Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Martin Koppenhoefer writes: I do agree that they might likely have copyright on the routes, and that we maybe can't reproduce their routes in our db, but I do question that we can't map their signposts. Reasoning: the routes are nothing physically existing, they are, similar to a novel, creative works made up by someone, and that someone will probably hold copyright on them. The routes are not facts, they are works of creativity and ingenuity. But the signposts are facts, observable in reality, and while their graphic layout, logos, colors, composition, fonts, text, will likely be protected by copyright, I'd question the concept that their pure existence cannot be told about (i.e. without reproducing them with a foto, drawing or similar). This observable in reality lies at the heart of what is meant by facts about the world. Other routes (like rail Subdivisions) are yet more than simple signposts: physical things snaking through the landscape which have names and are even further published/talked about -- there are many gradations when it comes to facts about the world. We do discuss. I do not have answers to offer, as this has been a rich thread, so I would rather listen and encourage others to discuss amongst themselves (especially those legally leaning amongst us). I find this a nodding point upon which we might switch topic headers. Sincerely, SteveA California ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Am 07.04.2015 um 16:51 schrieb Martin Koppenhoefer: ... is this something the OSMF lawyers have had a look into? Is the issue really copyright or is this about trademark (regarding the names GR PR etc.)? Currently it seems we are accepting what the Fédération Francaise de la Randonnée Pédestre claims, without questioning whether their claims hold up. ... The wiki already explains: they hold a trademark for GR which makes using the official names of the routes essentially impossible in and for material they hold protection for and further they seem to claim copyright on the routes themselves, which is not particularly far fetched and can't be dismissed out of hand. AFAIK the OSM FR has never asked for formal support in the matter, and I very much doubt the OSMF would become active in the matter of its own accord, except if directly approached by a rights holder and even then the likely response is to delete questionable material. This doesn't mean that the OSMF is completely inactive wrt such matters, for example the LWG has been in contact and discussion with the WMF on freedom of panorama issues. E.g. why can't you do a survey and publicly say: You are requesting somebody to argue the case of Fédération Francaise de la Randonnée Pédestre, which I would do, if they paid me :-). .. Also, we are mapping roads and buildings, but the projects leading to these constructions are normally protected by copyright, and also a building can be protected (architectural work). None of these do stop us to map them in other fields, what is the particularity why GR cannot be mapped? Because us mapping them has never been challenged? Particularly in the case of 3d building models there is obviously potential for conflict, which however has AFAIK never actually happened up to now. Simon signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
2015-04-08 9:05 GMT+02:00 Simon Poole si...@poole.ch: The wiki already explains: they hold a trademark for GR which makes using the official names of the routes essentially impossible in and for material they hold protection for and further they seem to claim copyright on the routes themselves, which is not particularly far fetched and can't be dismissed out of hand. I do agree that they might likely have copyright on the routes, and that we maybe can't reproduce their routes in our db, but I do question that we can't map their signposts. Reasoning: the routes are nothing physically existing, they are, similar to a novel, creative works made up by someone, and that someone will probably hold copyright on them. The routes are not facts, they are works of creativity and ingenuity. But the signposts are facts, observable in reality, and while their graphic layout, logos, colors, composition, fonts, text, will likely be protected by copyright, I'd question the concept that their pure existence cannot be told about (i.e. without reproducing them with a foto, drawing or similar). Cheers, Martin ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Am 08.04.2015 um 15:23 schrieb 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. Yes, but we are using their trademark on a competing product, aka Pespi labelling their bottles with Coke-a-Cola (made by Pepsi). signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
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] Facts about the world
Under French law, would it be a violation of that copyright if someone recorded a GPX trace while walking along the signposted route, then mapped that route in OSM using the GPX trace and not using the GR name or shield? Do any of these routes have non-copyrighted local names? On April 4, 2015 11:40:53 AM CDT, stevea stevea...@softworkers.com wrote: exceptions, I believe the GR issue is still unsolved). Yes, all of that is fair game. Though I don't know what the GR issue is, and ask you to please clarify. Sorry for the late answer, been on the road for two days and now are on a rather flaky network connection. See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Walking_Routes#Francehttp://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Walking_Routes#France for a very short synopsis of the GR issue. Thank you. A quick GR synopsis: hiking routes in France, even with trailblazers marked on-the-ground (!), are under a restricted copyright and cannot be OSM-entered. Wow! Our oft-quoted test is it on-the-ground-verifiable? to determine whether data are OSM-enterable is not as clear-cut as yes or no? We need discussion, sometimes a Legal Team determinations, good will and open hearts as we figure this all out. Sometimes on a case-by-case basis. Not dogma, dig-in-our-heels zealotry. That isn't easy, so let's face that squarely and cut each other some slack that while there may be friction, we won't burst into flame. .. As facts about the world, these data belong to us, and when true, we can put them into OSM. (Sometimes such data, like airline routes, are inappropriate to put into OSM -- but that's another topic). I think where we differ is that I see OSM (not only) as a project that demonstrates (in practical use) what citizens can do with today's technology, in an area that just a couple of years back was completely controlled by government and industry. If by doing so, more government data becomes freely available then that is a nice side effect, but not a primary goal. Recall what made me start this thread: I want to clean up/improve crusty/wrong TIGER railway data. THAT, in the instant case, is my primary goal. I assert, I believe 100% correctly, that the names of long industrial things hundreds of km long are both my business and facts about the world that belong to nobody in particular, but rather everybody, and hence deserve to be in OSM as correct. I'm not necessarily doing an import, I'm better naming crusty/wrong data OSM already has with facts about the world. Yes, these happen to be confirmed by data published by my employees (government agencies). That's it. Please don't conflate the process just outlined with government data becoming more freely available as a side effect as that is not what I just described nor is it what is happening here. I don't see it as a vehicle to promote any specific agenda outside of the relatively narrow goals of the project itself. In particular I don't see potentially impacting the primary goal of providing free (as in free of legal restrictions by third parties) geo data to everyone by becoming embrolied in legal fights just to prove a point. I like proving points when it suits me (especially when I am right!) but again, that's not what this is. It is cleaning up old, wrong data so they are correct, appropriate-to-be-in-OSM data (but only when correct, and they are wrong now). It is my subjective impression is that we are just on the brink of the project being unworkable because our contributors are too bold in using third party sources -not- the other way around (and yes when I get back home I have to deal with removing months of work by a mapper together with the DWG because they were too bold). I respectfully and strenuously disagree. We still (and likely will) continue to have some predictable and manageable problems with import of data from third party sources, but we have procedures in place to make imports and third party data sources (two different things, but they do often overlap) better. Emphasis on manageable. My turn to ask: How much of these problems are OUR FAULT? The obvious answer is every last bit. We need to educate people, train them and be vigilant. We do all of these things, but if we still have problems (we do, but they do not threaten to make the project unworkable) we simply must do better. That's roll-up-our-sleeves work, but it isn't throw-up-our-hands the project is almost unworkable. Respectfully, SteveA California ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
2015-04-04 16:46 GMT+02:00 Simon Poole si...@poole.ch: Sorry for the late answer, been on the road for two days and now are on a rather flaky network connection. See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Walking_Routes#France for a very short synopsis of the GR issue. is this something the OSMF lawyers have had a look into? Is the issue really copyright or is this about trademark (regarding the names GR PR etc.)? Currently it seems we are accepting what the Fédération Francaise de la Randonnée Pédestre claims, without questioning whether their claims hold up. E.g. why can't you do a survey and publicly say: here is a sign which reads GR 4 similar to making a survey and publicly saying: here is a sign that reads 'Coca Cola'? This doesn't question the CocaCola trademark. Also, we are mapping roads and buildings, but the projects leading to these constructions are normally protected by copyright, and also a building can be protected (architectural work). None of these do stop us to map them in other fields, what is the particularity why GR cannot be mapped? Cheers, Martin ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
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] Facts about the world
Eleanor, I want to clarify some things: On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 1:06 AM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com wrote: Paul - If perception of mapping in the US isn't aligning with reality, we probably *do* need to do a better job as a chapter board of telling the full story. I believe that the story that the board tells reflect the overall experience of the board. Paul did an analysis of the mapping activites of the prospective board members before they were elected. Some of the board members are not active OSM mappers, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that people who don't do manual surveying don't talk about manual surveying. I see what you mean about the blog posts, though I do think your interpretation is a bit harsh. For example, the mapathon post that you characterize as an indoor event, while it does admittedly have a photo of people at computers, also makes it clear that the theme for the upcoming mapathon is the great outdoors. The events are characterized as Edit-a-thons and they were designed to be run indoors. They were essentially a response from some members of the community who felt that Mapping Parties were not for them. The advantage of an Edit-A-Thon is that they can be run indoors (unlike Mapping Parties), but if you look at most Edit-A-Thons going on next week, and you look at the history of them (look at the talk-us archives) they're still largely indoor events. The only reason that OSM NYC runs them as outdoor events is that I believe strongly that the experience of going out and surveying has value- not only data quality value, but emotional value. There's value in being connected to the place you live that can't be captured via areal photo or governmental dataset. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 11:19 AM, Martijn van Exel mart...