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 Outdated language?

[Russ Nelson]

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 It occurred to me that "man_made" is an outdated term that should be 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

Some of us remember that women are humans, too.

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: [OSM-talk] Beware Pokemon users

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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Re: [OSM-talk] addr:interpolation and data consumers

[Russ Nelson]

nebulon42 writes:
 > For me that sounds like: use it until there is something better/more
 > accurate. I tend to replace addr:interpolation with addresses on nodes
 > or buildings when I see them and more accurate data is available.

That is the right thing to do.

 > What is the opinion on addr:interpolation here?

I cannot speak for other areas, but twenty years ago every town in my
county renumbered their roads so that your house number is 1/200th of
the mile down your road. When a new house gets built, there is no
question what its house number is.

Now, for my area, I've numbered all the houses (well, mailboxes,
because that's where the number is) AND used those points to create
address interpolation ways AND the property centroid has a node with
the cadastral address on it, as well. Mostly I did that on bicycle
rides near my house; not everywhere. And mostly that was done to test
the accuracy of mailbox vs cadastral centroid vs interpolation. And
y'know? It's all good. Any one of them works.

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

Any place there aren't a lot of people.

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Re: [OSM-talk] "We're On The Map" vinyl window clings?

[Russ Nelson]

No one has expressed interest in five days, so I'm landfilling them.
-russ

Russ Nelson writes:
 > Cleaning out my office. Found an envelope with about 80 vinyl window
 > clings. You peel off the backing and apply it to the inside of a glass
 > window. The idea was to add an establishment to OSM, then give them
 > one of these to put on the inside of one of their windows so passersby
 > could see it. It says:
 > 
 > We're   www.OpenStreetMap.org
 > On  wrapped in a semicircle around
 > The Map!the OSM logo
 > ---
 > www.openstreetmap.org
 >   An Open Source Map of the World
 > 
 > (smaller print) Get your own cling for free at www.cloudmade.com/cling
 > 
 > If anybody has a use for them, I'll send them to you at my
 > expense. Preference given to the cheapest shipping address. :-)
 > 
 > Before you bother to check, no, the cloudmade.com/cling address
 > 404's. Nick Black is still there. We could probably talk him into
 > making the URL work again and say "Sorry, offer expired in 2010" or
 > something like that.
 > 
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[OSM-talk] "We're On The Map" vinyl window clings?

[Russ Nelson]

Cleaning out my office. Found an envelope with about 80 vinyl window
clings. You peel off the backing and apply it to the inside of a glass
window. The idea was to add an establishment to OSM, then give them
one of these to put on the inside of one of their windows so passersby
could see it. It says:

We're   www.OpenStreetMap.org
On  wrapped in a semicircle around
The Map!the OSM logo
---
www.openstreetmap.org
  An Open Source Map of the World

(smaller print) Get your own cling for free at www.cloudmade.com/cling

If anybody has a use for them, I'll send them to you at my
expense. Preference given to the cheapest shipping address. :-)

Before you bother to check, no, the cloudmade.com/cling address
404's. Nick Black is still there. We could probably talk him into
making the URL work again and say "Sorry, offer expired in 2010" or
something like that.

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Re: [Talk-us] MapRoulette Rail Crossings challenge

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

Just do the import, Kevin.

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Re: [OSM-talk] who do we trust for photos?

[Russ Nelson]

Jo writes:
 > If you post them on Fickr, they're already lost for the community.

All my photos on Flickr, except for a tiny handful, are CC-By-SA.

Not sure what you're talking about.

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[OSM-talk] Georeferencing lots of photos using JOSM

[Russ Nelson]

I'm trying to verify every(!) abandoned railroad bridge in NY with a
field trip and a photographic record. It's worth doing, because I
found a couple of bridges I thought I could see on the aerials, but
which weren't actually there, a few that were reconstructs, not
original RR bridges, and a few that had been dismantled (sob!).

Problem: I've already visited a majority but not all. Which ones?
Problem: not all my photos are georeferenced.
Problem: I don't have a GPS track for them either (otherwise I would
and do use exiftool's geosync facility).

Solution: I remember where I took every photo (but if I see you
walking on the street I won't remember your name; go figure), so it's
just a matter of getting a lat/lon and storing it with every
photo. So, I look at the photo, and use JOSM to visit that location. I
add a node at the location I took a photo, use Ctrl-Alt-C to copy the
lat/lon, then Ctrl-Z to remove the node. Then I copy the lat/lon into
a shell command called "setgps" (included below), which takes three
parameters: lat, long, and the photo. It uses exiftool to stuff the
lat/lon and hemisphere into the photo.


#!/usr/bin/python
"""takes three parameters: lat, long, and the photo filename.jpg"""

import sys, os

lat = sys.argv[1].replace(",", "")
lon = sys.argv[2]
if float(lat) > 0: latdir = "N"
else: latdir = "S"
if float(lon) > 0: londir = "E"
else: londir = "W"

os.system("exiftool -GPSLatitudeRef=%s -GPSLatitude='%s' -GPSLongitudeRef=%s 
-GPSLongitude=%s '%s'" % (latdir, lat, londir, lon, sys.argv[3]))

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[OSM-talk] who do we trust for photos?

[Russ Nelson]

Here's a possibly silly, possibly serious question: who do we trust to
keep photos of features? Once I finish gathering my set of photos of
NY railroad bridges, where should I upload them so that I can
automagically add links to the photos to each OSM bridge=yes way?

Flickr? Archive.org? Wikimedia.org? Google Photos? Instagram?

The trouble with any for-profit service is that if they cease to make
money, they will be shut down. The trouble with any non-profit service
is that if they cease to get donations, they will be shut down.

Has anybody attempted to solve this problem before in other problem
domains? Unfortunately, I don't know everything (it's a flaw of mine),
so it's quite possible that there is some RFC or standard or suchlike
where you name a photo with an MD5 of its contents, and then upload it
to multiple sites or something like that I have no idea quite what.

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Re: [OSM-talk] OpenRandomMap

[Russ Nelson]

Joseph Reeves writes:
 > My favourite remains http://openwhatevermap.org/ :)

If the goal of having a map on the front page of osm.org is to
illustrate the extent of our data, perhaps we should be using a random
tile set just as OWEM does, and allow people to choose "Standard" as
one of the choices.

OSM is a dataset that can be used to create maps. It is not a
map. OWEM would make that clear without removing the utility of having
map tiles available.

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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Re: [OSM-talk] [Talk-us] Find missing roads

[Russ Nelson]

Eric Ladner writes:
 > I see some just north of Utica.   dozens of dots over all of New York if I
 > zoom out.

Weird. I fixed some north of Utica. Are your dots possibly cached? Is
my lack of dots cached? Martijn?

Paul Johnson  writes:
 > Try other states?  ;o)

I don't know if you've noticed, but I stick to NY. It's big enough to
be a challenge, but small enough to say "I finished this." where
"this" is lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, boat ramps, interstates, and
railroads. My own county is a big enough challenge to get all its
county roads into relations. I need to start that project up again

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: [OSM-talk] User WJtW - railway track counts

[Russ Nelson]

Colin Smale writes:
 > It is not limited to tracks=2 by the way - I have seen examples of four
 > tracks, all with tracks=4... 

