make a profit from using OSM, they can be expected to invest some time and brain power in finding out how to make OSM usable for them (just as Skobbler did!) whereas we mappers should just do what works well for us. Of course this would require some self-discipline on the part of mappers; nobody must run a bot to impose his personal tagging scheme on the rest of the country. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
Frederik Ramm wrote: Really? Are there people who say I'd rather not map because there is no consensus on the roads tagging? Are those people the 20,000 missing mappers in the US? I don't think it's all 20,000, no. :) But it's certainly significant and it is - correction, it _should_ be - one of the easiest things to fix. Three reasons: a) The map really, obviously looks wrong and inconsistent. It's one of the first things people notice (e.g. Justin O'Beirne on the late lamented 41latitude blog). Contributing to a sloppy map ostensibly produced by a bunch of blithering incompetents is not an appealing prospect. Of course I know and you know that OSMers aren't blithering incompetents and are in fact lovely, but you've got to get past the first impression. b) Barrier to entry. If you have to read up on 92364 contradictory policies about how roads should be tagged, or if you just can't figure it out, you're not going to proceed with it. I realise I'm preaching to the wrong guy here as you actually _like_ unnecessary barriers to entry but maybe the rest of the list will hear me out. ;) c) Even if you do come along and try your hardest to tag it right... then chances are that some muppet with a bot or a XAPI fetish is going to do an uninformed bulk change of your work in a week's time. That is _really_ disheartening. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/What-does-the-community-want-from-a-US-local-chapter-tp6847994p6849164.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 2:49 PM, Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com wrote: [ ... ] This is an interesting thread, but I don't think we need to have a discussion about tagging consistency on this thread. Consider Advocate for tagging (especially highway) consistency added to the list of things a US chapter should do. Can we think of anything else? Mental note: tagging is on the mind of some community members. Okay. Got it. ;-) Anything else? ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
-Original Message- From: Nathan Edgars II [mailto:nerou...@gmail.com] On 9/30/2011 1:48 PM, Richard Fairhurst wrote: I think you could make a case that OSM in the US is being held back by the community's failure to agree on a common tagging scheme for roads (about five years after every other country settled on one, and with no sign of it being resolved any time soon). Add Canada to the list: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Canadian_tagging_guidelines#Highway.2 FRoad.2FCarriageway_Tagging_System From what I've seen when building relations outside of BC, the tagging is fairly consistent across Canada. It's just not documented. I think the difficulties for North American tagging stem from the fact that there is no system of government classifications in some areas that is meaningful for determining what to tag a road as. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.net wrote: Frederik Ramm wrote: Really? Are there people who say I'd rather not map because there is no consensus on the roads tagging? Are those people the 20,000 missing mappers in the US? I don't think it's all 20,000, no. :) But it's certainly significant and it is - correction, it _should_ be - one of the easiest things to fix. Three reasons: a) The map really, obviously looks wrong and inconsistent. It's one of the first things people notice (e.g. Justin O'Beirne on the late lamented 41latitude blog). Contributing to a sloppy map ostensibly produced by a bunch of blithering incompetents is not an appealing prospect. Of course I know and you know that OSMers aren't blithering incompetents and are in fact lovely, but you've got to get past the first impression. I'm not saying it's the best possible solution, but that could also be addressed by US-specific geography that takes the inconsistencies into account. There seem to be many cases in which there is just not a national standard, such as the ref tag for state routes. I don't see how it would make sense to impose a standard where there isn't any. Inconsistency may just be part of reality here - excuse my limited understanding of the issues at hand though. b) Barrier to entry. If you have to read up on 92364 contradictory policies about how roads should be tagged, or if you just can't figure it out, you're not going to proceed with it. I realise I'm preaching to the wrong guy here as you actually _like_ unnecessary barriers to entry but maybe the rest of the list will hear me out. ;) As a newcomer you would probably find http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_Road_Classification which is not all that ambiguous but quite possibly an oversimplification. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_roads_tagging on the other hand -- how do these two pages relate to each other? -- is quite confusing and seems to need a lot of clean-up. The US Chapter could play a role here I believe, but a facilitating one rather than an imposing one. Maybe invite an outside specialist to come up with a proposal? c) Even if you do come along and try your hardest to tag it right... then chances are that some muppet with a bot or a XAPI fetish is going to do an uninformed bulk change of your work in a week's time. That is _really_ disheartening. When that happens -- I don't know if it already has here in the US? -- the situation has already gotten out of hand and there probably needs to be a cool down period with measures like temporary stricter bot detection for the US part of the database. I don't even know if that's possible, but it's a situation we need to consider, apparently. I wonder what possible temporary measures could be for such a cool down period -- technical and non-technical. What if anything can we learn from Wikipedia? Martijn -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/What-does-the-community-want-from-a-US-local-chapter-tp6847994p6849164.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- martijn van exel geospatial omnivore 1109 1st ave #2 salt lake city, ut 84103 801-550-5815 http://oegeo.wordpress.com ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 2:36 PM, Mike N nice...@att.net wrote: On 9/30/2011 2:23 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote: Really? Are there people who say I'd rather not map because there is no consensus on the roads tagging? Are those people the 20,000 missing mappers in the US? It is more like I don't see anyone using the map except for Skobbler, so why should I invest my time? My experience is that most long term mappers map to OSM, not to any one downstream OSM consumer (Skobbler, Mapquest, CloudMade). We map because we want to improve OSM. And if the others use our work, great. If not, we're still making the map. And what are the obstacles to usage? inconsistent tagging. My experience is that lack of complete addresses is a larger issue. Ideally this should be done by, as you say, facilitating a consensus, Personally I'd think a per-state consensus would already be quite good. Greece and Norway use different tagging schemes - so why would anyone be held back if Texas uses something other than Alaska? A map data consumer would want to be aware of local state conventions, but it would be a huge saving of effort to read up on a single US tagging convention from the Wiki, then apply it to consume map data. As already demonstrated by the 'shields' discussion, we can begin to approach a unified tagging convention that will cover all states. In the US, there may be minor differences from state to state, but we expect products to work seamlessly everywhere. By the same token, the standard tagging rules should then apply- the international ones. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
If it hasn't been mentioned already, I think you should add help to organize SOTM-US each year (or whatever time interval is appropriate). Tanya On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 7:25 AM, Richard Weait rich...@weait.com wrote: I'd like to see more discussion and guidance for the US local chapter. So, questions for the community: 1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do? 2) Why should this be done by the local chapter, and not by individual mappers? 3) Why should this be done by the local chapter and not by the OSMF? ___ 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] What does the community want from a US local chapter?
On 9/30/2011 7:37 PM, Martijn van Exel wrote: What if anything can we learn from Wikipedia? That consensus is very hard to reach :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:State_route_naming_conventions_poll/Account ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
