Re: [OSM-talk] Tool for users to add wikidata tags
On Thursday 08 June 2017, Edward Betts wrote: > > Please check each match carefully before uploading to > OpenStreetMap. If in doubt, contact the local mapping community > before adding Wikidata tags. This will not help much though - every single mapper i have seen performing mechanical edits along these lines in the past years was sure their edits were factually correct and diligently checked - partly because of the fact that what is written on Wikipedia is often a significant part of the perceived trouth about the world. This all would not be too bad - after all it is just one simple tag but the trouble is later other mappers will use that to fix discrepancies between OSM and Wikidata for example by 'correcting' names in OSM. I am not against the idea of cross referencing these databases but it would be great if (a) this would be universally treated as 'related objects' rather than a one-to-one relationship and (b) at least like ten percent of the time and effort put into such work is invested in educating people about error sources and teaching people about reliably researching geographic facts. Too often the impression i get is the aim is more producing and connecting data per se than actually recording reliable factual information. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] HDYC, login requirement and "privacy"
On Sunday 07 May 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > It is a common issue in OSM (and elsewhere) for people to use the > status quo as a reason. "Admin boundaries are not visible on the > ground and they are mapped, THEREFORE I can also map everything else > that is not visible on the ground" - no! And you're doing it the > other way round, saying "your privacy goes down the drain if you do > anything online anyway, so why should we at OSM take steps to protect > it more". But we also should be careful not to apply the 'analogy sledgehammer' the other way round - just because restricting access to data can in some case reduce privacy issues it is not necessarily always the best way to deal with such a problem. Specifically that putting a login via OSM account in front of HDYC makes sense for this specific tool and some specific concerns regarding it (mainly the 'invitation to stalking' matter) should not lead anyone to consider this a useful standard measure for all privacy related concerns. Side note: Mailing lists are a very different matter for a variety of technical and social reasons. I would say that the idea of restricting mailing list archive access due to metadata based privacy concerns is fairly far fetched (in contrast to content related concerns about privacy or confidentiality - which make much more sense) considering the archives show almost nothing of the mail metadata except 'From' and 'Date' which can be freely chosen by the user. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] HDYC, login requirement and "privacy"
On Friday 05 May 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > [...] > > I would like to come to a point where, if this happened to you in a > job interview, you could afterwards point to an OSM policy and say: > Clearly this company has violated OSM rules, they must have created > an account under false pretenses to get at this data and they're > using it for purposes not sanctioned by OSM. That won't make you get > the job, but it would at least make clear that we stand with our > contributors against abuse of their data. One of the things i was trying to point out is that this would not be the case. That company would simply say: "We got that info from or from our human ressources consulting contractor and never agreed to any terms not to use such data. Thanks for informing us that they are using this data without permission, we will not use it any more in the future." ;-) > > For a balanced discussion - and i am not saying i would actually > > prefer this approach to what you are suggesting - the whole problem > > could also be approached from the other side by reconsidering the > > possibility for partly anonymous edits. > > Yes. I think both approaches could be grouped under "restricted > access to personal information", and there will probably be still > other approaches with their own advantages and disadvantages. Well - the difference with the scenario i outlined is that it much more clearly aims at the protection of the mappers' privacy and gives the mapper much broader and more immediate control over this. This is no replacent for a solid strategy on educating mappers on what kind of privacy risks are involved with contributing in OSM but it kind of seems a more logical approach to the matter than a purely after-the-fact approach to protecting the data. This does not mean i am convinced this is ultimately the best solution, this depends on a lot of details of the implementation. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] HDYC, login requirement and "privacy"
On Friday 05 May 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > I think that a viable middle ground could be to make user data > available to signed-up project members only, and they'd have to > promise to only use that data for project-internal purposes. You know i have not formed an opinion on this matter yet but i wonder how this is supposed to work. Do you suggest to have an addition to the contributor terms, kind of a 'terms for access to metadata' and require existing users to newly agree to that? And after a transit period disable api access for those accounts who have not agreed? In principle that would certainly be possible although there are tons of practical problems that would come with such an approach. But ultimately this would probably lead to the vast majority of people who routinely get mapping metadata in bulk for whatever purpose to use anonymous accounts for downloading it and to also publish possibly problematic results of processing it in an anonymous way. Under this scenario there would probably be some open source HDYC clone, you could run it either privately for yourself, use an access restricted officially sanctioned instance of it with your real or anonymous OSM account or use some rouge open instance running anonymiously somewhere. For a balanced discussion - and i am not saying i would actually prefer this approach to what you are suggesting - the whole problem could also be approached from the other side by reconsidering the possibility for partly anonymous edits. We don't have this primarily to fight vandalism but it could be considered to give mappers the option to activate an anonymous editing mode on their account which would mean their edits and any other access to their user identity through for example the API gets scrambled on a daily basis and resolution of the generated random id to the real user is only available to the DWG. This would certainly also generate tons of problems but i think it is important to keep this possibility in mind when considering the matter of privacy. > Hence, > anyone with an OSM account could make such an animated progress map, > and it could be shown to anyone with an OSM account. Only if you want > to distribute it outside of OSM you'd either have to > remove/pseudonymize the user names [...] That part is really tricky, you'd have to be very specific on what kind of aggregation is necessary to make the data ok to be published. Obviously just replacing each user name with user is not going to cut it. Without clear rules here anyone who publishes anything based on such data would be in a legal mine field. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] HDYC, login requirement and "privacy"