It could be worse: you could see three tracks, all with tracks=4. :-)

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Re: [OSM-talk] Find missing roads

[Russ Nelson]

Martijn van Exel writes:
 > Hi all,
 > 
 > Our OSM team cooked up something new. A missing roads plugin for JOSM. I
 > think it's pretty nice but I would really like to hear what you think.

Something's wrong -- there aren't any missing roads in NY (anymore)!!

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Re: [OSM-talk] THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject

[Russ Nelson]

Ian Dees writes:
 > > Why do I bother responding to questions like this? FWOMPT!
 > 
 > I think that's a question we all want to know, Russ.

Oh, well, if you want to assure me that deletionists have no respect
from others in the OSM community, and their edits will be treated as
vandalism and reverted, I will DEFINITELY shut up.

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Re: [OSM-talk] THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject

[Russ Nelson]

Dave F. writes:
 > On 12/09/2015 03:18, Russ Nelson wrote:
 > > Dave F. writes:
 > >   > >   Because when I see a spike, or a lump of coal, or a "road"
 > >   > > which is level where no road needed to be but a railroad did, I map 
 > > it
 > >   > > as an abandoned railroad.
 > >   >
 > >   > Please give a list of tags you'd use to map the tracks in your photos.
 > >
 > > highway=track
 > > railway=abandoned
 > 
 > Which tag takes rendering preference? How is the renderer meant to know?

You ask this question as if there is any kind of controversy. On
OpenSTREETMap, it gets mapped as a track. On OpenRAILWAYMap, it gets
mapped as an abandoned railway.

Why do I bother responding to questions like this? FWOMPT!

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Re: [OSM-talk] THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject

[Russ Nelson]

moltonel writes:
 > Still, I'd like to add one reason: none of the other tags you
 > mentioned have such a vehement, uncompromising, relentless champion

There is no "compromise", Moltonel. "Compromise" is where you get your
way, and delete my hard work. Can you see how this is not acceptable?
Whereas, from my point of view, you can compromise by accepting that
abandoned railways have a place in OSM. They don't get rendered
anymore, so they're not a problem there. You can hide them in JOSM. I
don't know if ID lets you hide ways. Compared to all the things that
*should* be mapping but aren't, having a few things that are mapped
that "shouldn't" be, simply isn't a problem.

Please, compromise, rather than demand that I compromise by giving in
completely!

The only problem that anybody has been able to articulate is the fear
that at some day in the future, OSM will be overwhelmed with all the
people who want to map all the things that don't exist anymore. Well,
those people aren't here, I am, fear is not rational in most cases,
and they aren't making more abandoned railroads anymore (Beeching is
dead, and the US has railbanking).

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Re: [OSM-talk] THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject

[Russ Nelson]

Mateusz Konieczny writes:
 > (2) railway=abandoned includes both cases where railway is still
 > present and cases where railway no longer exists so automation is
 > impossible

Jesus.

Railway=disused is a railway that is no longer used but where the
track remains and infrastructure is in place. Railway=abandoned is a
tag to map former railways, where the rails have been removed but the
route is still visible in some way. Railway=dismantled is used to tag
a former railway, where mostly all evidence of the line has been
removed.

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Re: [OSM-talk] THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject

[Russ Nelson]

Dave F. writes:
 > > Don't destroy other people's mapping. Why is this not obvious?
 > 
 > What's obvious is that it's a track.

May I make a suggestion that I don't really want you to take? If you
really agree with Frederik that abandoned railways should not be
mapped, and you think it's okay to delete things other people added
just because you think they shouldn't be in OSM, then you should write
an script which locates railway=abandoned and automatically removes it
everywhere. If you TRULY have the courage of your convictions, go
ahead and do it. You'll get blocked from editing OSM, and your
minority opinion will disappear from the project.

Problem solved.

If you *don't* do this, then your true opinion will be revealed that
you are in fact okay with people adding railway=abandoned to
highway=track, and you're just wasting everybody's time on the mailing
list by arguing for actions you are unwilling to take.

Problem solved.

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Re: [OSM-talk] THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject

[Russ Nelson]

Dave F. writes:
 > >   Because when I see a spike, or a lump of coal, or a "road"
 > > which is level where no road needed to be but a railroad did, I map it
 > > as an abandoned railroad.
 > 
 > Please give a list of tags you'd use to map the tracks in your photos.

highway=track
railway=abandoned

There are a lot of railway=abandoned that are not highway=track, so
clearly railway=abandoned by itself is fine. And there are a lot of
highway=track that were never railways. And ... there are many
highway=track that are also railway=abandoned. If you disagree with
the above pair, exactly how do you say we should tag a highway that
used to be a railway if NOT the above pair?

 > What's obvious is that it's a track.

And it's an abandoned railway. The spike and coal prove it beyond a
shadow of a doubt. And yet you doubt. What evidence would it take to
convince you that this is an abandoned railway? Do I need to show you
historic maps? Do I need to show you railway stations that still
exist? Do I need to show you railway bridges? What evidence, exactly,
do you require to keep you from destroying other people's work?

 > > Don't destroy other people's mapping. Why is this not obvious?

But you didn't answer my question: why do you think it is in any way
acceptable to delete things that were added to OSM which are factually
true?

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Fairhurst writes:
 > I suspect I'm more attuned to finding these traces than you
 > are.

I call it "raildar" or "ferroequinology". It's when you look down that
tree line and say "Hey, that's an old railroad", then you go to OSM
(possibly using OSMAnd), find that spot, and yep ... old railroad.

 > A few metres from the URL you cited is 
 > http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/263868309

Yeah, Condie Street, hehe. I drove down it and then said "um, that's
barely a track, and certainly not highway=residential."

I asked Tom Hynes about all those identically-sized rectangles. He
imported them from his 911 dataset, wherein the vendor tagged every
building that wasn't directly digitized with that rectangle. He knows
it's not perfect, but his plan is to import whatever corrections
people make in OSM back into his database.

Speaking of Kingston, NY, the mayor who decided to shut down the
tourist railroad by parking a dump truck on the tracks (a felony in
the US) lost the Democratic primary, so he won't be mayor after
November. #WINNING

 > (Also, NY State Bike Route 32 sucks rocks. The traffic is heavy and the
 > shoulder is either non-existent or too narrow to ride. I would love to find
 > a way of mapping that.)

On behalf of the entire state of New York, I apologize for allowing
that road to be marked as a bicycle route. I should probably make that
my next project -- make sure that all the bicycle routes are in OSM
and are tagged properly for quality. I *have* bicycled on NY-32 and
yeah, it's not a shining example.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

Mateusz Konieczny writes:
 > Now it is done with railways and may be stopped. But if completely
 > dismantled railways are not deleted from OSM what would stop somebody
 > interested in mapping completely destroyed buildings, canals etc?

This is a strawman argument. Nobody is proposing this. You're just
borrowing trouble from the future. Don't do that. The present has
enough trouble already. Like not having enough people mapping in the
US, which is my point here. We have a set of people who are interested
in maps and mapping, AND YOU GUYS ARE THRUSTING THEM AWAY.