@openstreetmap.us wrote: It would be nice if we could have SotM US this June be a venue to dispel some of the assumptions that seem to exist abroad about the U.S OpenStreetMap community. Reducing the U.S. community to a bunch of couch potatoes who are more concerned with mapping remote places and importing data is not only inaccurate but also disrespectful to all of us who tirelessly work to improve our neighborhoods and towns based on good ol' ground surveying and local knowledge. Perhaps we, as the U.S. chapter, play a role in creating or sustaining these false assumptions? Do we need to do a better job highlighting really good local mapping efforts? I would welcome opinions and ideas. As I recall Martijn, there were a number of videos from SOTM US 2013ish that laid out the issue. It is the size of the US project that complicates the issue. By the time your talk came around, you stated the same thing once again. By the way, I am so thankful that the US Conference records these sessions. I have not been able to attend but I try and view the videos every once in awhile. I'd have you focus on something else than trying to dispel the assumptions about the US. I have the sense; it is what I have observed; no mater what is done in the US, we did not do it like the Europeans so it cannot be good. That's my perception of their view. One of the most interesting things I saw from 2013 was the progress report and the meta tile report that some of the report was based on. I had to go look at what some of the mappers had accomplished in these regions. It was so cool to see all those buildings that were imported in Chicago. That was a major accomplishment. Arizona has this problematic issue about trying to make money off their GIS data. Sadly, there's no cost recovery even if they think that there is. Moreover, there is no building data set that I know of in AZ that could match what Chicago cataloged. The Chicago area inspired me to trace as many buildings as I can. One of the cool areas that I worked on was the Scottsdale Air Park http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/33.62087/-111.91182 . Thanks for the inspiration Ian! I got bored. I moved on to other areas. However, I always look for those nice challenging buildings to map. One of the Carolina meta tiles also inspired me http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/254964599#map=19/35.84273/-78.66457 . Wow. Look at that! The mapper added driveways too. I saw a number of tag combinations that I never thought of because of these meta tiles. I actually setup a daily import to generate my own meta tile report. I was shooting for x number of nodes in each tile of the meta tile. I found out that Arizona has a number of zero meta tiles. I also saw that $user in the East Valley had a number of very dense tiles but no 100K meta tile yet. As for me, I got past 50,000 nodes in one meta tile but no 100K meta tiles yet. There's so many interesting things to see and map that when I achieve boredom with an area, I find another interesting area to map. I always try to think of the glass of orange juice as half full or half empty. Either way their's room for Vodka! So Fredrick builds a tool to solve a rendering problem.[1] It is not just the US where a certain image is painted. The resulting discussion sounds like a Ford verses Chevy debate __to_me__. The debate goes like this, if your Chevy has more nodes than my Ford, I have to find some vault with the Chevy. The opportunity to see a Craig's List or Rand McNally use OSM without all the great or small contributions would not have been possible with the efforts of OSM mappers. The sea of change that OSM has brought is just amazing to me. Regards, Greg [1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-May/067194.html http://fred.dev.openstreetmap.org/density/ http://fred.dev.openstreetmap.org/density/2012.html https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-May/067136.html Because it means that this is probably dead data without a community behind it to fix problems and to do updates. https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-May/067138.html Endless story. That's the anti-imports theory : a map looking complete does not call for new contributions. Which means that we should gum out the map from time to time just to build a new community of contributors when the previous one consider the job done or is exhausted ;-) Pieren https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-May/067142.html ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 2:55 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: The events are characterized as Edit-a-thons and they were designed to be run indoors. They were essentially a response from some members of the community who felt that Mapping Parties were not for them. The advantage of an Edit-A-Thon is that they can be run indoors (unlike Mapping Parties), but if you look at most Edit-A-Thons going on next week, and you look at the history of them (look at the talk-us archives) they're still largely indoor events. #editathons are #mapathons since last summer and they've since at least a year and a half now explicitly encouraged people to go outside - not least because of your feedback Serge: June 2013 Rather want to go outside and survey? Nothing should stop you from that. http://openstreetmap.us/2013/06/july-summer-editathon/ In June 2014 we renamed 'editathons' to 'mapathons' to clarify: go out and survey! http://openstreetmap.us/2013/07/why-editathons/ I would also love to see a foot survey activity at StateOfTheMap.us in NYC in June. I know my OSM US board colleagues Martijn and Alyssa are talking to some people about this. If anyone here on this list is interested in help lead a foot survey at State of the Map US, get in touch: sot...@openstreetmap.us . -- Alex Barth Vice President OpenStreetMap United States Inc. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
I actually think it's fine Frederik has opinions about how we should do things around here in the US and shares them. I just don't want to be called a couch potato in the course of it ;-) On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 8:57 AM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote: On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:18 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, On 04/03/2015 02:41 AM, stevea wrote: It seems to me that in the USA, what people think about OSM is one of these two: (a) A project for hackers and couch potatoes who trawl their county web pages and other sources to look for stuff they could upload to OSM (because it's such a big country and nobody could possibly, yadda yadda yadda) (b) A project for people who roll up their sleeves, travel to places of humanitarian crises, and help those in need by creating maps where the government hasn't done their job well. Wow Frederik, In your post related to one of your pet-peeves about the US OSM community you managed to stumble across one of MY PET PEEVES! Honestly I have a hard time with people who spend a lot of time on the country specific mailing lists telling people that live, are from or often travel to a specific country or area what OSM is to them. If I'm correct you have never lived in the US, you have never spent significant time in the US, you have no plans to move to the US or any other particular interest, right? So why do you come over to talk-US and tell the people that do all of those things what OSM should be to them? If we want a free map of the entire world we should all be free to make our own meaning out of OpenStreetMap. That is of course within the boundaries of the license. Signed, Someone who has mapped her neighborhood by hand, imported data and traveled to places of humanitarian crisis all with OSM. Additionally I live and am from the US. -Kate P.S. Specific to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and your suggestion that it is mostly people from the US. That is simply not the case. HOT's new current board is 7 people and only one is from the US. I also suspect our contributors are more from a few countries in Europe than anywhere else. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ 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 -- Alex Barth Vice President OpenStreetMap United States Inc. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 8:53 PM, Paul Norman penor...@mac.com wrote: In the current board term I counted 15 blog posts. The breakdown of these is 7 conference 3 indoor computer-based events 2 non-OSM geo-related projects 2 chapter administrative 1 HOT Last year, it is similar, except the conference itself was within the time collected 21 conference 10 indoor computer-based events 4 chapter administrative 1 HOT None of the indoor events you listed are indoor only, they are all mapathons and we leave it explicitly up to the local organizer whether they want to go out or stay in. Obviously there's a misunderstanding and we need to work on better communicating this. More outside pictures everyone! - among other things. Looking at Eleanor email just now on this same thread I want to highlight this sentence: My first editathon - led by another community member - involved walking around outdoors on a college campus. This is why we're doing mapathons (previously editathons) - they bring new people into the community! How awesome is that? -- Alex Barth Vice President OpenStreetMap United States Inc. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Also! There's still time to join the upcoming #mapathon by organizing an event in your community https://twitter.com/OpenStreetMapUS/status/584378522245922816 On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 11:33 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 11:09 AM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Serge. As a member of the chapter board, I feel a bit erased? misrepresented? by your email. It hurt, especially because I think you and I share some common ground about why we map and that it is important to feel a connection to a place. You're right that I painted everyone with the same brush, and that wasn't my intent; I'm sorry. It's hard to be critical of an organization and not the individuals, but you're right, I probably could have done a better job. At any rate, while you are more qualified to speak to the history of OSM as a whole than I am, I do want to say a few things that will maybe help you get the know my personal history with OSM: There are people on this list who were involved in OSM longer than me. I don't believe I have special qualifications beyond being there. When I was new to OSM and first learned about editathons, I didn't know anyone involved with OSM or have any preconceived ideas about the project. All I knew was that editathons sounded amazing, so I made the effort to connect with other local mappers and start building more of a community in my region. My first editathon - led by another community member - involved walking around outdoors on a college campus. My second editathon - led by myself - involved walking around outdoors in a neighborhood commercial district. In my experience, editathons have always been a way for community members to get together and map in whatever manner made the most sense - sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors. There can be value in both. I remember Paul's post, I was elected to the chapter board, and - it's true! - I don't have very many OSM edits compared to many members of the community. That doesn't mean I don't go out and map my community - I described in a different email how I do so. But I contribute in other ways as well. Last month, I led a group of students in a survey of a nearby neighborhood. I spent hours walking through the neighborhood with them, helping mark points, and then helping them enter their data when they returned. I did not personally make a single edit with my OSM user name. However, I contributed to those edits invisibly, behind the scenes, and I believe several of those students will become regular contributors. Maybe time erases this stuff, and that's a good thing. Again, my apologies. Especially as someone who doesn't have a car, I know the challenge that mapping can be for folks like us, and major kudos to you for your mapping and community work. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- Alex Barth Vice President OpenStreetMap United States Inc. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Am 04.04.2015 um 14:57 schrieb Kate Chapman: ... Small reality check (not saying that this is anybodies fault, just how it is): - the US community shapes how the project is perceived by the media globally - US based companies control the majority of funds spent on OSM development and have a major influence in OSM related formal bodies - the US community has a large (far far larger than the relative and absolute size of the community would indicate) presence in essentially every policy discussion in an OSM context. I don't think pretending that the US is an unimportant, negligible player, best left on its own, is going to work particularly well and just as a lot of other people follow closely what is going on in the US and feel entitled to voice my opinion when necessary. Its the price you have to pay for global dominance. And the other part of the puzzle is, while we don't and likely can't have unified quality standards for OSM, there is a certain expectation of usefulness, at least for 1st world countries. That might not be a concern for everybody in the US community, it is a concern for people outside of the US wanting to use OSM based data for the US (revisit Richard Fairhurst numerous posts on the topic) and I don't think you can negate that such an interest is quite valid. Simon signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Am 03.04.2015 um 02:41 schrieb stevea: Facts about the world Simon Poole writes: Up to now OSM has drawn the line in such a way that stuff that is signposted and is observable on the ground is fair game (with some exceptions, I believe the GR issue is still unsolved). Yes, all of that is fair game. Though I don't know what the GR issue is, and ask you to please clarify. Sorry for the late answer, been on the road for two days and now are on a rather flaky network connection. See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Walking_Routes#France for a very short synopsis of the GR issue. .. As facts about the world, these data belong to us, and when true, we can put them into OSM. (Sometimes such data, like airline routes, are inappropriate to put into OSM -- but that's another topic). I think where we differ is that I see OSM (not only) as a project that demonstrates (in practical use) what citizens can do with today's technology, in an area that just a couple of years back was completely controlled by government and industry. If by doing so, more government data becomes freely available then that is a nice side effect, but not a primary goal. I don't see it as a vehicle to promote any specific agenda outside of the relatively narrow goals of the project itself. In particular I don't see potentially impacting the primary goal of providing free (as in free of legal restrictions by third parties) geo data to everyone by becoming embrolied in legal fights just to prove a point. It is my subjective impression is that we are just on the brink of the project being unworkable because our contributors are too bold in using third party sources -not- the other way around (and yes when I get back home I have to deal with removing months of work by a mapper together with the DWG because they were too bold). Simon signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Hi, Serge. As a member of the chapter board, I feel a bit erased? misrepresented? by your email. It hurt, especially because I think you and I share some common ground about why we map and that it is important to feel a connection to a place. At any rate, while you are more qualified to speak to the history of OSM as a whole than I am, I do want to say a few things that will maybe help you get the know my personal history with OSM: - When I was new to OSM and first learned about editathons, I didn't know anyone involved with OSM or have any preconceived ideas about the project. All I knew was that editathons sounded amazing, so I made the effort to connect with other local mappers and start building more of a community in my region. My first editathon - led by another community member - involved walking around outdoors on a college campus. My second editathon - led by myself - involved walking around outdoors in a neighborhood commercial district. In my experience, editathons have always been a way for community members to get together and map in whatever manner made the most sense - sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors. There can be value in both. - I remember Paul's post, I was elected to the chapter board, and - it's true! - I don't have very many OSM edits compared to many members of the community. That doesn't mean I don't go out and map my community - I described in a different email how I do so. But I contribute in other ways as well. Last month, I led a group of students in a survey of a nearby neighborhood. I spent hours walking through the neighborhood with them, helping mark points, and then helping them enter their data when they returned. I did not personally make a single edit with my OSM user name. However, I contributed to those edits invisibly, behind the scenes, and I believe several of those students will become regular contributors. Thanks for reading! Eleanor On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 1:55 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: Eleanor, I want to clarify some things: On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 1:06 AM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com wrote: Paul - If perception of mapping in the US isn't aligning with reality, we probably *do* need to do a better job as a chapter board of telling the full story. I believe that the story that the board tells reflect the overall experience of the board. Paul did an analysis of the mapping activites of the prospective board members before they were elected. Some of the board members are not active OSM mappers, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that people who don't do manual surveying don't talk about manual surveying. I see what you mean about the blog posts, though I do think your interpretation is a bit harsh. For example, the mapathon post that you characterize as an indoor event, while it does admittedly have a photo of people at computers, also makes it clear that the theme for the upcoming mapathon is the great outdoors. The events are characterized as Edit-a-thons and they were designed to be run indoors. They were essentially a response from some members of the community who felt that Mapping Parties were not for them. The advantage of an Edit-A-Thon is that they can be run indoors (unlike Mapping Parties), but if you look at most Edit-A-Thons going on next week, and you look at the history of them (look at the talk-us archives) they're still largely indoor events. The only reason that OSM NYC runs them as outdoor events is that I believe strongly that the experience of going out and surveying has value- not only data quality value, but emotional value. There's value in being connected to the place you live that can't be captured via areal photo or governmental dataset. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Many areas of the western US are sparsely populated. Not only are there few mappers per square mile, there are simply very few people per square mile. I map were I visit. But in more than a few cases I may only visit and area once. This could lead to the same issue you worry about for imports: There are local mappers to maintain the data I collected and entered. Or even to review and correct errors I may have made. Should I only map areas that I am likely to return to so that I can be responsible for the maintenance? Seems pretty limiting to me. So I think the issue of long term data maintenance is a separate issue from that of imports though imported data may spotlight the issue more. Cheers, Tod On Apr 4, 2015, at 6:14 AM, Volker Schmidt vosc...@gmail.com wrote: Hi all, I have been reading most of the exchange about the different approaches. My take on it is that the entire discussion is missing something that is in my view much more important than the quality of the data at the moment of important: I am much more worried about imports for a completely different reason, and that is data maintenance. Even if data were 100% correct at the moment of import, they deteriorate over time. If the data are imported directly into the main database, you have no choice than to maintain them manually from then on, and you need to have sufficient poeple on the ground to spot changes in the data set, including the imported data. If the external data were not imported, but kept in a separate external-data layer, the situation could be different, because you would have the option to refresh the external data form time to time. But this is not the data model of OSM. And in that respect there are most likely differences between countries. I can see this difference between Italy and Germany: Germany has many more mappers per map feature than Italy has. That is why there are less imports (I suppose) in Germany in the first place, and that explains why they are generally much less import-inclined than the Italian mappers. But Germany could deal better with the data maintenance thanks to more mappers in the field. In Italy we have many imports, but the imported data is generally of poor quality, we simply do not have the manpower. Formulated another way: the quantity of imported data in an area should take into account how much maintenance manpower is available for that area. Where there are less active mappers, don't be tempted to compensate by by more imports, simply keep the map simpler. I should point out, that I have no idea what the relative mapper per feature ratios are in he US compared with Germany. Volker (Padova, Italy) ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:18 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, On 04/03/2015 02:41 AM, stevea wrote: It seems to me that in the USA, what people think about OSM is one of these two: (a) A project for hackers and couch potatoes who trawl their county web pages and other sources to look for stuff they could upload to OSM (because it's such a big country and nobody could possibly, yadda yadda yadda) (b) A project for people who roll up their sleeves, travel to places of humanitarian crises, and help those in need by creating maps where the government hasn't done their job well. Wow Frederik, In your post related to one of your pet-peeves about the US OSM community you managed to stumble across one of MY PET PEEVES! Honestly I have a hard time with people who spend a lot of time on the country specific mailing lists telling people that live, are from or often travel to a specific country or area what OSM is to them. If I'm correct you have never lived in the US, you have never spent significant time in the US, you have no plans to move to the US or any other particular interest, right? So why do you come over to talk-US and tell the people that do all of those things what OSM should be to them? If we want a free map of the entire world we should all be free to make our own meaning out of OpenStreetMap. That is of course within the boundaries of the license. Signed, Someone who has mapped her neighborhood by hand, imported data and traveled to places of humanitarian crisis all with OSM. Additionally I live and am from the US. -Kate P.S. Specific to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and your suggestion that it is mostly people from the US. That is simply not the case. HOT's new current board is 7 people and only one is from the US. I also suspect our contributors are more from a few countries in Europe than anywhere else. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ 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] Facts about the world
Thanks so much, Serge - seriously. Your apology means a lot to me. Happy mapping! Eleanor On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 11:09 AM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Serge. As a member of the chapter board, I feel a bit erased? misrepresented? by your email. It hurt, especially because I think you and I share some common ground about why we map and that it is important to feel a connection to a place. You're right that I painted everyone with the same brush, and that wasn't my intent; I'm sorry. It's hard to be critical of an organization and not the individuals, but you're right, I probably could have done a better job. At any rate, while you are more qualified to speak to the history of OSM as a whole than I am, I do want to say a few things that will maybe help you get the know my personal history with OSM: There are people on this list who were involved in OSM longer than me. I don't believe I have special qualifications beyond being there. When I was new to OSM and first learned about editathons, I didn't know anyone involved with OSM or have any preconceived ideas about the project. All I knew was that editathons sounded amazing, so I made the effort to connect with other local mappers and start building more of a community in my region. My first editathon - led by another community member - involved walking around outdoors on a college campus. My second editathon - led by myself - involved walking around outdoors in a neighborhood commercial district. In my experience, editathons have always been a way for community members to get together and map in whatever manner made the most sense - sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors. There can be value in both. I remember Paul's post, I was elected to the chapter board, and - it's true! - I don't have very many OSM edits compared to many members of the community. That doesn't mean I don't go out and map my community - I described in a different email how I do so. But I contribute in other ways as well. Last month, I led a group of students in a survey of a nearby neighborhood. I spent hours walking through the neighborhood with them, helping mark points, and then helping them enter their data when they returned. I did not personally make a single edit with my OSM user name. However, I contributed to those edits invisibly, behind the scenes, and I believe several of those students will become regular contributors. Maybe time erases this stuff, and that's a good thing. Again, my apologies. Especially as someone who doesn't have a car, I know the challenge that mapping can be for folks like us, and major kudos to you for your mapping and community work. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] Facts about the world