On Thursday 04 May 2017, Michał Brzozowski wrote: > > > Well - HDYC is a tool offered by Pascal Neis, AFAIK it is not even > > open source. Pascal could turn it off any time if he wanted to and > > of course he can also put up constraints. > > Keep in mind that I don't make it appear that my requests are based > on something formal, they're not. I simply hope that people will tell > him they don't agree with me and two already did ;) I can only say if i was in Pascal's position here and i had decided to add the requirement of authorization to my tool because i am convinced this is important for the privacy of mappers (and i don't want to imply that i would see it that way nor that this was actually Pascal's motivation) users not liking my decision but having no convincing arguments w.r.t. the basis of my decision would not have any bearing on the matter. > I think it also emphasizes how open-source tools are important. There > are tons of obscure analysis pages which don't have their source > available. Yes - and the situation about HDYC would have different dynamics obviously if it was open source. But also keep in mind that the functionality of HDYC is not really that complex. Writing a replacement for it would certainly be quite a bit of work but it is not really rocket science. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] HDYC, login requirement and "privacy"
On Thursday 04 May 2017, Michał Brzozowski wrote: > > https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=57813 > > I don't like the idea how this was never introduced and discussed > outside of the German forum. So you think the German community should be required to proactively communicate any subject they discuss in German language channels to the international community? > I think that such "privacy" measures are futile and go against the > spirit of OSM - transparency. Well - HDYC is a tool offered by Pascal Neis, AFAIK it is not even open source. Pascal could turn it off any time if he wanted to and of course he can also put up constraints. If you think that is against the spirit of OSM that is up to you but don't forget that there are tons of tools based on OSM data developed and run with restricted access you never hear about. It is not really conceivable how in case of HDYC making such a tool available for all mappers based on authentification with an OSM account makes this less in the spirit of OSM than a private tool that is not even known to the public. > Maybe this is due to some "moral panic" in Germany revolving around > privacy, just like StreetView ban - except it's made clear that your > edits are public and you agree to it! Just to make this clear since there are likely quite a few people reading here who will not be able or willing to parse the discussion on the German forum - discussion there was about privacy concerns w.r.t. editing metadata, which is what is the basis of HDYC. Mixing this with the subject of openness of geodata and privacy concerns reagarding geodata (like mappers recording names from the doors of private homes etc.) is not really appropriate - two very different matters which need to be considered separately. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] HDYC, login requirement and "privacy"
On Thursday 04 May 2017, Nicolás Alvarez wrote: > > > Just to make this clear since there are likely quite a few people > > reading here who will not be able or willing to parse the > > discussion on the German forum - discussion there was about privacy > > concerns w.r.t. editing metadata, which is what is the basis of > > Mixing this with the subject of openness of geodata and > > privacy concerns reagarding geodata (like mappers recording names > > from the doors of private homes etc.) is not really appropriate - > > two very different matters which need to be considered separately. > > I don't think Michał was mixing those two different matters. Michał made a connection to privacy concerns regarding Google StreetView which were exclusively about the recorded data and not about the recording metadata (which Google obviously has no interest in publishing). -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] DWG survey on organised editing
On Wednesday 20 September 2017, Paul Norman wrote: > > The survey is available at https://osm-dwg.limequery.org/741554 Looks good. To get a broad spectrum of opinions i would encourage everyone to participate - even those who usually just map on their own without much interaction with the community outside mapping itself. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Adding wikidata tags to the remaining objects with only wikipedia tag
On Wednesday 20 September 2017, Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > > Christoph, a valid point. Yet the duplicate would allow finding many > of these errors, rather than leaving wp-only to go bad due to > changing nature of the WP articles. Actually no - you can find the errors just as well without adding the wikidata tags to OSM as after doing so. The perpetuation of errors is one of the primary reasons why mechanical edits are often not considered favorably in OSM. > As for sameness argument - lets > try to work on them on a case-by-case basis. I don't really want to argue this here - as said i have no objections against having wikipedia/wikidata tags as references for 'related features' but many treat these references under the assumption that they indicate identical real world concepts exist on both ends - or even worth: they might think a lack of identity is an indication for a factual error in the data on one side. I wanted to point out that this is a fundamentally incorrect assumption. Don't assume such cases are just a freak anomaly - they are not. OSM and wikidata are two very different projects which developed in very different contexts. Just another example: For most cities and larger towns (at least in Germany) there exists an admin_level 6/8 unit with the same name and most of these seem to have a single wikidata item while in OSM we have two separate concepts for the populated place (place=city/town) and the administrative unit (boundary relation with boundary=administrative + admin_level=6/8). -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Adding wikidata tags to the remaining objects with only wikipedia tag
On Wednesday 20 September 2017, Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > > https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Municipalities_of_ >Germany > > I think if you suggest it there, they will be happy to add it, > allowing OSM objects to be properly tagged. Or just contribute there > :) But i don't think there is anything wrong with how wikidata represents things - for Hamburg wikidata for example has a single item: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1055 which represents both the administrative unit and the populated place - which is perfectly fine. And OSM does differentiate between them which is also fine. Why should i attempt to change their data model to be identical to that of OSM (which would be a hopeless endeavor anyway because how things are represented in OSM is constantly changing)? -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Adding wikidata tags to the remaining objects with only wikipedia tag