Let me tell you a little story. The USGS has been mapping the US for
well over a hundred years now. Very precisely mapping it, including
railroads. Some people who wanted to find these old railroads realized
this, and started digitizing the maps so that everyone can have
them. That set of maps is still available at
http://docs.unh.edu/nhtopos/nhtopos.htm even though the USGS has begun
its own digitization program.

Thank you railfans, not "get lost" railfans.

Another railfan took those scans (which are four scans per map sheet),
combined them into a single map sheet, geo-rectified them,
color-corrected them, and marked the collar so it may be removed, and
published them.

Thank you railfans, not "get lost" railfans.

Another railfan took those maps, stripped off the collars, pasted them
into MSMaps-style 200x200 pixel UTM tiles, and published them at
http://rutlandtrail.org/mapview.cgi under the "Historical" style.

Thank you railfans, not "get lost" railfans.

Am I being unreasonable to suggest that we should welcome railfans to
OSM, and tolerate their wild and crazy desire to map every part of an
old railroad, even the dismantled portions? Particularly when (in
another thread) there is a discussion of how to recruit specialized
groups like the 4-H into OSM?

You guys are saying "get lost" because OSM rejects (some of) the data
railfans want to contribute.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
 > The total number of such things is relatively small. I can continue
 > to state that abandoned railways should not be in OSM(**) and Russ
 > Nelson can continue to claim otherwise but that is really a minor
 > skirmish that won't bring the project to a halt.

Kinda-sorta. You're from Germany, where you can't throw a stone
without hitting a mapper. New York State is about a third the size of
Germany, and has maybe two dozen active mappers (Simple check: look
for landuse.)

Can you see how I am feeling lonely and desperate for company? Even if
we have to tolerate that company putting their feet up on the table
and <gasp!> mapping abandoned railroads?

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Re: [OSM-talk] THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject

[Russ Nelson]

Ian Dees writes:
 > Let's stop trying to generate conflict where there isn't any, Russ.

I understand your desire to sweep conflict under the rug, to pretend
it doesn't exist, to think that we only map what "we" can see. But *I*
see an abandoned railroad here. Let's all sing Kumbaya, hug, and get
along. Which we CAN if people would only stop destroying what other
people have done.

Look at these two photos and tell me what you can see, what you can
"verify":

https://goo.gl/photos/G41ehgPJyfEWcvwH7
https://goo.gl/photos/FfgSS5bDMQ3XW7MX8

What's this? Is it a trail or is it an abandoned railroad? See the
spike? Where did it come from if not the abandoned railroad?
Or the lump of coal hundreds of miles from any coal field?

It's not a track. It's an abandoned railroad that is being *used* as a
track.

I'm not asking anybody else to map it as an abandoned railroad.
I'm asking people to respect MY tagging of it as an abandoned
railroad. Because when I see a spike, or a lump of coal, or a "road"
which is level where no road needed to be but a railroad did, I map it
as an abandoned railroad.

Don't destroy other people's mapping. Why is this not obvious?
Don't vandalize OSM!

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Re: [OSM-talk] THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject

[Russ Nelson]

Mateusz Konieczny writes:
 > On 7 Sep 2015 15:31:02 -
 > Russ Nelson <nel...@crynwr.com> wrote:
 > 
 > > people who reject mapping abandoned railroads
 > 
 > Nobody is against mapping abandoned railroads that are existing.

Ian Dees writes:
 > If it used to be rails and now its a trail, we should map it as a
 > trail. If it used to be rails and now its a bare embankment, we map
 > it as an embankment.

Dear Mr. Konieczny, I would like you to introduce you to Mr. Dees,
whom you have just called a "nobody".

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Re: [OSM-talk] Railways yet again (was "THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject")

[Russ Nelson]

Andy Townsend writes:
 > If there's something new to add I, as an OSM list-reading punter*, would 
 > be glad to read it (perhaps on the tagging list if that's what it's 
 > about) but frankly it's all getting a bit repetitive.

This time around it's: who do we encourage to contribute to OSM?
Because if railway=abandoned is the current red-headed stepchild, who
is to be the next red-headed stepchild?

Deletionists delete. It's what they do. "I didn't see it" is always a
valid reason to delete something, right? Oh, you can add it back,
saying "I went there, and I saw it," but that's exactly what I'm
saying, and a handful of people are rejecting that idea.

They will reap what they have sown.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Railways yet again (was "THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject")

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
 > But what if I have said the same thing five times already and the others
 > STILL don't see that I'm RIGHT

Nobody has told me how I can create a relation which hops between OSM
and OHM. Nobody has told me how I can have a node keep the same
location in both OSM and OHM. Nobody has told me how I can tag a way
which exists in OSM as railway=abandoned in OHM.

I have a different solution, one which works today and doesn't require
some fantasy software to be invented later: Map entities which are
partially destroyed and partially existing, and tag them exactly that
way.

You want to know what's different, Frederik? This go-around, I now
understand the problem that I'm facing: that OSM putatively rejects
historical objects, and yet the object in this case is a railway which
is partially gone and partially present, but what is to be mapped is
not the parts, but the whole.

Not asking you to do it. Asking that you support a policy of allowing
it.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

Mateusz Konieczny writes:
 > On Wed, 9 Sep 2015 01:54:20 -0400
 > Russ Nelson <nel...@crynwr.com> wrote:
 > 
 > > Why do you persist? You can't win, because you're wrong.
 > 
 > Please, stop treating it as some zero-sum game. I am not trying to
 > "win".

You're arguing with me, and you don't expect to win the argument?? Why
would you bother? In particular, it *is* a zero-sum game. If you get
to delete abandoned railways, I don't get to see them in my own
rendering or in OpenRailwayMap.

 > I am trying to ensure that editing of OSM will not be made
 > harder by presence of ways representing completely destroyed objects
 > or ridiculous relations containing features approximately following
 > track of former, no longer existing objects.

That's the sticky problem: the railway still exists. Part of it may be
an embankment, or a cut, or a bridge, or a straight line of trees, or
a track. Part of it may go through a field where the farmer has plowed
it away (but I can point you to fields where you can still see
cinders). Part of it may go through a housing development (but I can
show you tree lines where it went). Those latter two parts should be
tagged railway=dismantled.

 > Editing OSM is already complicated, there is no good reason to make it
 > even harder by adding confusing features editable only by experts.

Here's how to make it less hard: Don't delete things you didn't
add. (Oh, and don't edit coastlines).
Isn't that easy?

Now, it's not always true, but it's a simple rule of thumb that will
allow everyone to add their favorite thing to OSM, whether stores,
park benches, fire hydrants, trees, cliffs, etc.

Are there other problems that you fear will occur when people map all
the parts of a railway?

I'm thinking that maybe what we need is a censoring OSM API, where the
people who would be confused by dismantled railways could say "I want
the censored OSM", and then they wouldn't get any dismantled railways
in their data download.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

Mateusz Konieczny writes:
 > And "abandoned railway" that was not noticed by somebody in his/her
 > own back yard seems to be a good example of object that should not be
 > mapped in OSM.