Hi all, I have been reading most of the exchange about the different approaches. My take on it is that the entire discussion is missing something that is in my view much more important than the quality of the data at the moment of important: I am much more worried about imports for a completely different reason, and that is data maintenance. Even if data were 100% correct at the moment of import, they deteriorate over time. If the data are imported directly into the main database, you have no choice than to maintain them manually from then on, and you need to have sufficient poeple on the ground to spot changes in the data set, including the imported data. If the external data were not imported, but kept in a separate external-data layer, the situation could be different, because you would have the option to refresh the external data form time to time. But this is not the data model of OSM. And in that respect there are most likely differences between countries. I can see this difference between Italy and Germany: Germany has many more mappers per map feature than Italy has. That is why there are less imports (I suppose) in Germany in the first place, and that explains why they are generally much less import-inclined than the Italian mappers. But Germany could deal better with the data maintenance thanks to more mappers in the field. In Italy we have many imports, but the imported data is generally of poor quality, we simply do not have the manpower. Formulated another way: the quantity of imported data in an area should take into account how much maintenance manpower is available for that area. Where there are less active mappers, don't be tempted to compensate by by more imports, simply keep the map simpler. I should point out, that I have no idea what the relative mapper per feature ratios are in he US compared with Germany. Volker (Padova, Italy) ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 11:09 AM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, Serge. As a member of the chapter board, I feel a bit erased? misrepresented? by your email. It hurt, especially because I think you and I share some common ground about why we map and that it is important to feel a connection to a place. You're right that I painted everyone with the same brush, and that wasn't my intent; I'm sorry. It's hard to be critical of an organization and not the individuals, but you're right, I probably could have done a better job. At any rate, while you are more qualified to speak to the history of OSM as a whole than I am, I do want to say a few things that will maybe help you get the know my personal history with OSM: There are people on this list who were involved in OSM longer than me. I don't believe I have special qualifications beyond being there. When I was new to OSM and first learned about editathons, I didn't know anyone involved with OSM or have any preconceived ideas about the project. All I knew was that editathons sounded amazing, so I made the effort to connect with other local mappers and start building more of a community in my region. My first editathon - led by another community member - involved walking around outdoors on a college campus. My second editathon - led by myself - involved walking around outdoors in a neighborhood commercial district. In my experience, editathons have always been a way for community members to get together and map in whatever manner made the most sense - sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors. There can be value in both. I remember Paul's post, I was elected to the chapter board, and - it's true! - I don't have very many OSM edits compared to many members of the community. That doesn't mean I don't go out and map my community - I described in a different email how I do so. But I contribute in other ways as well. Last month, I led a group of students in a survey of a nearby neighborhood. I spent hours walking through the neighborhood with them, helping mark points, and then helping them enter their data when they returned. I did not personally make a single edit with my OSM user name. However, I contributed to those edits invisibly, behind the scenes, and I believe several of those students will become regular contributors. Maybe time erases this stuff, and that's a good thing. Again, my apologies. Especially as someone who doesn't have a car, I know the challenge that mapping can be for folks like us, and major kudos to you for your mapping and community work. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Hi Frederik, On Sun, Apr 5, 2015 at 3:36 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, On 04/04/2015 07:20 PM, Simon Poole wrote: I just don't want to be called a couch potato in the course of it ;-) Seriously, I believe Frederik was more referring to how OSM is viewed by third parties Indeed. I don't have much exposure to US Americans outside of OSM but in the few interactions like that I had, if people did have any conception about OSM it usually fell into one of the two categories I mentioned - either OSM the hacker project to re-purpose government data or OSM the humanitarian project. I know we've gotten a bit off topic regarding the subject. My point is that that OSM is going to work differently in different cultures. I understand the need for legal compliance completely, but I also think people can certainly do well thought out imports. The question of stale data in imports? Honestly at this point that to me is more a matter of tools than anything else. Are there ways to make it easier to update? Japan and France spend a lot of time importing data. Do you spend as much time over there telling them how their OSM culture should be? I always put it down to people in the USA traditionally having much freer access to data their government has collected (viz. TIGER) and therefore more likely to respond to hey, here's people finally making their own map with a shrug than with enthusiasm. It is true, it is hard to excited about mapping roads for example when there is okay data already existing. Creating that enthusiasm is a huge challenge (anyone remember CloudMade's ambassadors?) and in my opinion, every time someone says ah we don't have to map this and that, we can take that data from third party source, the enthusiasm dampens a bit. Because who wants to be seen doing something that might turn out not to be necessary? The Cloudmade ambassador program was complicated. The people that had the most success reaching the widest audience were people that came outside of the OSM community. To me that might be an indication that US culture developers less people that have the traditional OSM culture fit. -Kate Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ 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] Facts about the world
On 4/3/2015 5:32 PM, Eleanor Tutt wrote: I'm interested in hearing more about how and why people contribute to the map. It's just a hobby for me, a way to get out and learn some obscure facts about a place. Most contributions come from a GPS survey or local observation. Although I believe I could get permission from my county and an adjoining county for importing buildings and addresses, I'm intentionally not bothering with that import because I'm not sure who would use the data yet anyway. (In the US, everyone uses Google, so they shrug at OSM). In the meantime, I am adding addresses of most POIs / landmarks that I enter into OSM. There are now 3 major contributors in my area, up from 1 for many years. One pulls extensively from survey data he collects from daily travels. The other one has created some detailed landuse coverage for the region. I'm ashamed to admit that he hasn't actually traversed each landuse area with a GPS, but is instead using Bingg, and by the way NOT AN IMPORT. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 2:21 PM, Darrell Fuhriman darr...@garnix.org wrote: TIGER is much older than reasonably portable GPS units. According to [1] pre-TIGER paper map sources were below the quality of the 1:100,000 DLG data outside of urban areas. Many of the crazy spaghetti data areas we see probably haven't changed geometry in TIGER much since since the mid-1980's when they were digitized the first time. They were never intended for mapping, but rather were attribute rich for relative geocoding. We shouldn't be surprised they as bad as they are. Many of the processes for rural counties to contribute modern geometry (not attributes) to TIGER only gained steam after the date that OSM sucked it it's first big import, so the bad areas never benefitted from the geometry improvements. It is what it is... All this is to say is that it's important to understand the origins of any data - many of the complaints people have about government data sources are easily explained if you trace the origins. For example many people don't know that the original source of the digital spatial coordinates of uncorrected GNIS point data was the centroid of the cartographic labels on 24k topo quads. This entirely explains why the points are most often next to, rather on top of the feature being labeled. Yet complaints abound because for OSM scales, the data is imperfect. So it goes. [1] http://geospatial-solutions.com/tiger-database-historical-perspective/ ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
I feel the OSM project is missing a major opportunity to find mappers, by focusing on finding mappers. Instead find enthusiasts for . It could be RV toilets, street art, abandoned railways (ahem), free book stands, fairy houses, whatever. OSM is far behind Google in transportation routing via any mode (from walking to airline/train travel) that that won't work right now. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
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. -- m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
exceptions, I believe the GR issue is still unsolved). Yes, all of that is fair game. Though I don't know what the GR issue is, and ask you to please clarify. Sorry for the late answer, been on the road for two days and now are on a rather flaky network connection. See http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Walking_Routes#Francehttp://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Walking_Routes#France for a very short synopsis of the GR issue. Thank you. A quick GR synopsis: hiking routes in France, even with trailblazers marked on-the-ground (!), are under a restricted copyright and cannot be OSM-entered. Wow! Our oft-quoted test is it on-the-ground-verifiable? to determine whether data are OSM-enterable is not as clear-cut as yes or no? We need discussion, sometimes a Legal Team determinations, good will and open hearts as we figure this all out. Sometimes on a case-by-case basis. Not dogma, dig-in-our-heels zealotry. That isn't easy, so let's face that squarely and cut each other some slack that while there may be friction, we won't burst into flame. .. As facts about the world, these data belong to us, and when true, we can put them into OSM. (Sometimes such data, like airline routes, are inappropriate to put into OSM -- but that's another topic). I think where we differ is that I see OSM (not only) as a project that demonstrates (in practical use) what citizens can do with today's technology, in an area that just a couple of years back was completely controlled by government and industry. If by doing so, more government data becomes freely available then that is a nice side effect, but not a primary goal. Recall what made me start this thread: I want to clean up/improve crusty/wrong TIGER railway data. THAT, in the instant case, is my primary goal. I assert, I believe 100% correctly, that the names of long industrial things hundreds of km long are both my business and facts about the world that belong to nobody in particular, but rather everybody, and hence deserve to be in OSM as correct. I'm not necessarily doing an import, I'm better naming crusty/wrong data OSM already has with facts about the world. Yes, these happen to be confirmed by data published by my employees (government agencies). That's it. Please don't conflate the process just outlined with government data becoming more freely available as a side effect as that is not what I just described nor is it what is happening here. I don't see it as a vehicle to promote any specific agenda outside of the relatively narrow goals of the project itself. In particular I don't see potentially impacting the primary goal of providing free (as in free of legal restrictions by third parties) geo data to everyone by becoming embrolied in legal fights just to prove a point. I like proving points when it suits me (especially when I am right!) but again, that's not what this is. It is cleaning up old, wrong data so they are correct, appropriate-to-be-in-OSM data (but only when correct, and they are wrong now). It is my subjective impression is that we are just on the brink of the project being unworkable because our contributors are too bold in using third party sources -not- the other way around (and yes when I get back home I have to deal with removing months of work by a mapper together with the DWG because they were too bold). I respectfully and strenuously disagree. We still (and likely