On Wednesday 20 September 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > If the Wikidata ID can be fetched automatically based on the > Wikipedia tag, can we delete the Wikipedia tags from everything that > has Wikidata afterwards because it is redundant? This idea stems from the widespread view that a wikipedia article, a wikidata item and an OSM feature refer to the same real world entity just because they reference each other. This is not generally the case - and it can't be since what makes something a certain feature with certain tags in OSM differs fundamentally from what constitutes a certain class of objects in wikidata or what a certain wikipedia article describes. Simple example: The Faroe Islands are both a country: http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/52939 and an archipelago: http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3067431 in OSM which are represented as separate features obviously. Both reference the same wikidata item and all the blind automated name adding activities based on wikidata will not differentiate between names that apply to the archipelago and names of the country (which are not necessarily always the same in all languages). It is best to regard the wikidata and wikipedia tags in OSM as 'related features' rather than identical objects. These provide useful sources to research additional information (in particular wikipedia articles often link to additional sources) but you should never try to fix or add something in OSM - be that a name tag or coordinates - based purely on the assumption that the wikidata object referenced via tag is the same as the OSM feature. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Adding wikidata tags to the remaining objects with only wikipedia tag
On Wednesday 20 September 2017, Eugene Alvin Villar wrote: > > This is most certainly a wrong modeling in Wikidata. While we can > just have one well-written and comprehensive Wikipedia article about > the country/archipelago, in Wikidata, one item should correspond to > one concept. Maybe - but even if that is the case the wikidata concept of a country or archipelago is not necessarily the same as in OSM. For countries and archipelagos this might sound strange (an archipelago is an archipelago, right?) but as you surely know the meaning of tags in OSM can be quite peculiar in the way it develops over time based on mapping needs and it would be quite insane if wikidata copied all these peculiarities in their classification system. I don't know a lot about wikidata but as far as i can see every wikipedia article links to exactly one wikidata item and there are many geographic wikipedia articles that describe several different concepts together for which separate OSM features exist. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] DWG survey on organised editing
On Wednesday 20 September 2017, James wrote: > Also does organised mapping include groups that hold little > mapathons? Example a local mapping group from Vancouver, Toronto, > Montreal or Ottawa decide to say map sidewalks in their city. It's an > organised event. Would they be included as well? > > The terms used in this survey seem a little vague and can be left to > interpretation. I think you are misunderstanding the idea of the survey here - this is not a vote on a regulation of organized editing, it is meant to gather opinions of OSM community members on the matter. Classifying organized editing activities in a fine grained way would be beyond the scope of such a simple exploratory survey. You can be sure the DWG knows that there is a broad range of organized editing activities and that even within the definitions given for the survey there is room for interpretation. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Adding wikidata tags to the remaining objects with only wikipedia tag
On Wednesday 20 September 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > Does that mean that the original plan of "fetching" (dare I say > importing) 200k Wikidata links through automated connections from > existing Wikipedia links is (a) dangerous because you can easily > obtain a reference to something totally different, or (b) no problem > because it is *to be expected* that an object's Wikipedia and > Wikidata links point to different things an hence the import wouldn't > introduce "errors" per se? It all depends on how you use the data. I think adding the wikidata tags is fine *because* i regard them as simple references to related features but if you'd insist on the idea that the OSM feature and the wikidata item refer to the same real world feature then inferring such an identity from an existing wikipedia tag is even more problematic - because the wikipedia tag was almost certainly not originally verified to refer to exactly the same concept as the OSM object. Also keep in mind that both the OSM features and the wikidata items evolve over time and not every edit made in OSM (like extending the area of a forest polygon to include some additional tree covered area) is necessarily verified to still justify having the wikidata reference. What will inevitably happen if you automatically add wikidata tags is that existing errors in either OSM (in form of incorrect wikipedia tags) or in wikidata (in form of incorrect connections to wikipedia articles) will get duplicated. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Could we just pause any wikidata edits for a month or two?
On Wednesday 04 October 2017, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: > there is another aspect that could be added to your list for > discussion: wikipedia and wikidata integration on osm tag definition > wiki pages. > > * Some wiki editors seem to believe, the first word of a osm tag > definition should be a link to a wikipedia article about something > related to this tag, but sometimes these are also interpreted as > descriptions of what should go into the tag, particularly when the > wikipedia link is the only substantial content. > > [...] I agree this problem exists but it has existed for many years so it is not really something related to the current topic of wikidata and systematic addition of wikidata IDs. I would suggest to separate that discussion. > Regarding the license question: wikidata is public domain (so taking > name translations from there shouldn’t pose a problem), but it > started (AFAIK) with importing things like coordinates and > interlanguage links from wikipedia, which has different licenses, how > was this step possible? Maybe because these are seen as facts and not > copyrightable? AFAIK Wikipedia essentially says you can enter individual pieces of information (from any book, any map or any digital database) because such individual pieces of information are not protected in any way. You can enter such information freely into Wikipedia and from there it can be freely transferred to Wikidata (with a different license). They ignore the fact that database law says that if you do so systematically, like if you determine the coordinates of all towns and cities in Germany from Google, you are subject to the restrictions of database protection. Wikipedia ignores that possibility but OSM does not, therefore for OSM any information entered from Wikipedia or Wikidata would need to be treated as information from whatever source it was originally entered into Wikipedia or Wikidata. If that source is unknown such information should not be used. Practically this is not that much of a problem because if you have some info from Wikipedia (like a certain name or coordinates) that you don't know the source of and that you cannot verify independently from other sources or from own local knowledge it is not information you should enter into OSM anyway. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] New OSM Quick-Fix service