Oh, and he didn't notice the railroad bridge about 90m east of his
property either. This bridge:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/240308433 Nor the right-of-way
underneath the NYS Thruway. This right-of-way (which pre-existed the
trail): https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/237524740 . Nor the bridge
remains on the west side (which I didn't put into OSM, but they're
there). You can read the Wikipedia page for the railroad -- it will
tell you more than you ever wanted to know about why the railroad
right-of-way under the Thruway was destroyed. All of those should have
been clues to the homeowner. They are *certainly* verifiable evidence
of an abandoned railroad right-of-way.

Why do you persist? You can't win, because you're wrong. I know far,
far more about abandoned railroads than you do, and I can provide as
many examples of the verifiability of abandoned railroads as it will
take to convince you. Assuming that facts will actually change your
mind. Of which I am in doubt at this point.

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[OSM-talk] THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject

[Russ Nelson]

https://www.facebook.com/groups/abandonedrails/permalink/1044885352211646/

To everyone who thinks we shouldn't map abandoned railroads: THIS is
the kind of mapping enthusiasm that you would have us reject
forcefully. THIS is why Google Maps has people mapping for free.
THIS is not the only person who maps abandoned rails for the
competition, who is glad to have the data.

  o What the HELL am I supposed to tell this person?
  o How do we get him to contribute his efforts to OSM?
  o Am I supposed to tell him "Yes, you can map the way
we tell you, but if you try to map what you are
passionate about, go away"??

We should map everything that doesn't move, and maybe a few things
that do.

We need an authoritative statement that says that deleting abandoned
railroads is vandalism, and that people who do so in spite of being
warned not to, will be banned from the project. Until I get that, I
cannot in good conscience encourage any railfan to map railroads,
because of the threat from vandals to delete their edits.

I could go through the discussion over the last month and identify a
grand total of five people who reject mapping abandoned railroads. Are
THEIR efforts worth the loss of Tony Howe's mapping?? What are we
giving up for our "purity of essence"? Why are we listening to these
five people when allowing people to delete abandoned rails (or
threaten to do so, which is the same thing, just pushed into the
future.)

I'm so, so, tired of this fight. I want to encourage Tony Howe to edit
OSM, but I don't want to look like an idiot when he comes back and
says "Some jerk deleted my edits!"

:-(

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

Bryce Nesbitt writes:
 > I've worked on "rails to trails" projects where the physical trace
 > of the railbed was subsumed by fences, lines of trees and (in once
 > case) a swimming pool.

I'll bet you're talking about the Wallkill Valley Trail north of
Rosendale! I think I know the very place you're talking about! Guy had
built his house right up to the ROW property line, and put his
swimming pool on the ROW itself.

Too bad for that guy that he didn't check OpenStreetMap first, because
there was an abandoned railroad mapped in his back yard. Now that the
trail has been built, he has a fence about 5' behind his house. I
can't imagine he's happy now.

I think Bryce's observation lays this issue to rest. No, you should
not delete railways you cannot see, because they might still exist in
the property lines, and if you haven't checked, you don't know. If
somebody added it to OSM, they probably have better reason to have
done so than you have reason to delete it, so leave it there!

Thanks for your cooperation!

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

Dave F. writes:
  On 23/08/2015 16:49, Frederik Ramm wrote:
   Hi,
  
   On 08/23/2015 02:27 AM, Balaco Baco wrote:
   I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. To have no data and to
   have the most recently obtained data are two very different things.
   Certainly you're not suggesting we map all these negatives.
  
  I think I'd rather map Dark Matter. Seems easier ;-)

As I've pointed out many times in the past and apparently must point
out again, because some people are not paying attention, nobody is
asking you to map things you don't want to map. This is an open source
project, and as such, NOBODY gets to make demands that anybody else do
something.

We can't demand that somebody write a module, or map a county.

We CAN, however, demand that somebody stop deleting modules or ways
that somebody else has added to the project.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

I don't understand why people suggest things that don't work. How do I
make a route in OSM that includes the active railways, disused
railways, washed_out railways (where you can SEE rails in the river),
cycleways, footways, bridges, hedges, cuttings, embankments, and
shadows in fields if there is not a way in every case?

Or conversely, how does OHM allow for a route that includes ways going
through a farmer's field where everything has been plowed away, the
cinders scattered, the spikes buried beyond the reach of metal
detectors, where I, even I, agree that there is nothing to be seen
there  AND ways where any damned fool can see that this used to be
a railroad because it lines up with existing tracks? (hint: like OSM,
it doesn't.)

Perhaps some day in the future, what you suggest will be practical
when the data schema has been revised to implement layers stored in
different databases. For now, no. Please stop suggesting this.
-russ

Tim Waters writes:
  I'd like to recommend OpenHistoricalMap.org (OHM) which will welcome
  all types of historical, disused and abandoned features. Please, go
  add every abandoned railway to OHM, and then together we can
  eventually get an accurate map of 1880s railway network compared to a
  1940's, compared to yesterdays world!
  
  Tim
  
  
  
  On 22/08/2015, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote:
   Hi
  
   I'd therefor like to propose that abandoned railways be treated like
   borders.  Even if you can't see it along a given stretch there are people
   who can and they have put a huge amount of effort into that work.  Lets
   respect that and strengthen the community rather than deleting it and
   doing
   the opposite.
  
   I 100% agree. The amount of data required to map abandoned railroads
   is tiny. An occasional way through a new development is not going to
   hurt anybody or impair normal mapping activity.
  
   Apparently, the people that like to map railroads think OSM is the
   best place to do this. We are not in any position to be chasing them
   off. OSM has a long, long way to go still. Above all else, it needs to
   more active mappers if we are serious about being the best map for the
   entire world. Also, It seems likely they are also mapping non
   controversial things like roads while working on the railroads.
  
   Dave F, OSM is doing just fine. It is full of contradictions,
   redundancies, disagreements, and broken rules (see the tagging list).
   It is not some kind of business database that requires normalization,
   strict schema definitions, and vigilant protection. It can't have any
   once sentence rules defining its boundaries. It is a great big blank
   sheet of paper, relax and let the railroad people draw on it a bit.
   Nobody is going to get hurt.
  
   Jason
  
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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

Dave F. writes:
  On 23/08/2015 01:27, Balaco Baco wrote:
   What we need is a
   database that already has all the data and simply identify when some
   small elements of it cease to be current.
   In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;)
   I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do.
  
  Are you saying if a building gets demolished  replaced with a new one, 
  you wouldn't remove the original outline from OSM?

This is also a strawman argument. Stop it. You are hurting your own
case, and making my case. Do you really want to help the
railway=dismantled people? No, you do not. So abandon this line of
argument -- it is failure incarnate.

Not a single person so far has suggested that everything that used to
exist, or everything that has already been mapped but since changed,
should remain. NOT ONE PERSON.

Instead, I and others have said that since you can see a railway at
point A, and you can see a railway at point B, it only makes sense
to map it between those points for several reasons:
  o Chances are good that there are artifacts between point A and B
that further investigation will reveal.
  o Mappable entities exist between those points which can only be
understood by including the dismantled railways (e.g. bridges, roads,
or buildings).
  o It's possible that cadastral data would reveal the presence of a
right-of-way, and (I think, but correct me if I'm wrong) everybody
agrees that there is way too much cadastral data to include in OSM,
and it's something that must be imported because it only exists in a
real property office's database.

