On 8 Jul 2008, at 15:07, James Ewen wrote: > On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 3:17 PM, SteveC <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> I think you're being obtuse. From looking at the map it wouldn't take >> me much time to map the whole place myself so it doesn't need a >> party. > > That gets you one small city, now add in the rest of Canada. The > problem is the sheer size of the country, and the low OSM member > density. There are no OSM members in Ft. McMurray, and it is a 5 hour > drive to the city from my home. There are a whole lot of other towns > and villages, not to mention hundreds of thousands of miles of rural > highways, and county roads to map as well. Mapping parties are fine > when you can get a bunch of members together. Since this thread is > about the state of the (Canada) map, I am talking about issues seen > here, not issues seen in areas where the member density is much > higher.
But you're sort of giving up before you started. OSM didn't start by having universal member density throughout Europe or something. You run a mapping party in I don't know, Calgary. Someone there gets really interested and his brother is a Geography teacher in, I don't know, Ft. McMurray and he emails him about it, he runs a class and it gets mapped. See? Networks effect is everything and you have to start somewhere. >> I know I'm helplessly stupid and lame, but, to run a party in my >> nearest city (San Francisco) basically costs nothing. I get a space >> for free (or just go to starbucks). I drive, cycle or walk there. I >> put out the publicity using the internet. People turn up, we do some >> mapping and I show them how to do stuff, then we grab a drink >> afterward. None of these costs are different from any other Saturday. > > I am not insinuating that you are stupid, nor lame. I am suggesting > that if I want an OSM map of Fort McMurray, AB, that it is not going > to be a zero cost event. Can you show me how to find users in a > specific area? I know that I can find users located near me on my home > page. Is there a way to query for users located near a specific > location? I'd be willing to bet that I am probably in the top ten > closest members to Fort McMurray. See above - just try and make a start somewhere. >>> On another tangent, if the licensing issues can be settled, we might >>> soon have a base map provided by the Government of Canada upon which >>> to build. This is probably our best avenue to pursue. A base map >>> will >>> get 95% of the roads in the database, and making minor edits and >>> adding new roads can then become the priority. >> >> I'm working on that from the OSMF PoV > > That's going to be the way that the majority of Canadian roads get > added to the OSM map. There's simply not enough user density to be > able to effectively map Canada any other way within my lifetime. That kind of ignores the better than exponential user take up and is being super negative. Best Steve _______________________________________________ Talk-ca mailing list Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk-ca