On Sunday 15 October 2017, Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > [...] I was following up on the Christoph Hormann's > idea of the "bot=no" tag, to "allow mappers to opt out of bot edits > on a case-by-case basis." No, you were not, likely because you misunderstood my suggestion which is likely because you don't get how OpenStreetMap is working overall. I would strongly advise you to reconsider your whole approach to OpenStreetMap and to interacting with the OpenStreetMap community. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] New OSM Quick-Fix service
On Sunday 15 October 2017, Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > > > > [...] I was following up on the Christoph Hormann's > > > idea of the "bot=no" tag, to "allow mappers to opt out of bot > > > edits on a case-by-case basis." > > > > No, you were not, likely because you misunderstood my suggestion > > which is likely because you don't get how OpenStreetMap is working > > overall. > > > > I would strongly advise you to reconsider your whole approach to > > OpenStreetMap and to interacting with the OpenStreetMap community. > > Christoph, kindly explain, instead of making snide remarks. You have > not added to the discussion, but instead raised the level of toxicity > of this channel even further. Note that several people have already > noted that this channel is toxic and refused to participate in it, > rather than being productive and beneficial to everyone involved. I rest my case. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] New OSM Quick-Fix service
On Sunday 15 October 2017, ajt1...@gmail.com wrote: > > You did indeed receive one message in your favour - I miscounted. > That's 1 in favour, 1 question (from someone who has been critical > elsewhere) and 7 against. Maybe that counts as a majority in your > favour in some places, but it doesn't here. Indeed - and you should always be careful to make assumptions about the 'silent majority' of people who do not voice their opinion for one reason or another. I for example know of quite a few people who in general have a positive attitude to either Wikidata or mechanical edits and want to explore the possibilities of these but who feel the attitude and approach of Yuri Astrakhan is inconsiderate, non-constructive and damaging. I would wish more of them would speak up here but i also understand if they do not want to "pour oil into the fire" so to speak. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] New OSM Quick-Fix service
On Monday 16 October 2017, Marc Gemis wrote: > Would Yuri's tool be OK, if the proposed changes were limited to > objects that were created/last edited after survey to the person that > is using the tool ? > > I was thinking of a scenario where people try to help with a > tag-renaming proposal. > Such a tool would be handy to help them locate all objects that they > know well and retag them. I think you are missing the point here - this tool's only purpose is doing automated edits. The discussion if and under what circumstances automated edits are OK for the community is not the issue here, this is already regulated by the automated edit policy. Creating a tool for doing automated edits is perfectly fine, but designing it in a way and advertising it in a way that encourages automated edits in ignorance of existing rules is not. You probably recall that we have had discussions in how far Maproulette encourages mechanical edits (http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/imagico/diary/40759) but Martijn has always demonstrated he is aware of the problem and tries to avoid such abuse, for example by not allowing anonymous challenges and not having simple click through tasks with already fully predetermined editing decisions. In summary so far i think it can be said developers in the OSM context have overwhelmingly been responsible in the way they design tools in compliance with the spirit of the OSM community. But this one is clearly different in that regard. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] New OSM Quick-Fix service
On Monday 16 October 2017, Marc Gemis wrote: > I was thinking about possible changes to the tool that would make it > a useful tool for the community, and at the same time not violating > any policy. Sure, if you want to do that. In my opinion there is however not really a need for more tools in that field. I don't think anyone who wants to do an automated edit in compliance with the guidelines is seriously limited by the lack of suitable tools. Most smaller tag editing tasks will be served very well by Overpass+JOSM and for larger tasks (which are very rare) you will want a fully scripted solution and not something interactive. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] New OSM Quick-Fix service
On Friday 13 October 2017, Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > I would like to introduce a new quick-fix editing service. It allows > users to generate a list of editing suggestions using a query, review > each suggestion one by one, and click "Save" on each change if they > think it's a good edit. This is a tool to perform automated edits as per the automated edits policy. A resposible developer of such a tool should inform its users that making automated edits comes with certain requirements and that not following these rules can result in changes being reverted and user accounts being blocked. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Could we just pause any wikidata edits for a month or two?
On Thursday 12 October 2017, Ryszard Mikke wrote: > > * How many of the wikidata=* tags currently in the database have been > > > added through normal mapping (while adding or significantly > > modifying the object otherwise) and how many have been added > > through systematic efforts outside normal mapping? > > Given that semi-automated edits might be done by unknown number of > users, i'm afraid this information might be hard to obtain. If it was easy to determine i would not have asked. > > * What practical applications exist for the wikidata IDs? And i am > > not talking about theoretical ideas here but specific uses for > > practical purposes in actual use, in particular with open source > > implementation. > > There are QA tools by Yuri Astrakhan and Mateusz Konieczny, both > based on wikidata. As i have pointed out elsewhere doing QA in OSM based on Wikidata does not in any way depend on the automatic addition of Wikidata IDs to OSM - or in other words: Any ID you'd add based on some matching algorithm just for QA purposes you would not need to add at all. With practical applications i was referring to actual external use of the data. If the only practical use of the wikidata IDs is internal QA that would be a pretty bad ROI in terms of Mapper's work (the time adding IDs would be much better invested into doing actual validation work). > > * To what extent has there been information transferred > > systematically from Wikidata and Wikipedia to OSM based on wikidata > > ID references (like adding names in different languages). As > > others have explained this would be legally problematic and it > > would be important to know how common this is. > > To my knowledge nothing automatic of this kind exists so far, so > there should be only a few manual edits of this kind. Yesterday i showed examples of systematic node and name tag additions to OSM clearly sourced from Wikidata. It is clear that this is happening. The question is only how extensive such data transfer is. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Could we just pause any wikidata edits for a month or two?