I can point to examples of all of the above. Please don't doubt
me. You don't want me to have more facts on my side.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Reply-to header

[Russ Nelson]

Balaco Baco writes:
  All messages I received from OSM list does not have the reply-to header
  with the list address.

They should not. If you want to reply to the list, use your email
software's reply to list function.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

By the way, I want to apologize for dumping so many messages in a row
onto the list. I've not had a lot of sitting-in-front-of-the-computer
time lately because I've been spending a lot of time gathering map
data in the field:

I'm ONE rail-trail short of cycling every rail-trail in New York
State. Over a hundred of them, around 2800 miles, taking about two
months of bicycling if I spent a full 8 hours every day on the trail,
but in reality it's been an 11-year-long project.

moltonel 3x Combo writes:
  One can often assert that something was here even when nothing is left
  of that thing. And is nothing is left of that thing, it shouldn't be
  mapped.

What about point A?  What about point B? The *endpoints* do indeed
continue to exist, so nothing is left of that thing is not true
about most dismantled railways.

Speaking of housing developments, I earlier pointed to the south end
of Cazenovia, where a housing development has an obvious railbed to
the north, and an obvious railbed to the south, and in people's
backyards, a treeline where the railbed was.

Should the map look like this (A)?  ___   __ 

Or should it look like this (B)?___---__-

Some people are arguing for A. I argue that B is a better
representation of what is there (the underscores) because it includes
the dismantled portions (the dashes).

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

moltonel writes:
  Wrong data is worse than absent data.

Right. So tag dismantled railways with (oh, dare I say it?)
railway=dismantled. Correct data is better than wrong data, right?

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
  The fact there is no railroad here, however, is not something that I
  would consider useful; because where would it end? I'm standing at a
  lakeshore - there's no railway here, also there's no forest here, and no
  building, and no rugby pitch, no telephone booth, and no power lines.
  Certainly you're not suggesting we map all these negatives.

IN FACT NOBODY IS SUGGESTING THIS. This is called a strawman
argument. You create a position that nobody actually holds, which is
unreasonable, and then you say This Is Unreasonable and then you use
everyone's agreement to claim that a different position is wrong.

The use of a strawman argument is evidence that you have no viable
argument against the position that people actually hold.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Pieren writes:
  There is a large consensus on that in the community. Why are you
  insisting ? If you like, check the OHM project which is dedicated
  for historical maps.

We've been through this before. You're just insisting on your view and
claiming that everyone agrees with you. There is no consensus; rather
a number of people want to map disued / abandoned / dismantled
railways. Some people don't! Good for them! I'm happy for them that
they don't.

But what gives them the right to delete things that other people CAN
see and DO want to have in OSM?

The problem is that this disagreement is not symmetric. It's not like
the power=sub_station or power=substation disagreement. You don't have
one side saying we don't map power lines and the other saying but
we do. No, instead, we have one side saying YOU CANNOT MAP THIS.
That is not how we do things here -- and THAT is the true consensus.

I'm fine with you mapping the things you want. Why aren't you fine
with me mapping the things I want? Why the urge to delete? Why
encourage other people to delete things that are not accidents, not
TIGER mistakes, but things that people WANT in OSM and have PUT in
OSM?

I simply cannot comprehend the desire to delete.

You want to improve OSM? Fine. Add things that aren't
there. Contribute to Richard Welty's collection of fire hydrants. He's
got a useful project going on there. The Bing aerials are good enough
now that you can see traffic lights. There are a TON of missing ones.

You improve OSM by adding things. You make OSM worse by deleting
things.

Don't make OSM worse. Don't be that guy everyone hates.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
  On 08/22/2015 11:07 PM, Lester Caine wrote:
   What we need is a
   database that already has all the data and simply identify when some
   small elements of it cease to be current.
  
  In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;)

In OSM we do that by tagging the small elements properly. Deletion is
vandalism. No smiley.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
  Also I have the impression that, contrary to what you're saying, at
  least some proponents of abandoned railway mapping find it totally ok to
  map an abandoned railway that leads through a modern day housing
  development.

Abandoned? No. Dismantled? Yes. Now, I must admit that I have added
a lot of abandoned railways that really ought to be dismantled in
places. At the time, it wasn't an issue. Definitely I can clean up my
data, and I'm willing to do that. The trouble is that I'm being
threatened with having my contributions deleted!

DELETED!

Why incentive do I have to correctly tag, when people are saying Go
ahead, I'm just going to delete it anyway and I'm going to encourage
other people to do the same thing. And indeed, rather than doing
that, I've been adding lakes and ponds and rivers and streams in
NY. These have been multi-year projects for me. If, IF, I can get
agreement from people that they won't delete dismantled railways, I
will go through each and every railway=abandoned in NY and re-tag them
as dismantled as needed. It will be a multi-year project, but I'm good
for it.

Here's a perfect example of how a railway should be mapped: 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/42.92237423246795/-75.8534094581493

You've got a railway going through a modern day housing
development. The railway is a foot/bike path on the north side of the
development, visible in the back yards going through the development,
and on the south side of the development. It's been bulldozed,
dismantled, razed where houses were built.

Some people think the railway should be deleted. That makes a hash, a
mishmash, a farrago, of the relation which is the railway. Rather than
having a nice neat set of connected ways, you have a way here and a
way there, everywhere a way, way. It's simply true, and makes OSM
better, to say that the railway has, for those stretches, one 130
meters and another 300 meters, been dismantled.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

moltonel writes:
  The existence of ohm is a strong aknowlegement that osm is only for
  the present. Russ, you're an expert in old railroads, but think of
  all the other old things you could be an expert of. If all the
  niche experts

When they show up, we can have a discussion. In the meantime, I'm
here, and many other mappers map abandoned and dismantled railways,
and we would like to NOT HAVE YOU FRICK WITH OUR STUFF.

  In the meantime, please only map the present in osm.

A dismantled railway has been dismantled in the present. You can go
and look at it and verify that yes, indeed, it has been dismantled.
And then you can go down the block and see where it hasn't been
dismantled. It's simply ridiculous to expect OSM clients to have to go
from one database to another and back within the course of a few
hundred meters.

Maybe, as you suggest, some day it won't be ridiculous.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Glenn Powers writes:
  For the record, I deleted an abandoned railway that leads through a new
  housing development, because it didn't make any sense to leave it there.
  
  Satellite images clearly show ground gradings indicating an abandoned
  railway. IIRC, it was also featured in century-old county atlases.

I don't understand. You're saying that you could see the railroad on
satellite imagery, and you deleted it rather than marking it as
railway=dismantled??

I'm NOT in favor of incorrectly tagging railways. Not at all. If a
section of it is dismantled, then by all means mark it as
dismantled. Go ahead. Don't let me stop you from improving the map.

But deleting it? That isn't improving the map data, it's destroying it.
Why is that so hard for people to understand? You don't make the map
better by deleting true things out of it. I can see the railway at
point A, I can see it at point B, I can't see it inbetween, I'm going
to mark it as dismantled. THAT is perfectly fine. But deleting it?
Whyever in the world would you do that?

Seriously, folks, I don't understand the impulse to delete rather than
tag correctly.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

moltonel 3x Combo writes:
  The demolished: prefix only makes sense when there is something left
  of the former feature, typically rubble (useful for example to alert
  boattripers of the hazard). When there is nothing left in reality,
  there should be nothing left in OSM.