will) continue to have some predictable and manageable problems with import of data from third party sources, but we have procedures in place to make imports and third party data sources (two different things, but they do often overlap) better. Emphasis on manageable. My turn to ask: How much of these problems are OUR FAULT? The obvious answer is every last bit. We need to educate people, train them and be vigilant. We do all of these things, but if we still have problems (we do, but they do not threaten to make the project unworkable) we simply must do better. That's roll-up-our-sleeves work, but it isn't throw-up-our-hands the project is almost unworkable. Respectfully, SteveA California___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Am 04.04.2015 um 18:40 schrieb stevea: Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world I respectfully and strenuously disagree. We still (and likely will) continue to have some predictable and manageable problems with import of data from third party sources, but we have procedures in place to make imports and third party data sources (two different things, but they do often overlap) better. Just as a a clarification the case in question is not an import, but actually exactly a they are only facts so I can extract them from the original source(s) and use them in OSM situation. signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Am 04.04.2015 um 17:03 schrieb Alex Barth: I just don't want to be called a couch potato in the course of it ;-) Couch carrot? :-P Seriously, I believe Frederik was more referring to how OSM is viewed by third parties and the impression outsiders could get from the image we tend to market. And however at odds with reality such an impression is, it probably can't be ignored and needs a conscious effort to correct. Aka no more rooms of people staring at computer screens, more people on bicycles or whatever :-) Simon signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On 4/3/2015 10:06 PM, Eleanor Tutt wrote: Paul - If perception of mapping in the US isn't aligning with reality, we probably *do* need to do a better job as a chapter board of telling the full story. I see what you mean about the blog posts, though I do think your interpretation is a bit harsh. For example, the mapathon post that you characterize as an indoor event, while it does admittedly have a photo of people at computers, also makes it clear that the theme for the upcoming mapathon is the great outdoors. Eventually, most people do enter the data they collect in the field into the OSM while at a computer, and as a mapathon organizer, I don't always remember to take good action shot photos. Rather than assume no one set foot outdoors, why not assume that no one remembered to stop mapping to take a photo, because mapping outdoors is really fun? I thought hard about the mapathon/editathon posts. I ended putting them down as indoors because that's how their publicity has historically been. I'm aware that not all are indoors-only events, but I was looking at what the US chapter publicizes. Seattle has mapping parties that go outdoors in suitable weather which I attend - it's not that I'm unaware of surveying going on in the US, but Martijn asked about the role the US chapter plays, which I think the data solidly answers. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 10:04 AM, Minh Nguyen m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us wrote: 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. I think TIGER is genius. I think of TIGER like the walking papers project. You print out a piece of paper and mark a few Xs and Os on it. You go back and record the real data. TIGER serves its primary purpose: collecting census data by getting boots on the ground in the right area. I base my thoughts/opinion on some of the trailer courts, retirement communities, and travel trailer parks around AZ. They were so out of scale. It felt like that is what could fit on an 8 by 11.5 sized paper that could be carried by a census worker. The intersection table ideal feels right. There have been a number places where I cut a street at an intersection. Where that intersection was good enough for a census worker, it may drive a person crazy that is trying to use the same data for a visual representation of an area in a car. Resolution is another good idea. From my experience with Yahoo imagery, I like to over zoom when I map. My node placement is vastly different as zoom 17 verses 1.25m in JOSM. With MapBox Satellite, I click on the slider in JOSM. I can use the arrow keys to over zoom layer 17 down to 50.1m before I get to the same Bing looking layer. Woot! Woot! I just ran across this video last week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05_eABTrXq8 It is a very interesting process that MapBox uses to solve many problems with imagery. Regards, Greg ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
OSM started out with the do-it-yourself, clean room approach of on-the-ground surveying. It offers the strongest guarantee of legal compliance and appropriateness for OSM -- no legal analysis required. All of us certainly hold such efforts in the highest esteem, but I do see an argument for letting contributors be resourceful in other ways, to *carefully and judiciously* incorporate other sources, as long as they do their best to document their work. Thank you, Minh. That really is all I did with rail subdivisions in California. As others have said, I could have asked the rail companies (not by web, which yielded twin brick walls of gotta log in and copyright) perhaps by telephone or letter, in which case I would have likely been given the answers, these being facts about the world. Or, I could have asked random people on the street, not a good idea, so I didn't. What I did do was to *carefully and judiciously* confirm these data thanks to publications by my employees (the CPUC), and then I well documented that fact in my changeset tags. Easy, peasy: being resourceful where it makes sense to do so. And it seems to me, that should be totally fuss-free. By the way, along with my GPS, a little wire-page note pad with pencil and my decent memory/brain, I certainly do my fair share of on-the-ground surveying, too. SteveA California ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Hi, On 04/04/2015 07:20 PM, Simon Poole wrote: I just don't want to be called a couch potato in the course of it ;-) Seriously, I believe Frederik was more referring to how OSM is viewed by third parties Indeed. I don't have much exposure to US Americans outside of OSM but in the few interactions like that I had, if people did have any conception about OSM it usually fell into one of the two categories I mentioned - either OSM the hacker project to re-purpose government data or OSM the humanitarian project. I always put it down to people in the USA traditionally having much freer access to data their government has collected (viz. TIGER) and therefore more likely to respond to hey, here's people finally making their own map with a shrug than with enthusiasm. Creating that enthusiasm is a huge challenge (anyone remember CloudMade's ambassadors?) and in my opinion, every time someone says ah we don't have to map this and that, we can take that data from third party source, the enthusiasm dampens a bit. Because who wants to be seen doing something that might turn out not to be necessary? Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Apr 4, 2015, at 1:36 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Indeed. I don't have much exposure to US Americans outside of OSM but in the few interactions like that I had, if people did have any conception about OSM it usually fell into one of the two categories I mentioned - either OSM the hacker project to re-purpose government data or OSM the humanitarian project”. I wonder if there might be a sampling bias going on. Going out an gathering data in the field and then entering it is relatively straight forward and non-controversial. So people doing that often don’t join or follow the mailing lists. You are much more likely to run in to them at https://help.openstreetmap.org or http://forum.openstreetmap.org than on this or any other list. If you get to a situation where it seems to you that an import might be a good idea then you join a mailing list and discuss the idea. First with the mappers in your country (talk-us in this case) and then if it still seems like a good idea with the imports people. But if all you ever do is “traditional” OSM field mapping you are seldom seen or heard of. So the lists will be biased toward discussion of things like importing data. Might be interesting to see a breakdown of current map objects in the US to see how many last had manual edits or corrections versus how many are imports. Cheers, Tod smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On 4/4/2015 1:04 PM, Minh Nguyen wrote: 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. Or recorded with a GPS back in the days when the signal was scrambled, that is with the deliberate random error measured by non-military grade GPS receivers. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 6:14 AM, Volker Schmidt vosc...@gmail.com wrote: I am much more worried about imports for a completely different reason, and that is data maintenance If the external data were not imported, but kept in a separate external-data layer, the situation could be different, because you would have the option to refresh the external data form time to time. But this is not the data model of OSM. *Not necessarily true*: I run several ongoing synchronization scripts. These keep OSM in sync with a commercial dataset. The longest running is for car sharing: data from the reservation system is compared to OSM. OSM mapper additions are respected. But if the car is removed by the operator, it's deleted from OSM. And this is a two way ongoing import: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Dero_Bike_Repair Improvements on either side flow to the other (except in the UK, due to community preferences regarding imports). ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On 2015-04-02 17:41, stevea wrote: Simon Poole writes: Up to now OSM has drawn the line in such a way that stuff that is signposted and is observable on the ground is fair game (with some exceptions, I believe the GR issue is still unsolved). Yes, all of that is fair game. Though I don't know what the GR issue is, and ask you to please clarify. If you are using a collection of facts, be it a list, a map, a file on a computer or whatever, we have to now always taken the, fairly high ground, position that you either need explicit permission (by agreement, licence or similar) or that the use of the source is clearly not subject to copyright any longer. Forgetting about other rights, regulations etc that may exist for the purpose of this discussion. When a collection of facts about the world are data published by a government (around here, those are our employees), ESPECIALLY if/as one is in a jurisdiction where geo data published by us (via the government) are explicitly prohibited to be encumbered by copyright or onerous Terms -- as I do -- then use of those data flowing into OSM should be absolutely uncontroversial. As the explicit example I used in the instant case, road/rail crossing data published by our PUC that became reverse-engineered names of subdivisions sufficient to tag nastily-tagged TIGER data (just plain wrong, but better than nothing and an OK starting place) so they are more correct is a perfectly valid use of such data. I believe anybody in any of the 49 other states can do this, but I am not as familiar with their Public Records Acts (or/stare decisis/) as I am California's. Nor am I an attorney. But I can read and make these determinations. In fact, I believe any reasonably intelligent adult can do so. If we can't, it is incumbent upon OSM to help us do better. Erring on the side of high ground safety might be a good place to plant an initial flag, but if it's location is wrong and we need to move it to a more accurate place, we must do so. Not every state's public records law is as generous as California's. For instance, the Ohio Attorney General's office publishes an annual Sunshine Laws Manual [1] that interprets the sunshine law as providing a right for public inspection and authorized copying of public records, but not necessarily a right to create and distribute unauthorized derivative works. Assuming that position is correct, we can't automatically treat a PUCO publication as a potential import source. Unfortunately, Ohio is no exception. That said, I'm nobody's idea of an IP lawyer and I'd love to be proven wrong in this instance. Moreover, I think Simon and Frederik are arguing from the perspective that compliance with U.S. copyright law is necessary but insufficient for OSM. To European contributors, concerns over copyright are compounded by concerns over moral rights and database rights, hence the requirement for explicit permission. I'm uncomfortable with the notion of imposing European legal restrictions on American imports, but this discussion is more about what *should* be included than what *may* be included. A Wikipedia administrator would swiftly delete a perfectly copyright-free article about your backyard swing set for being unencyclopedic; likewise, the OSM community can decide that large-scale inclusion of certain outside sources would take the project too far from its founding mission. OSM started out with the do-it-yourself, clean room approach of on-the-ground surveying. It offers the strongest guarantee of legal compliance and appropriateness for OSM -- no legal analysis required. All of us certainly hold such efforts in the highest esteem, but I do see an argument for letting contributors be resourceful in other ways, to *carefully and judiciously* incorporate other sources, as long as they do their best to document their work. [1] http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/YellowBook -- m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