On Wednesday 11 October 2017, Minh Nguyen wrote: > Great questions. I've attempted to answer a few of them below: Thanks for the effort - but from my point of view these answers mostly do not actually address the key points of my questions. I have made some progress getting answers to some of the core questions on the German forum (https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=59910=3) so far resulting in the following conclusions from my side. * stability of Wikidata IDs seems limited. There seems to be a concept of redirects so an ID can point to a Wikidata object with a different ID and the object formerly under that ID is not necessarily identical to the one it redirects to. To what extent re-structuring of information on Wikidata (that would primarily mean merging and splitting of Wikidata objects) leading to the creation of redirects happens and how much more or less common it is to OSM IDs changing i don't know (and given Wikidata is still very young such information would also be quite unreliable for the future). * there definitely is no 1:1 relationship between Wikidata IDs and OSM objects in general. In particular this is not the case for Wikidata objects covering several concepts that are separately mapped in OSM (where several features in OSM correctly refer to the same Wikidata ID). Also in case of redirects in Wikidata there would be several Wikidata IDs corresponding to the same OSM feature (although you could of course formally define redirects as invalid Wikidata IDs - which however would further limit the stability of those IDs as explained above). * Wikidata is definitely not suited as an universal meta-database connecting OSM with other open data sets. This is because of the Notability concept (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Notability) which practically means the vast majority of the >500 million tagged features in OSM will never be able to get a Wikidata ID and will therefore never be able to be connected to other data sets through Wikidata. There are still a lot of things that are unclear to me about the whole "Wikidata in OSM" subject so any further insights into this are welcome. Given that Wikidata cannot function as an universal connector of OSM to other databases (something i was not really aware before) i would in particular like to re-emphasize the question: > * What is the qualification of Wikidata for having its IDs in OSM > (both for wikidata=* and X:wikidata=*)? Is there a particular > objective criterion that qualifies it? Would there be other external > IDs that would also qualify under these criteria? Is there a limit > in the number of different external IDs OSM is going to accept? Please understand that from my side this is truly an open question, not a means to press for removing wikidata IDs from OSM. But it is a question that needs a good answer from my point of view. And deflecting by pointing to other IDs we already have in OSM like leftovers from imports and IDs for specific real world uses does not really help here. > > * To what extent has there been information transferred > > systematically from Wikidata and Wikipedia to OSM based on wikidata > > ID references (like adding names in different languages). As > > others have explained this would be legally problematic and it > > would be important to know how common this is. > > I agree that there are questions about OSM's acceptance of labels and > statements copied from Wikidata, though I would've expected this > phenomenon to be at least as common with Wikipedia long before the > introduction of the wikidata tag. But my question was specifically to what extent data has been transferred based on wikidata ID references. The question if such data transfer happened before based on other connections has nothing to do with this. We definitely have under-the-radar data imports from Wikidata, sometimes partly disguised by moving nodes - but the names matching in all inconsistencies is a clear indicator. Like here: http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/4996439821 http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/5073632521 http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/5121933121 But this is also a different matter unrelated to the Wikidata IDs in OSM. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Adding wikidata tags to the remaining objects with only wikipedia tag
On Sunday 01 October 2017, Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > > Wikipedia created a stable ID system for these pages. Its called > Wikidata. Please view Wikidata as first and foremost a linking system > to Wikipedia articles. [...] > > Andy, you keep saying Wikidata is not verifiable data - but that's > because you keep insisting on separating it from Wikipedia. Wow, i had to read this twice to really believe what i was reading here. Seems you are still in deep denial about the fundamental differences between OSM and Wikipedia. Wikipedia is based on secondary sources, it rejects original research. Therefore you can find a lot of nonsense on Wikipedia - all kind of urban legends and things like that, especially about remote areas, as long as everyone believes them and no one bothers to proof them wrong and rebut them outside of Wikipedia. So in a way Wikipedia documents societies current beliefs about the world, not the world itself. This does not necessarily have to go as far as an article about something fictitious claiming to be about a real world thing, often its smaller stuff like X being an object of type Y. The iconic 'citation needed' of Wikipedia is not about the information being in need of actual verification as a fact, it is about this information being verified to be something well integrated into societies' belief system. OSM is fundamentally different in that because it is based on verification by original research. This does not mean everything in OSM holds up to this standard but we aim for this and value information that is practically verifiable by local mappers and tagging concepts that are targeted at verifiable mapping more than other information that people always will keep adding to OSM to some extent despite it being non-verifiable. It also means information in OSM is inherently more variable because what people observe on the ground varies - both because what people see depends on their experience and background and because appearance of reality, especially of natural features, varies over time. OSM with its original research research focus lacks the unifying and consistency preserving effect of the filter through secondary sources you have in Wikipedia. What you do when you mechanically 'fix errors' and correct discrepancies between tags in OSM that contradict the Wikipedia/Wikidata information is you impose the value system of Wikipedia onto OSM. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Adding wikidata tags to the remaining objects with only wikipedia tag
On Monday 02 October 2017, Stefan Keller wrote: > > I would like to auto-add all the corresponding wikidata based on > > wikipedia, for all remaining objects, using JOSM's "Fetch Wikidata > > IDs". > > Pls. correct me if I'm missing something here. Though "auto-add" is > perhaps not the best notion, it's still a human in control of JOSM. > To me, OSM really should remain a welcoming, inclusive do-ocracy. > So, let's look forward. For clarification - since this is often a point of misunderstandings - if an edit is a mechanical edit or import does not depends on the tools used, it depends on if the modifications are made individually feature by feature based on individual, informed assessment of the local situation or if it is made in bulk without each feature being evaluated individually - and doing this by clicking a button a hundred times instead of scripting it of course does not qualify as manual evaluation. Manual evaluation would of course be pointless if the data is not verifiable which is why so much discussion on the matter evolved about the problem of verifiability. If the data is not verifiable you should neither add it manually nor through automated edits. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Adding wikidata tags to the remaining objects with only wikipedia tag