Question: should we tag the aqueduct underneath Sunrise Highway
between Aqueduct Raceway and Freeport, NY?

  Deleting an object is hardly different from editing it as far as
  osm history is concerned.

Except that deletion excises it from the database that you see when
make an API call. In the case of dismantled railways, that is not
accurate. There *is* a dismantled railway there, and you can tell
because the railway was at point A and at point B, and you can still
see it there, and so you should expect to see it in-between.

Is that a difficult concept to understand? I can point to various
unfinished railroads in NY where part was built (and is in OSM,
because you can see it), and part was never built (which isn't in OSM,
because it was never created). Contrast that with a dismantled
railway, which *is* in OSM, marking the location where it was
dismantled.

I understand that most people don't give a crap about map feature X,
Y, and Z. I get it, really I do. I look at things in OSM myself and
wonder why the hell did you map that?? Who cares?? And when it comes
to railways, there's a lot of people who don't give a crap. Fine. Go
ahead. Don't care. But I do. So don't delete the things that I (and
other railfans) have added.

Is that *really* too much to ask? Really??

From whence comes this impulse to destroy other people's work? Cuz it
seems pretty anti-community, anti-mapper, and anti-OSM.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

moltonel 3x Combo writes:
  I do empathise with Russ being angered at his work being deleted
  without discussion.

Not any happier if it gets deleted after discussion either. I brought
my data (I started mapping railways in 2004) to OSM because I thought
that the community was friendly to abandoned railways. Really,
decidedly unhappy if people are deleting data older than OSM.

  But it's equally annoying and tiring to repeatedly encounter the
  ludicrous kind of railway=abandoned,

Then tag it as railway=dismantled. You won't find me defending
incorrect tagging of anything.

But you don't hear me being annoyed or tired by finding data that I
dislike, do you? Perhaps we could all be less annoyed and tired by
what other people map?

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

moltonel 3x Combo writes:
  To me the distinguishing criteria between disused and abandoned is
  wether the rails are still present or not.

Indeed. disused means the rails are still there. Abandoned means that
the rails are gone. Dismantled (or some people use razed) is when a
section of the railbad cannot be seen. Railways that were never there,
placed by mistake, should be deleted.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Serge Wroclawski writes:
  TIGER wasn't what I was referring to.
  
  Please don't speak on my behalf.

Very well. Feel free to point to anything anywhere that people are
afraid to delete. I want to see 1) something that obviously doesn't
belong there, 2) which isn't TIGER and 3) evidence that someone
expressed a reluctance to delete it.

Is it unreasonable of me to ask for evidence of a claim that you have
made? I mean, besides TIGER, which is a perfectly reasonable
assumption for an ambiguous claim.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Warin writes:
  On 16/08/2015 1:35 AM, Russ Nelson wrote:
   Seriously? THIS is your line of reasoning? There's a simple way to
   empower them: If it's got TIGER tags and you don't see it, delete it.
  
  TIGER tags?
  
  Don't they only occur in one area of the world? Rather a small view
  of the world then.

Yes. TIGER is the only data that needs a serious amount of
deleting. That's what Serge was talking about. The rest of the
wrongly-added features that needs to be deleted is way WAY down in the
noise.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Richard Fairhurst writes:
  Frederik Ramm wrote:
   Inferring from that that there must have been a railway there is a 
   step too far. We are mappers, not trappers.
  
  Tell me again you can't infer there must have been a railway there. I dare
  you. I double dare you.

Nobody is asking Frederik to infer anything.

We're asking him to stop interfering with our inferring things -- an
action he has said he will not stop doing. This is a problem.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Warin writes:
  On 15/08/2015 3:46 PM, Russ Nelson wrote:
   Railway=dismantled. Doesn't get rendered except where it should be,

do you still want railway=disused to remain?

Are we even talking about the same thing? Let's assume that you made a
s mple t po.

Don't those last two words look a little weird with missing bits?
Shouldn't those letters be there? Shouldn't the dismantled bits of a
railroad be in OSM as dismantled bits?

Lookit, I'm also a fan of unfinished
railroads. http://russnelson.com/unfinished-railroads.html You don't
see me insisting that the unbuilt sections of these railroads get
mapped, do you? No, because they never existed, and you can't see any
evidence that they did. With a built, operated railroad, you *can* see
evidence that they did, even if it's only because you can look left
and see evidence of the railroad, and you can look right and see
evidence of the railroad. Should they NOT be mapped through the
farmer's field where they have been plowed into dismantlement?

Now, I'm sure somebody will, at some point say, Russell, just go off
to OpenHistoricalMap and put your data there. That's fine, except for
those pesky implementation details where THEY ARE IN TWO DISPARATE
DATABASES, UNCONNECTED. How, exactly, do you make a relation that
shows the entire route of a railroad when half of it is off in a
different corner?

I don't understand why we're having this argument. We map tons of
things that you can't see. Why not map as dismantled railroads that
have been dismantled? Why not make an exception to the Delete it if
you don't see it guideline?

It's only a small handful of people who are deleting and counseling
deletion of dismantled railways. They are pushing a rigid,
mechanistic, inconsistent view of what to map. If we can simply tell
them dismantled railways are cool, we love them, deal with it then
we'll be done here.

I WILL BE HAPPY AND GO AWAY WITH AN EXCEPTION. Don't you want me to be
happy? Don't you want me to go away?

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Serge Wroclawski writes:
  Our project's policy thusfar has been in contrast to other projects in that
  each and every one of us is empowered to make changes to anything we see.

You're starting to understand! You should make changes to things you
see. Things you don't see require a higher standard of knowledge.

  This leaves our project with a problem of lots of data and no one feeling
  empowered to remove it.

Seriously? THIS is your line of reasoning? There's a simple way to
empower them: If it's got TIGER tags and you don't see it, delete it.

Done. Next problem.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Maarten Deen writes:
  On 2015-08-14 07:44, Russ Nelson wrote:
   Maarten Deen writes:
 I beg your pardon? I read this as nothing can be deleted, since 
   you
 say that deleting something you don't see (which usually means it's 
   not
 there) is reason for a ban.
   
   No, nobody is going to get banned for just one action. But if they
   consistently go around deleting things because *they* didn't see the
   thing, and are counselled that that is not how we do things, and
   persists in doing it (and advising others to do it), yeah, deleting
   things that can be seen is reason to ban somebody, just as is any
   other kind of damage to the map data.
  
  That last statement is something different than I didn't see it,
  so I deleted it So I'm still confused. Please confine the answer
  to the deletion of things that are not present.

You are mixing two ideas: 1) that something is not present, and 2)
that everyone who doesn't see something is competent to judge that it
is not present.

Examples: a blind person doesn't see anything. Why can't they delete
everything? Trivial, I know, but that's the claim. Less trivial:
someone with limited vision. Are we now administering eye tests before
we allow people to map? What about somebody with left neglect? Should
they delete something because it's on their left? They won't see it.

Less trivial examples: A subway (for all of the meanings). A
pipeline. Aqueduct. Buried electrical mains. We map above-ground, why
not map buried? Underground fire hydrants. Rich Welty has mapped all
the fire hydrants in the Albany area, for good reason. What about
places where they are underground? Don't map them??  Why? Delete them
if they're mapped?