TIGER is much older than reasonably portable GPS units. It was originally developed for the 1990 Census, which means work began much earlier than that. In 1990, handheld GPS units were not even available to the military. Much of the original data was traced from paper maps (which is also true of a great deal of GIS data in use today). They have an ongoing project to update the data in cooperation with local governments, but those entities are often resource constrained themselves. It would be great if we could share OSM data with them all, but of course we can't. d. On Apr 4, 2015, at 13:30, Mike N nice...@att.net wrote: On 4/4/2015 1:04 PM, Minh Nguyen wrote: 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. Or recorded with a GPS back in the days when the signal was scrambled, that is with the deliberate random error measured by non-military grade GPS receivers. ___ 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] Facts about the world
So I think the issue of long term data maintenance is a separate issue from that of imports though imported data may spotlight the issue more. Agreed. Data maintenance is a much duller task than adding new data, and that’s going to be an issue anywhere and has nothing to do with the origin of the data. Many of the common imports (buildings and addresses) are quite slow to change anyway, so ongoing maintenance becomes a different kind of beast. Anyway, there are reason why there are companies whose business is keeping business listings up to date — because it’s hard, tedious work. On that note, I actually sent this as a feature suggestion to the Pushpin developers a while back, but I think it’s a concept that could be extended to any OSM data, especially now that most of us are carrying around smartphones. The idea is make data currency checking as painless as possible. I wrote it with POI data in mind, but it could be extended to other data types as well, with varying scheduling based on how often the data is likely to change (i.e. streets and buildings don’t change that often, businesses do). d. === I was thinking that it would be helpful to add some geofencing to the Pushpin app, so that if you come near a POI you can be asked to check if it's current. It could work something like: Establish geofence for each POIs that has not been updated/verified in some interval (let's say 6 months + some random interval, so as to avoid someone getting pinged for every POI on the street if they happen to walk down the street six months after someone else did). When user comes near such a geofence, they get a notification and a few options to verify. For example, let's say Joe's Coffee hasn't been verified for 9 months. When I walk past it, I get a notification that says: Hey, you're right near Joe's Coffee, at 123 Main Street. Would you like to verify its information is current? And it presents me the options: • Not right now - I no longer get notified for Joe's Coffee for some period of time (say, a week, or until it's verified by someone else) • Yes, it's current - POI is flagged as current in OSM, app says Thanks! and the geofence is removed • Yes, it's current, but let me change/add to the info - Takes me to the update screen, I make changes, POI is flagged as verified in OSM, app says Thanks! and the geofence is removed • No, it's out of date - User is prompted: - Let me update it (update as above) - It's gone, just delete it - It's gone, but let me replace it with what is here now I think you guys get the idea. === ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Not sure it is necessary to suggest all nonhackers and non humanitarians on this list are couch potatoes to further the argument. Osm is a place where imports happen, we have rules to stick to, we want to have educated discussions about those rules. I am tired of import bashing as an unproductive tangent on almost all import related discussions. On Friday, April 3, 2015, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, On 04/03/2015 02:41 AM, stevea wrote: Erring on the side of high ground safety might be a good place to plant an initial flag, but if it's location is wrong and we need to move it to a more accurate place, we must do so. Frankly - no. OSM does not depend on the inclusion of third party data sources for its quality. Taking a high ground safety approach with regards to third-party rights in data might cut us off from some third party data sources but then re-publishing these third party sources in OSM clothes doesn't do us much good anyway. If an individual is desperate to use a third party data source, let them do the due diligence on the legality of the source, but it certainly isn't us who must move our flag to make it (even) easier to swamp us with (often low quality) third-party data. It sounds like it is getting a bit shrill. I'll say it again: I wish light, not heat. I would be absolutely thrilled if more people, especially more Americans, would stop thinking about what data they could take and add to OSM, and instead grab a GPS, or their car, or their boots, or bicycle, or mobile phone, or all of that, and simply map stuff. It seems to me that in the USA, what people think about OSM is one of these two: (a) A project for hackers and couch potatoes who trawl their county web pages and other sources to look for stuff they could upload to OSM (because it's such a big country and nobody could possibly, yadda yadda yadda) (b) A project for people who roll up their sleeves, travel to places of humanitarian crises, and help those in need by creating maps where the government hasn't done their job well. The idea that you could also roll up your sleeves and map your own backyeard, village, town, or city quarter, instead of copying from official bicycle route publications, official railway brochures, or stuff that the administration has done, seems to occur to very few people, and others will say: OpenStreetMap is cool, but I don't think that actually going out and doing a survey is a good use of my time. I'm really sad that time and time again we have to fight about whether or not a specific source is permitted to be used in OSM, when we could just collect the facts ourselves and therefore be completely free of any legal implications (and also free of errors that others may have made). Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org javascript:; ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org javascript:; 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] Facts about the world
Hello! While I think that (vetted, high quality) imports and armchair mapping have the ability to improve OSM, especially for things like building footprints that are hard to survey on the ground without traipsing across private property, I certainly hope that people do not view the US as *exclusively* importers and armchair mappers. My preferred way of contributing to OSM is via on the ground field work. I believe the structure for participatory mapping that OSM provides is important in part because it distributes power and allows residents to map what matters to them in their communities. How do I map, as a US resident living in the Midwest? 1) I don't drive, so I take the bus everywhere. Because I work for a community development non-profit, my travels take me all over my city and region. I will often take notes on scratch paper as I pass key intersections/assets and later (when I have time) add these items to OSM 2) I also organize mapathons in my community, providing basic instruction on mapping using Field Papers and/or GPS devices (I personally prefer paper, but a local university lets us borrow GPS devices and getting to play with tech is fun for lots of our participants). While current OSM contributors are the ones most likely to attend mapathons, I focus on finding residents of the neighborhood who may not have heard of OSM before. One mapathon I held included a home base in a storefront art gallery so that we could catch strangers walking by and give them a Field Papers atlas and basic instructions. If anyone on the list is interested in organizing a mapathon in their community, OpenStreetMap US has a mapathon weekend coming up April 11-12 with the theme The Great Outdoors. http://openstreetmap.us/2015/01/2015-mapathons/ If you need help, I'm happy to talk with you about how I organize mapathons...I'm not an expert by any means, but I've picked up a few things over time. Thanks! Eleanor On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:18 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Hi, On 04/03/2015 02:41 AM, stevea wrote: Erring on the side of high ground safety might be a good place to plant an initial flag, but if it's location is wrong and we need to move it to a more accurate place, we must do so. Frankly - no. OSM does not depend on the inclusion of third party data sources for its quality. Taking a high ground safety approach with regards to third-party rights in data might cut us off from some third party data sources but then re-publishing these third party sources in OSM clothes doesn't do us much good anyway. If an individual is desperate to use a third party data source, let them do the due diligence on the legality of the source, but it certainly isn't us who must move our flag to make it (even) easier to swamp us with (often low quality) third-party data. It sounds like it is getting a bit shrill. I'll say it again: I wish light, not heat. I would be absolutely thrilled if more people, especially more Americans, would stop thinking about what data they could take and add to OSM, and instead grab a GPS, or their car, or their boots, or bicycle, or mobile phone, or all of that, and simply map stuff. It seems to me that in the USA, what people think about OSM is one of these two: (a) A project for hackers and couch potatoes who trawl their county web pages and other sources to look for stuff they could upload to OSM (because it's such a big country and nobody could possibly, yadda yadda yadda) (b) A project for people who roll up their sleeves, travel to places of humanitarian crises, and help those in need by creating maps where the government hasn't done their job well. The idea that you could also roll up your sleeves and map your own backyeard, village, town, or city quarter, instead of copying from official bicycle route publications, official railway brochures, or stuff that the administration has done, seems to occur to very few people, and others will say: OpenStreetMap is cool, but I don't think that actually going out and doing a survey is a good use of my time. I'm really sad that time and time again we have to fight about whether or not a specific source is permitted to be used in OSM, when we could just collect the facts ourselves and therefore be completely free of any legal implications (and also free of errors that others may have made). Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ 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] Facts about the world