On Sunday 01 October 2017, Andy Mabbett wrote: > > Or perhaps it is you who is "deep denial" about the consensus in the > OSM community to link to Wikipedia articles, and other useful > third-party sources? May i suggest you to read my previous messages on this thread to find the answer to that question? I find it fascinating how both you and Yuri seem to be eager to always deflect the discussion from the main subject, namely the automated editing/addition of wikidata IDs and misinterpreting constructive critique of that as an attempt to tell local mappers what tags they may and may not add to the things they map. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Adding wikidata tags to the remaining objects with only wikipedia tag
On Sunday 01 October 2017, Marc Gemis wrote: > > If I noticed an inception date on a information sign next to a > building, is this original research or a secondary source ? The date on the sign is verifiable as a signed date, not necessarily as a date connected to the building. Historic information like dates from before the timeframe witnessed by today's mappers is something that is problematic in OSM in general. As any historian will be able to tell you history as a science is not about analyzing events of the past in the same way you analyze present day observations in empiric science disciplines but about analyzing and interpreting sources - in this way it resembles the approach of Wikipedia more than that of OSM. > If a Wikidata contributor/Wikipedian researches websites like Orbis, > Onroerend erfgoed, etc and finds different inception dates and > records them all, is it bad that s/he uses secondary sources instead > of the information sign on the ground ? I don't want to judge the different approaches of Wikipedia and OSM - both have their pros and cons. As a contributor i am more comfortable with the OSM approach but i would never say that collecting information from secondary sources is inherently less valuable than collecting empiric data. > I wonder whether OSM is really always based on original research, or > whether we sometimes just want to believe this. Well - human perception is of course always connected to our past experience and beliefs, we cannot observe our environment in a truly neutral way. And of course with armchair mapping much of the data in OSM is produced by people who have never been near the place they map based on the belief that what the image layer they use depicts what is actually there (which is sometimes not the case - like with the iconic demolished buildings) and that what people think they see in the images actually resembles the impression they would have on the ground (which is also frequently not the case - prominent example would be here: http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/7142214). But the key is every information in OSM has to be able to stand up to scrutiny by local mappers - a local mapper standing in front of the object needs to be able to tell if it is correct or not - even if different mappers could in borderline cases come to different assessments on the matter. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A thought on bot edits
On Monday 02 October 2017, Martijn van Exel wrote: > I find this discussion and your proposal interesting to explore, at > least as a hypothetical. Do we know 1) what the volume of bot edits > is and how it has grown No, but i thought as well this would be an interesting thing to study. Of course you would need to make some definition of what a bot edit is that can be automatically analyzed - which is difficult. But even a hairy definition might allow to identify rough trends. There is little doubt that the volume of bot edits has grown recently but if it has actually grown much faster than the manual editing volume overall is not easy to determine. I mostly look at remote areas and there the raise in dominance of automated editing activities is massive but the manual editing activity in these areas has always been small and sporadic so this is certainly not an observation you can extrapolate to the whole. > 2) how many mappers have actually given up > based upon this? Again i can only answer this based on my own experience and a) I am unmotivated to map in areas where imports are in progress or regularly taking place (yes, i am talking about Canada). b) My primary motivation for mapping in OSM is that what i map gets improved by other craft mappers so what we produce together is better than what each of us can produce on our own. If the only changes that are going to be made to my mapping work after i upload it to OSM are made by bots there would be no results from that that would be any better than what i could produce on my own because i could simply run the bots on my own privately mapped data. Of course i am certainly not representative for the typical mappers. I would suspect there are probably mappers that would be attracted and motivated by an OSM project where bots routinely 'fix' data inconsistencies like typos in tags, different spellings of common names or automatically orthogonalize building geometries. But there are others who don't like this. One motivation behind my suggestion was that this would allow mappers to embrace bot edits but also allows them to reject this and decide they only want to interact with other craft mappers and not with bots. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A thought on bot edits
On Tuesday 03 October 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Did your proposal also extend to geoemtries? You said something about > bot:* tags, but if a bot were to orthogonalize an existing building, > would it then have to create a copy of that tagged > "bot:building=yes"? And how could that be differentiated from a > building that originally had building=YES and the bot only lowercased > the tag value? My original idea was only about tags but it could be extended to geometries of course - as i sketched in my reply to Martin, which would essentially mean creating a copy for the building a bot orthogonalizes if the building already has a manual building=yes tag. If the bot only changes the tag the building would remain a normal hand mapped geometry but would get a bot:building=yes in addition to the building=YES. Of course duplicating geometry data would make it much more difficult for data users to make decisions about selectively using data and it would make it much more difficult for editors to allow mappers to edit the data correctly. This is why i originally suggested this only for tags - after all the vast majority of bot edits are tag modifications only, geometry edits by bots are technically much more complicated to do right so they happen less frequently. As already said - if this approach is not considered favorably it is always possible to use the other method and forbid bots to touch anything with a bot=no tag and thereby allow mappers to opt out of bot edits on a case-by-case basis. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Could we just pause any wikidata edits for a month or two?