A very strong example: we map political boundaries. The only boundary
I've ever seen is the one between the US and Canada. It's a 30' wide
clearcut with concrete pillars every klik or so. We map
placenames. Never seen a big pin sticking in the ground saying
Potsdam, NY where we have it mapped.

What if I was to add the aqueduct which goes past Aqueduct Race Track
on Long Island, NY? It is without question there (the name Aqueduct
should be a pretty good hint), yet it cannot be seen anywhere. Why not
map that? Why map the Catskill aqueducts, which also cannot be seen?

See? The simple Delete things you don't see is just plain wrong.
And I didn't see it so I deleted it is not always a valid
defense. If I started deleting NY political boundaries, I'd get my ass
canned in a New York minute, and deservedly so.

Obviously there could be a project called ISawItMap, where you only
map things that an ordinary man can see. OpenStreetMap, however, is
not that project.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Serge Wroclawski writes:
  On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 11:09 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
  
   It's really just a small handful of people who think it's okay not
   just to delete things, but to counsel other people to delete
   things. I didn't see it, so I deleted it is a reason for a ban, not
   an excuse against being banned.
  
  Russ, I doubt that you mean it this way, but if you set the bar too high,
  then you're essentially asking people to disprove a negative.

I think you mean prove a negative. It's easy to disprove a
negative. If somebody wants to delete something that I added because
they don't see it, but instead, they ASK ME what did you see? I can
show them what I saw, just as I showed you pictures of what I saw on
one side and the other side of a building, giving me reason and cause
to conclude that there is an abandoned railroad there. That disproves
their claim that nothing was there.

  We allow original research and expert testimony, but we also don't require
  it.

Adding things, fine, no expertise required. Deleting things that
somebody else added (because we allow original research and expert
testimony) because we don't require expertise to delete things means
that in fact we don't allow original research and expertise.

Can you see how your sentence doesn't make any sense when it comes to
deletion?

  We have generally not required specialized knowledge or equipment for
  observations in the past and I don't think that we should change that going
  forward.

To add things, no. To destroy things, uh yeah, people should
understand that somebody put something into the map for a good reason
which may have required special knowledge or equipment.

For example, I could go to some place where OSM says there is a
pipeline, look around, not see a pipeline, and say urp, somebody
screwed up and added a pipeline here! I'll fix it by deleting it!

Again ... the problem is deleting. The problem is people who say
Delete things you don't see and people who believe them.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Mateusz Konieczny writes:
  In another case where railway tracks that were removed, embankment
  demolished and somebody build there houses. In that case railway
  track should not be mapped in OSM because this feature is gone.

Railway=dismantled. Doesn't get rendered except where it should be,
on openrailwaymap.org.

Why is this so hard? I'm not asking you to do it. I'm asking you to
stop preventing me from doing it.

I'm not trying to make extra work for anybody.

I'm asking you to find a different way to make the map better than by
deleting things, valid things, real things, that other people entered.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Ian Dees writes:
  I appreciate that there are strong feelings about this topic, but we could
  certainly use more constructive language and have a civilized conversation.

I would love to have a civilized conversation with civilized people
who don't destroy other people's work. You're asking for constructive
language about destruction, without any apparent irony.

It's really just a small handful of people who think it's okay not
just to delete things, but to counsel other people to delete
things. I didn't see it, so I deleted it is a reason for a ban, not
an excuse against being banned.

Of course, the defining problem here is what are these things? Are
they something that is obvious to everyone? Or are they something that
you can barely see as a shadow on an aerial photo, a bit of vegetation
in the wall between fields, or a small depression in a field, or
cinders where there ought to be sandy loam?  I will cheerfully
acknowledge that I am expert at locating abandoned railbeds, and that
my expert's eye can see things other people don't see. This isn't
Wikipedia. We allow original research and expert testimony.

So, is OSM to contain only the obvious that everyone can see? Or
should it contain everything that can be seen?

I'll leave the issue of railway=dismantled where I agree that there is
nothing to be seen for hundreds of feet for another day. Clearly we
are talking now about railway=abandoned that can be easily discerned
on the ground and from aerial photos.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Serge Wroclawski writes:
  That is, if I'm on the ground and there's a building, how do I know it's a
  razed railway?

Tracks buried in the asphalt are usually a good indication. You don't
need to get out your tape measure to see if the cracks are 4' 8.5 apart.
I don't have any pictures of the building, but it's in the description.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/russnelson/286222501/in/album-72157603830566601/

Don't believe me? Here's the rails on the other side of the building:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/russnelson/286222504/in/album-72157603830566601/

If that's not enough, the presence of buildings with loading doors are
boxcar height and spacing ought to suggest that a railroad went past.

Or how about a spur track? Had to connect to something, right?

https://www.flickr.com/photos/russnelson/2154335831/in/album-72157603830566601/

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Maarten Deen writes:
  I beg your pardon? I read this as nothing can be deleted, since you 
  say that deleting something you don't see (which usually means it's not 
  there) is reason for a ban.

No, nobody is going to get banned for just one action. But if they
consistently go around deleting things because *they* didn't see the
thing, and are counselled that that is not how we do things, and
persists in doing it (and advising others to do it), yeah, deleting
things that can be seen is reason to ban somebody, just as is any
other kind of damage to the map data.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
  Hi,
  
  On 08/11/2015 07:09 AM, Russ Nelson wrote:
   If you have
   ever said delete things you don't see, then you need to shut the
   hell up, because you are making the map worse. Just stop!
  
  Delete things you don't see (with some notable exceptions, abandoned
  railways not being among them).

Yep. You're one of the people who needs to shut the hell up. I wasn't
going to name names -- thank you for fingering yourself as one of the
guilty parties. Thanks for your cooperation in ceasing this practice,
I really appreciate your help.

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[OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Russ Nelson]

Okay, this has to stop. It just has to stop. Whoever is saying Yes,
go ahead and delete abandoned railroads wherever you don't see a
railroad has to stop it. They just HAVE to stop it, because people
are using that advice to vandalize the map.

Now, you might think Goddamnit, does Russell have to start again?
Yes, I have to start again. I was in north-western Pennsylvania last
weekend looking for the Corry Junction Rail Trail. Problem: it hasn't
been entered into OSM yet. But that's not a problem, right? Because OF
COURSE the railway is there, marked as abandoned, right? It isn't. And
I couldn't find the damned trail because the Traillink description is
inadequate. I finally just drove around where the trail HAD to be, and
found it.

This is unacceptable because:

1) on the bing aerials you can see where the railroad went perfectly
fine. It's a line that goes through people's yards, there is a node
from the TIGER data where it used to cross the roads, there is a tree
line the whole way, buildings are aligned to the railbed, people's
driveways bend out of the way of the railbed, etc.

2) THERE ARE STILL FREAKING RAILS ON THE SOUTH END. What the hell??
This is crazy stuff, it's just crazy. Yes, they're not very long, but
they're still connected to the national railroad network. How can
somebody legitimately delete that's obviously there? Answer: they
can't.

and worst:

3) The majority of it is a rail-trail. And not y'know, two weedy ruts
from an ATV trespassing. No, this rail-trail has a stone dust base,
permissive gates (with a hole not big enough for an ATV), and tactile
crossings. This is a *serious* rail-trail.