On 04/03/2015 02:41 AM, stevea wrote: Erring on the side of high ground safety might be a good place to plant an initial flag, but if it's location is wrong and we need to move it to a more accurate place, we must do so. And Frederik Ramm replied: Frankly - no. OSM does not depend on the inclusion of third party data sources for its quality. Taking a high ground safety approach with regards to third-party rights in data might cut us off from some third party data sources but then re-publishing these third party sources in OSM clothes doesn't do us much good anyway. Concerning the improvement of truly noisy TIGER rail data in the USA so that it becomes less noisy, correctly named infrastructure, yes, it does do us good. If we're going to have imported data (we do, here, in one case it is TIGER, and TIGER has significant errors), and if observations of facts about the world can improve these, then not only should we improve these, we should also not have proclamations that this doesn't do us much good. To be clear: cleaning up noisy data (something I strive to do, and have with much success for years) DOES do us much good. If an individual is desperate to use a third party data source, let them do the due diligence on the legality of the source, but it certainly isn't us who must move our flag to make it (even) easier to swamp us with (often low quality) third-party data. Now, wait a minute. #1: I am not desperate. These incorrect TIGER rail data have been aging for years. It is high time, no, perhaps even overdue that we correct them. #2: The data source is not third party, these are facts about the world just as a hedgerow might grow along a fence line. If my government employees publish data which confirm my corrections (and they do, so I do) that is not third party any more than the TIGER data already ARE third party (they came from the US Department of Commerce via census taking). #3: OSM-US has a legal team, and in my opinion, part of their responsibility is to make determinations about the legality of categories of data and whether it is legal to enter into OSM. This includes the vital category of facts about the world. It sounds like it is getting a bit shrill. I'll say it again: I wish light, not heat. I would be absolutely thrilled if more people, especially more Americans, would stop thinking about what data they could take and add to OSM, and instead grab a GPS, or their car, or their boots, or bicycle, or mobile phone, or all of that, and simply map stuff. Frederik, I have entered thousands of such data into OSM: I regularly hike wilderness (in my boots, with my GPS) and park trails and my mapping efforts as the fruits of having done so self-document. I don't want to deign responding further to characterizations of my mapping as either good, because I went outside and bad, because I sit in a chair. OSM needs good quality data. Period. It matters that they don't come from copyrighted sources, but beyond that, if they are good quality data (or improve low quality data to high) then it truly doesn't matter. It seems to me that in the USA, what people think about OSM is one of these two: This is vast oversimplification and I won't deign to reply, as others have and it just simply isn't true. The idea that you could also roll up your sleeves and map your own backyeard, village, town, or city quarter, instead of copying from official bicycle route publications, official railway brochures, or stuff that the administration has done, seems to occur to very few people, and others will say: OpenStreetMap is cool, but I don't think that actually going out and doing a survey is a good use of my time. I've done hundreds of such surveys, put the resulting data into OSM after editing them to the highest quality my instruments and skills allow, and have never once had them challenged like that. To hear you say that such things happen seems like fanciful imaginings. Take a look at my city and county (Santa Cruz) and the Gold Star Award at BestOfOSM we have won (one of only a handful in North America) and our county wiki page. Sure, I'm standing on many shoulders of many other OSM volunteers as I say this, but I've done yeoman work in this project, much of it from rolling up my sleeves and mapping my backyard, city and county. I, and we in the USA, are not either/or, one/or the the other. I'm almost tempted to say How dare you but it's inflammatory to do that, so I won't. I'm really sad that time and time again we have to fight about whether or not a specific source is permitted to be used in OSM, when we could just collect the facts ourselves and therefore be completely free of any legal implications (and also free of errors that others may have made). Well, I'm sad that there is so much heat and what looks like very little light, it's true. I like to think of everybody on this list as on the same team
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On 4/3/2015 8:18 AM, Frederik Ramm wrote: Hi, I'm really sad that time and time again we have to fight about whether or not a specific source is permitted to be used in OSM, when we could just collect the facts ourselves and therefore be completely free of any legal implications (and also free of errors that others may have made). Bye Frederik In the US, literally billions of dollars have been spent collecting geospatial data over the past 20+ years at all levels of government. A very sizable portion of that data is free of restrictive licensing (and getting better at the state and local level every year). That's a lot of work done - millions of man hours? I think a lot of people in the US look at existing available data and say to themselves, why duplicate all that effort? It doesn't make any sense. I think its more helpful to discuss what types of features lend themselves to imports vs. not. There seems to be a strong consensus in the US that addresses and buildings are strong candidates for import. Why spend hundreds of thousands of man hours to recreate something that has already been done by local governments throughout the US? Of course, data quality and licensing has to be vetted, but it just simply does not make sense to replicate all that work. Especially since we have proven methods for importing that data without damaging existing data. Brian May aka grouper ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Darrell, On 04/03/2015 08:39 PM, Darrell Fuhriman wrote: Ignore the haters, we’re doing fine. I don't know if that thing about haters is just a generic figure of speech but if you should indeed believe that I have expressed hate about anything, then you are mistaken (and I would feel a bit offended by you branding me a hater - does that then make you one too?). If I have expressed negative feelings in my message then they were pain or sadness, not hate. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 12:11 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: Darrell, On 04/03/2015 08:39 PM, Darrell Fuhriman wrote: Ignore the haters, we’re doing fine. I don't know if that thing about haters is just a generic figure of speech but if you should indeed believe that I have expressed hate about anything, then you are mistaken (and I would feel a bit offended by you branding me a hater - does that then make you one too?). If I have expressed negative feelings in my message then they were pain or sadness, not hate. The word hater in modern American speak is often used to describe someone who is simply expressing a generally cynical or pessimistic opinion. There are many local events in the US that don't get published to this talk-us email list, nor do they get added to the event calendar on the OSM wiki. All of the OSM in person meetings that I have been able to attend have been positive experiences for me. I am in favor of making use of publicly available geodata to enhance the data that we collect on the ground. Recently, I've been deliberately incorporating exercising into my OSM efforts. I often go running for at least a mile, then walk around and capture some photos and notes on my phone, and then run home. I think it's great that if I use the RunKeeper application on my phone, then I can visit runkeeper.com to see my route overlaid on top of a map that is generated with OSM data. I recently added some trails to OSM through the woods (some of these trails were just built in summer 2014): http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/45.49406/-122.69378 Multi-modal routing based on OSM data is also used at our local public transportation agency: http://ride.trimet.org/ I've seen improvements that I have made to the road and trail network propagate to this site. http://maps.me/ is a great mobile app, which utilizes OSM data to display maps on the go without the need for an internet connection. I love seeing improvements that I have made to OSM data show up on my phone through this app. I appreciate not having to pay through the nose for mobile data usage if I want to look at a map on my phone when I travel to Canada. I also just like mapping shopping centers and viewing the rendered results on the OSM website: http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/45.51448/-122.79099 http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/45.53583/-122.86951 http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/45.44305/-122.80189 http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/42.89235/-71.32614 Peter ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Eleanor, I don't see a reason not to be public with my reply to you. I organize mapping parties during the warmer months (have one next week) and during the colder months, organize indoor mapping events. The indoor events tend to get less participants than the outdoor ones, which is surprising. Why do I map outdoors? To me, the importance of OSM is in two part. Firstly and most importantly to me, OSM is part of a larger group of activites that I participate in regarding the Free Software and Free Culture worlds. I see OSM as part of that larger effort that I care about. I'm not a Geo person- rather I'm someone who has a passion for providing universal access and personal empowerment, and I see OSM as one means to that end. When we think about OSM, I do think we want to consider issues of lifespan. Will OSM be necessary if we had every town or county in the US providing us full access to their data, and we had access to every business data. If we had that, at least in the US, OSM would be largely redundant. But the fact is, we don't. In the meantime, here in the US and around the world, there is a desperate need for access to high quality geographic data. I don't know if you read a blog post I made about a year ago (http://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2014/01/04/why-the-world-needs-openstreetmap/) but we can't hand off this much power to third parties, even ones who act benevolently for the moment. Instead, this needs to be in the hands of all of us- every single one of us. Mapping can be hard work. The day after a big mapping party, I sometimes need to just sit in my apartment alone. The whole experience can be exhausting. But I do it because it's important. It's important to think about these spaces as *ours*. This is why projects like the NYC Community Garden Mapping project here in NYC are important (http://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2014/12/01/nyc-blooms-with-openstreetmap/), because we can't rely just on governments or companies to tell us what our world looks like. It's great to do humanitarian mapping, and it's awesome and amazing that we have access to resources like governmental datasets and imagery, but those can't substitute for going out and doing the work of looking at our neighborhoods for ourselves. That's why I map, and that's why I organize local mapping events. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
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
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] Facts about the world
Hi everyone, Second warning. Please cool it down. We're all in this project together, and if we can't keep our conversations on the mailing list civil then we should step away from the e-mail client and go map. -Ian ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com wrote: Side note relevant to this conversation: I would love to hear from mappers in the US who are collecting data on the ground - either by themselves or by organizing mapathons and building community. I can think of quite a few examples, but I'm interested in hearing more about how and why people contribute to the map. I am awful at documenting and sharing my own work (I'm trying to get better), and I imagine there are others like me who are mapping US towns not talking about it yet. You can write me at elea...@openstreetmap.us. :) Eleanor, This is a great question. * I use a combination of approaches. In my case, TIGER isn't all the that bad. Yes, I have done my share of TIGER fix-up. I enjoy that the names are already on the way. I just needed to straighten the roads. * I have used techniques like paper/pin and walking papers. The thing that I did not like about the paper method was how conspicuous the paper made me. * Pictures have been a great tool also. The pictures provide a great perspective during a mapping session. However, the picture taking can make you conspicuous. * My favorite application is keypad mapper2 and not version 3. The tool provides a GPS trace and .osm file. Sure I pick up a few addresses but I use the letters to mean something else. h might be hydrant during one walk. e might be one of those blue emergency lights. Search and replace in JOSM lets me turn those addr:housenumber=* tags into other features. In some cases, I don't even get the data into OSM. It is more important for me to get out and walk. What's great about keypad mapper2 is that I can walk the same area over and over again and see something new--it reduces the boredom. Keypad mapper2 is not over engineered. I can keep the walking pace up with this app verses waiting for several screens to load before I have the right tag as I have experienced with other phone based apps. Social engineering keeps a low profile. I can walk by a house and say, Isn't the weather great. The person may be left with the idea, Oh yet another one of those that can't walk and text at the same time. ;-) * I tossed the pawn shop Garmin GPS. The Garmin was great for a bunch of important roads in OSM. What I found is that GPS has accuracy issues. I expected both the cell phone and the GPS to be close when used together. But they were not. * I am so thankful for all the imports. I find things that I did not know about the world. The import data makes me want to go out and explore the world. I found an excuse to explore one of these nodes two months ago. I picked up one of those Duro bike stations. However, I was really interested in a GNIS point that was imported [1][2]. I did not know the significance of all of the dams in the metro Phoenix before I started mapping in OSM. Most of the dam POIs are easy to understand. This node was a real puzzler. They actually had to build AZ LOOP 202 over the dam. The contrast between living in a forest watershed and desert watershed has been outstanding. All the dams and storm improvements manage a watershed that has nothing to hold back the moisture. [3] I am so thankful for all choices that we have after 10 years of OSM. [1] http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/359276489/history [2] http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/328678925 [3] https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=894dat=19950209id=gScOIBAJsjid=un0DIBAJpg=1793,1166620hl=en It looks like the flood control district site is down right now. There was some more interesting information there. There is an interesting story behind the dam. The name does not mean what a modern interpretation brings. Regards, Greg ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