On Tuesday 03 October 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Hi, > >seeing that the matter is discussed quite intensively and opinions > vary widely, could we perhaps agree to pause any (large scale) > wikidata edits for a while until more members of our community have > had a chance to form an opinion? I think that is a good idea. This would also give an opportunity to take the discourse from the exchange of spontaneous opinions and reactions with relatively little substance to a better founded and thought through basis you can reliably form an opinion from. From my side a number of questions exist in the context of wikidata references in OSM where there does not seem to be a reliable answer at the moment although this would be important to form a qualified opinion. In particular: * How many of the wikidata=* tags currently in the database have been added through normal mapping (while adding or significantly modifying the object otherwise) and how many have been added through systematic efforts outside normal mapping? * How many of the X:wikidata=* tags have been added through systematic efforts? Are those derived from matching the existing X=* tags? How many of those also have a wikidata=* tag? * What practical applications exist for the wikidata IDs? And i am not talking about theoretical ideas here but specific uses for practical purposes in actual use, in particular with open source implementation. * To what extent has there been information transferred systematically from Wikidata and Wikipedia to OSM based on wikidata ID references (like adding names in different languages). As others have explained this would be legally problematic and it would be important to know how common this is. * How stable is the identity of what can be found under a certain Wikidata ID. As mentioned there are cases where Wikidata aggregates several concepts under one ID (like an administrative unit and a populated place in case of cities/towns). Would it be possible that this changes? If yes, would the original ID be re-purposed or would it cease to exist? * What is the qualification of Wikidata for having its IDs in OSM (both for wikidata=* and X:wikidata=*)? Is there a particular objective criterion that qualifies it? Would there be other external IDs that would also qualify under these criteria? Is there a limit in the number of different external IDs OSM is going to accept? Also i think it would be of great importance for OSM and a functioning communication in the community to have better documentation of: * systematic wikidata ID addition/editing efforts (there seems to be nothing listed currently on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Automated_edits_log) * tag documentation of the wikidata tags. This needs a lot of improvement. Like: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:wikidata does not make clear if these document 1:1 relationships between OSM features and wikidata objects or not and what qualifies a wikidata ID to be 'about a feature'. How does a mapper practically verify if a certain wikidata ID is correct on a certain feature? https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:brand:wikidata is plain wrong, brand:wikidata=* is not a machine-readable form of brand=*. It in particular needs to tell the mapper what types of wikidata object should be referenced here and how a mapper can find the correct ID for a certain feature. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Adding wikidata tags to the remaining objects with only wikipedia tag
On Tuesday 26 September 2017, Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > Since this thread had not received any new discussion in the past 4 > days, I assumed all points were answered and proceeded as planned, > per mechanical edit policy. That is always a bad idea. For example in this thread i made the following comment: > > Christoph, a valid point. Yet the duplicate would allow finding > > many of these errors, rather than leaving wp-only to go bad due to > > changing nature of the WP articles. > > Actually no - you can find the errors just as well without adding the > wikidata tags to OSM as after doing so. You did not react to that so why would it make sense for you to assume this issue has been resolved - just by ignoring it? > Per previous description, the existing data is already bad, and I am > simply making it possible to identify it, after discussing it on this > thread. Sorry but this is utter nonsense. Importing data into OSM is never required for either fixing errors in OSM or in the imported data. If you do an import you need to make sure the results are at least on the same level of quality as they would be based on competent manual mapping. You need to ensure that in data preparation and not after doing the import. And the presence of pre-existing bad data (to a significant part already produced through under-the-radar mechanical edits by the way) is no excuse for adding more bad data. > Andy, Wikidata ID is not correct or incorrect -- [...] Then it is non-verifiable data and does not belong in the OSM database at all. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Label language on the Default stylesheet
On Monday 25 September 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > Oh, in case I wasn't clear - what I said above was not with irony; > indeed, for my personal use, I want a map that shows me names I can > read. Which, I assume, everyone does. Yes, of course - we need to clearly differentiate between 'i want a map that...' and 'i want the standard OSM map to...'. I also do need a map with names i can read everywhere on earth in many cases but as you already said this need is mostly quite well served by both commercial and non-commercial styles from local communities (like the German OSM style). > I share your "diversity" viewpoint, although one must also see that > by only displaying the "name", some people in regions with non-latin > script but strong western cultural influence could feel forced to > include a Latin rendering of the name in their "name" tags or even > use Latin renderings altogether for "name". A future option of > "display the name you like" will also free these mappers to map the > correct local names. Yes, the problem that mappers need to decide on a single name for 'the local name' is definitely an issue, in particular in regions that are largely multilingual (i.e. where several language have a strong base and there is no clear primary language) but also if locals specifically want to serve outside interests. The way this is currently often solved by having several names in the name tag is not satisfying. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Label language on the Default stylesheet