And the railroad way that would be the trail got deleted. If you have
ever said delete things you don't see, then you need to shut the
hell up, because you are making the map worse. Just stop!

When is it okay to delete things you can't see? Only if it's untouched
TIGER data and you've been there and didn't see it. That's the only
time. Otherwise somebody put that thing into OSM, and they probably
know something you don't.

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

Martijn van Exel writes:
  Okay, thanks, I’ve been preferring level_crossing myself. 
  
  I will publish the ~90k tasks shortly! Will let you know when it’s done.
  
  Martijn
  
   On Jul 6, 2015, at 9:19 AM, Richard Welty rwe...@averillpark.net wrote:
   
   On 7/6/15 11:02 AM, Clifford Snow wrote:
   From my read of our wiki and wikipedia, the correct term should be
   level_crossing. British English and all. 
   level_crossing is correct. it's what i've been using for years.
   
   richard
   
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Re: [OSM-talk] API down?

[Russ Nelson]

I blame you for every second the API is down.
I also credit you for every second it's up.

You're WAY ahead on the credits! Thanks for everything you do,
especially the parts that get done on a schedule not of your own
choosing.
-russ

Grant Slater writes:
  Hi All,
  
  Sorry about the earlier outage. All fixed now.
  
  We had a server outage.
  
  Kind regards,
  Grant
  OSM ops team
  On 4 Jul 2015 2:20 pm, Blake Girardot bgirar...@gmail.com wrote:
  
  
   Is down for me too.
  
  
  
   On 7/4/2015 3:00 PM, Maarten Deen wrote:
  
   Hi,
  
   it seems the api is down? I can't get a connection from JOSM, ID, or a
   direct URL in my browser.
  
   Regards,
   Maarten
  
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  p dir=ltrHi All,/p
  p dir=ltrSorry about the earlier outage. All fixed now./p
  p dir=ltrWe had a server outage./p
  p dir=ltrKind regards,br
  Grantbr
  OSM ops team/p
  div class=gmail_quoteOn 4 Jul 2015 2:20 pm, quot;Blake Girardotquot; 
  lt;a href=mailto:bgirar...@gmail.com;bgirar...@gmail.com/agt; 
  wrote:br type=attributionblockquote class=gmail_quote style=margin:0 
  0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1exbr
  Is down for me too.br
  br
  br
  br
  On 7/4/2015 3:00 PM, Maarten Deen wrote:br
  blockquote class=gmail_quote style=margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px 
  #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex
  Hi,br
  br
  it seems the api is down? I can#39;t get a connection from JOSM, ID, or 
  abr
  direct URL in my browser.br
  br
  Regards,br
  Maartenbr
  br
  ___br
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  a href=mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org; 
  target=_blanktalk@openstreetmap.org/abr
  a href=https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk; rel=noreferrer 
  target=_blankhttps://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk/abr
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  ___br
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  a href=mailto:talk@openstreetmap.org; 
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  target=_blankhttps://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk/abr
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Re: [Talk-us] Railway crossing challenge for MapRoulette

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping

[Russ Nelson]

Andrew Wiseman writes:
  We talked about this a bit at the HOT Birds of a Feather at State of the
  Map -- to me it's a great idea. Why not ask some basic (and purely
  optional) information when people join OSM, with some fields for that info,

IMHO, we should allow people to use OSM tools to create polygons of
interest. Then, people can choose to get various notifications based
on events relative to those polygons. For example, you could send a
message to a node or a way, and everyone whose polygons intersected it
would get a notification. Or people could get a notification of edits
within those polygons. Or of people who created a polygon intersecting
their polygon.

Basically, give people more tools to communicate with people who are
local to them, or local to their interests.

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[OSM-talk] Velociraptor!

[Russ Nelson]

Going through some of my photos from the Cloudmade days. Cloudmade
wasn't *always* this fun, but when it was fun, it was THIS fun:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/russnelson/3499384727/in/album-72157619603953452/

Not *entirely* off-topic.

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

Makes ways a sickly yellow if you edit using JOSM.

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

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

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

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

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Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping

[Russ Nelson]

Kate Chapman writes:
  Possibly, but we cite as fact that imports stunt community growth. I don't
  think that has ever been proven in a way that cuts across cultures,
  geographies or the quality of the data being imported. People usually point
  to the TIGER import in the US. I don't think we can purely blame an import,
  there is much more going on than simply there was data already there.

Agreed. The TIGER import is not necessarily the reason for a community
growing only slowly. Pit against that the public domain USGS maps
(unlike, say, the OS Landranger maps), the very public-domain TIGER
data that we imported, or the various mapping services like Google
Maps.

In order for the armchair as import idea to hold water, it must
first be shown that armchair maps are even positively correlated with
a failure for a community to arise.

This whole discussion started with Frederick Ramm's speculation that
remote mapping is bad. I haven't seen any evidence that it is bad.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Some thoughts against remote mapping

[Russ Nelson]

Frederik Ramm writes:
  I think the tl;dr of both these postings could be: Whenever you give
  someone a map by remote mapping, you also take something away from them.

Western aid has a bad history of mostly aiding westerners. The one
simple trick for avoiding that is to ask the locals How can I help?

And if the locals say We need a better map for where we live, then
that addresses your concern.

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Re: [OSM-talk] SOTM-US: directions please

[Russ Nelson]

Julio Costa Zambelli writes:
  Another word of advice/tip for NYC Subway first timers,

Another tip/quirk, particularly on weekends: some trains don't stop at
some stations. Not so terrible if you're *at* the station. Not good if
you're trying to get TO the station. Just keep your eye open for
stations with a gray mark on them.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Can wikidata links help fight name inflation?

[Russ Nelson]

SomeoneElse writes:
  On 29/05/2015 07:07, Andrew Hain wrote:
   Thank you Dave. As a British mapper I am ashamed that some people want 
   to make the map of my country less useful, and not only to Russian 
   speakers a long way away.
  
  Hang on, where is _anybody_ saying that?  The whole point of the thread 
  is about whether it would be possible to use wikidata to make the map 
  _more_ useful to people who don't speak a particular language, not 
  less.  As I said yesterday:
  
It's a perfectly reasonable request for someone to ask can I
have a map that shows place names displayed in my language /
alphabet.

It wouldn't be the first time that we argued about what the map
should have on it. IMHO, we shouldn't have a map. We should have a
list of map peers, each of which is rendered topically, including an
English Language map, or a Kannada map. They should be hosted by
whomever wants to host them. The only difference is which tile set
gets selected. You can edit off all of them, using potlatch or id or
remote control. There is a data flag for all of them so you can see
data items rendered over the map tiles.

And (this is key) there is no default. There is no OSM map. And there
is nothing to argue about how the map should be rendered.

We'll still argue, of course. But it will be arguments about what goes
into the database. And the default answer there is Everything that
doesn't move, and a few things that do.

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

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Re: [Talk-us] CloudMade's ambassadors

[Russ Nelson]

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

I met some neat people while a Cloudmade Ambassador!

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

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

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

Oh.

Crap.

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

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

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

+1

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

[Russ Nelson]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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