Serge - Thanks for the detailed response! I think I do recall seeing your blog post in the past, but I reread it now and your concerns - especially who decides what gets shown on the map - very much resonate with me. Paul - If perception of mapping in the US isn't aligning with reality, we probably *do* need to do a better job as a chapter board of telling the full story. I see what you mean about the blog posts, though I do think your interpretation is a bit harsh. For example, the mapathon post that you characterize as an indoor event, while it does admittedly have a photo of people at computers, also makes it clear that the theme for the upcoming mapathon is the great outdoors. Eventually, most people do enter the data they collect in the field into the OSM while at a computer, and as a mapathon organizer, I don't always remember to take good action shot photos. Rather than assume no one set foot outdoors, why not assume that no one remembered to stop mapping to take a photo, because mapping outdoors is really fun? I also hope you'll keep in mind that conferences involve a lot of logistics which need to be communicated - for example, our amazing SOTM US scholarship program required two posts (to announce availability and to announce winners). While a mapathon can be a success without a blog post (though we probably *should* write more blog posts), a scholarship program will not get applicants or donors without a moderate level of publicity. Finally, to lighten things up, here is a photo of a kitten and a Field Papers atlas pre-mapathon. https://twitter.com/eleanortutt/status/583729143822450689 Thanks! Eleanor On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 8:27 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: Eleanor, I don't see a reason not to be public with my reply to you. I organize mapping parties during the warmer months (have one next week) and during the colder months, organize indoor mapping events. The indoor events tend to get less participants than the outdoor ones, which is surprising. Why do I map outdoors? To me, the importance of OSM is in two part. Firstly and most importantly to me, OSM is part of a larger group of activites that I participate in regarding the Free Software and Free Culture worlds. I see OSM as part of that larger effort that I care about. I'm not a Geo person- rather I'm someone who has a passion for providing universal access and personal empowerment, and I see OSM as one means to that end. When we think about OSM, I do think we want to consider issues of lifespan. Will OSM be necessary if we had every town or county in the US providing us full access to their data, and we had access to every business data. If we had that, at least in the US, OSM would be largely redundant. But the fact is, we don't. In the meantime, here in the US and around the world, there is a desperate need for access to high quality geographic data. I don't know if you read a blog post I made about a year ago ( http://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2014/01/04/why-the-world-needs-openstreetmap/ ) but we can't hand off this much power to third parties, even ones who act benevolently for the moment. Instead, this needs to be in the hands of all of us- every single one of us. Mapping can be hard work. The day after a big mapping party, I sometimes need to just sit in my apartment alone. The whole experience can be exhausting. But I do it because it's important. It's important to think about these spaces as *ours*. This is why projects like the NYC Community Garden Mapping project here in NYC are important (http://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2014/12/01/nyc-blooms-with-openstreetmap/), because we can't rely just on governments or companies to tell us what our world looks like. It's great to do humanitarian mapping, and it's awesome and amazing that we have access to resources like governmental datasets and imagery, but those can't substitute for going out and doing the work of looking at our neighborhoods for ourselves. That's why I map, and that's why I organize local mapping events. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On 4/3/2015 11:19 AM, Martijn van Exel wrote: Perhaps we, as the U.S. chapter, play a role in creating or sustaining these false assumptions? Yes. To substantiate this, I looked at communications from the US chapter I looked through the current board term and the previous board term. In the current board term I counted 15 blog posts. The breakdown of these is 7 conference 3 indoor computer-based events 2 non-OSM geo-related projects 2 chapter administrative 1 HOT Last year, it is similar, except the conference itself was within the time collected 21 conference 10 indoor computer-based events 4 chapter administrative 1 HOT The conference blog posts tend to be primarily around the time of SOTM US. Several blog posts had a theme of government data. Twitter is primarily tweets of blog posts, but has a similar breakdown. Looking at the photos on Twitter, they are 7 indoor computer-based events 3 conference-related 1 HOT Based on this, I would have to conclude that the US chapter is supporting the view that OpenStreetMap in the US does not include people doing surveys in their local area, but is primarily conferences, government data, remote mapping, and HOT. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
My god, this is arrogant. Crap like this is the #1 reason I’m not an OSMF member. If this is what counts as the “OSM community” – I want no part of it. d. On Apr 3, 2015, at 17:53, Paul Norman penor...@mac.com wrote: On 4/3/2015 11:19 AM, Martijn van Exel wrote: Perhaps we, as the U.S. chapter, play a role in creating or sustaining these false assumptions? Yes. To substantiate this, I looked at communications from the US chapter I looked through the current board term and the previous board term. In the current board term I counted 15 blog posts. The breakdown of these is ] ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
On Apr 3, 2015, at 5:18 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: . . . It seems to me that in the USA, what people think about OSM is one of these two: (a) A project for hackers and couch potatoes who trawl their county web pages and other sources to look for stuff they could upload to OSM (because it's such a big country and nobody could possibly, yadda yadda yadda) (b) A project for people who roll up their sleeves, travel to places of humanitarian crises, and help those in need by creating maps where the government hasn't done their job well. The idea that you could also roll up your sleeves and map your own backyeard, village, town, or city quarter, instead of copying from official bicycle route publications, official railway brochures, or stuff that the administration has done, seems to occur to very few people, and others will say: OpenStreetMap is cool, but I don't think that actually going out and doing a survey is a good use of my time. I'm really sad that time and time again we have to fight about whether or not a specific source is permitted to be used in OSM, when we could just collect the facts ourselves and therefore be completely free of any legal implications (and also free of errors that others may have made). I spent pretty much every day of the first 6 or 8 months of my retirement walking all the public and some of the private roads in my area collecting GPS traces, confirming street names and recording addresses. Once back a home I used Bing imagery to put in most of the building outlines in the areas I walked. Basically a full time job for 1/2 a year. But that was only a fraction of the small city I live in and even smaller fraction of the county I live in. When I visit somewhere I will also walk at least a few roads collecting addresses and confirming street names. I have probably walked 50 miles of roads near where some close relatives live over the last couple of years. So I really take offense to your characterization of the OSM mappers in the USA falling into two categories neither of which “roll up your sleeves and map your own backyard, village, town or city quarter”. But I’ve come to realize that I can’t map my entire city, much less county and state in my lifetime. And I am not great at recruiting new mappers. It appears that the GIS department of the county has good address data, at least as good as what I’ve collected walking, that by law should be public domain. Once I confirm that, why shouldn’t I do a careful import so it be available to everyone who uses OSM? Cheers, Tod smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] Facts about the world
Simon Poole writes: Up to now OSM has drawn the line in such a way that stuff that is signposted and is observable on the ground is fair game (with some exceptions, I believe the GR issue is still unsolved). Yes, all of that is fair game. Though I don't know what the GR issue is, and ask you to please clarify. If you are using a collection of facts, be it a list, a map, a file on a computer or whatever, we have to now always taken the, fairly high ground, position that you either need explicit permission (by agreement, licence or similar) or that the use of the source is clearly not subject to copyright any longer. Forgetting about other rights, regulations etc that may exist for the purpose of this discussion. When a collection of facts about the world are data published by a government (around here, those are our employees), ESPECIALLY if/as one is in a jurisdiction where geo data published by us (via the government) are explicitly prohibited to be encumbered by copyright or onerous Terms -- as I do -- then use of those data flowing into OSM should be absolutely uncontroversial. As the explicit example I used in the instant case, road/rail crossing data published by our PUC that became reverse-engineered names of subdivisions sufficient to tag nastily-tagged TIGER data (just plain wrong, but better than nothing and an OK starting place) so they are more correct is a perfectly valid use of such data. I believe anybody in any of the 49 other states can do this, but I am not as familiar with their Public Records Acts (or stare decisis) as I am California's. Nor am I an attorney. But I can read and make these determinations. In fact, I believe any reasonably intelligent adult can do so. If we can't, it is incumbent upon OSM to help us do better. Erring on the side of high ground safety might be a good place to plant an initial flag, but if it's location is wrong and we need to move it to a more accurate place, we must do so. 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 and is something that can be done without further consideration and the net result can be used in OSM globally with no expectation of problems This is putting it too strongly, indeed. Facts about the world, where, for example, long snaking industrial things with names that go through my and millions of others' neighborhoods should also be named in OSM. I see no problem whatsoever with that. I do say to not get these facts from sources where copyright is an issue. But if, as is true in the instant case, it can be determined from is, can be or should be known by the public as 'facts about the world,' then yes, I stand by my battle call. As facts about the world, these data belong to us, and when true, we can put them into OSM. (Sometimes such data, like airline routes, are inappropriate to put into OSM -- but that's another topic). It sounds like it is getting a bit shrill. I'll say it again: I wish light, not heat. SteveA California___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