On Monday 25 September 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > Also, personally I'm in a similar situation to Maarten. I'm from > Germany and I don't want a map with all German or all English names; > ideally I want a map with local names except where I can't read them > ;) While i understand this view and also see you are saying this with a bit of irony it seriously saddens me that apparently a large fraction of the OSM community actually thinks this way and wants the OSMF to invest ressources in a map that is well readable for them rather than a map that represents and communicates the diversity of the global OSM community. I would want the map to display in a way that is well readable and gives good feedback to the *local mappers* everywhere on earth and that gives me an impression of the local cultural and geographic particularities of the area irrespective of if i can read the names or not. I would want this by default even if technology also offered a 'filter bubble' version that shows me the map as i allegedly would want it to see where every place on earth looks like my home town. I also want to cite from the current goals of OSM-Carto: https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/blob/master/CARTOGRAPHY.md "Diversity - The style should represent the diversity of the OSM community and geography in general. The most obvious element to serve this goal is showing the local names everywhere on earth in their respective scripts. This goal however goes beyond labels. Both physical and cultural geography differs a lot globally and the aim is to represent this variety with equal determination - well mapped areas are not supposed to have more weight here than less mapped parts of the world. This also means the target map user is the potential global map user and no special consideration is given to the current geographic distribution of actual map use." Changing that would mean aiming the map more at the same target as commercial map providers, i.e. serving the economically important and influential map user groups, giving them what market research tells you they want and giving up on the core of what makes the OSM standard style unique and forms a significant part of what attracts people to OSM. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Label language on the Default stylesheet
On Monday 25 September 2017, Richard Fairhurst wrote: > > I'd invest the available brainpower in steps needed to achieve > > this goal, even if it's a year or two in the future. > > Which means vector tiles... which we should be looking at anyway. > > But that needs to be a separate project really, rather than a facet > of openstreetmap-carto. Note however rendering OSM-Carto without labels and producing a separate client side rendered labeling would be a possible approach. Vector tiles is a buzzword occasionally suggested as a solution to any and all problems in map rendering but so far i have not seen any practical proposal for a client rendered vector tiles concept that would be able to serve the mapper feedback purposes of the current OSM standard style. Rory's port of OSM-Carto to vector tiles is not suitable for client side rendering. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] OSM and science
On Thursday 24 August 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > It is certainly good for OSM to offer a helping hand to scientists > who are seeking cooperation. I would also like us to develop a review > and fact check mechanism for scientific publications on OSM so that > those who don't bother to get their facts right are held accountable > for the bad science they inevitably produce. One thought in that regard: It would in a way be nice if we could get members of the OSM community into the peer review process of scientific publications related to OSM. This would allow competent review and fact checking of publications beforehand. The problem with that is twofold: * scientific peer review is essentially a closed club you don't normally get into if you do not professionally work in the field yourself. * doing peer review is laborious, thankless work and universally unpaid. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] [Talk-us] Redacting 75, 000 street names contributed by user chdr
On Monday 28 August 2017, Paul Norman wrote: > > As the publisher of the OSM database, the OSMF has various legal > obligations. When we become aware of data that has been illegally > copied into OSM we need to stop distributing that data, generally by > deleting it and redacting the old versions so they are no longer > accessible. It's worth discussing if we can refine the identification > of data illegally copied data, but we need to remove it in the end, > regardless of if we want to. +1. In fact reading this thread i cannot really believe this discussion is actually happening, that there seem to be people who think that a large scale unauthorized use of data can be 'healed' by rubber stamping it with a 'review' of the names. If you think that redaction is pointless, unnecessary, inappropriate or similar the right thing to do is to lobby your legislative body to change database rights legislation, not to just ignore the law (which i am sure none of you would propose to do if you were personally liable). As has been mentioned by others replacing the problematic data with information from other sources (either on-the-ground knowledge or open data) is something that can be done both before and after a redaction without problems. And Frederik already indicated the DWG supports these efforts. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] [Talk-us] Redacting 75, 000 street names contributed by user chdr
On Monday 28 August 2017, Greg Morgan wrote: > We do get to go through the five stages. We do get to express the > emotions until acceptance of our fate as part of the healing process. > There is no rubber stamping! > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model You are free to express your emotions but I think you are overreaching here with comparing a redaction of data in OSM to the grief over a serious personal loss. In case this was not clear the term 'healed' as i used it was referring to the legal concept of healing a breach of contract or other legal infractions by ceasing some activity or doing something you neglected to do before. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Multipolygon fixing effort done
On Tuesday 29 August 2017, Jochen Topf wrote: > We have completed the 7-months effort to switch away from old-style > multipolygons and fix a lot of broken (multi)polygons. More about > this on my blog: > > https://blog.jochentopf.com/2017-08-28-polygon-fixing-effort-conclude >d.html First of all congratulations to what was achieved, i.e. a fairly massive reduction in the number of errors. The sad news however seems to be that given the current circumstances the number of errors will likely be back to near the pre-cleanup levels in 2-3 years for many types of errors. From my point of view this is because in contrast to the old style multipolygons where * the problem was fully eliminated in the data * the most important data user (the standard map) was changed to not interpret old style MPs any more after that * the major editors had already ceased to generate old style MPs long ago the circumstances that lead to the large number of broken multipolygons are essentially unchanged. We certainly got rid of a number of errors from bad imports and can hope that future imports will be better in that regard but the problem that mappers introduce this kind of error in manual mapping and don't realize they are making an error is unchanged. Of the points above both completely eliminating MP geometry errors and changing the editors not to upload broken geometries are things that are very hard to accomplish. This leaves the third point and therefore my question: Would the number of visible problems in the map due to dropping broken geometries now, after the fixing effort, be low enough so this change could be made to the main map to give mappers a better feedback about broken geometries? If the answer to this question is yes (or almost yes) we should not wait too long with making this step because once the number of errors has risen again this will again become increasingly problematic. And if this is not considered a practicable step there will of course be increasing need for libosmium to be able to fix these errors, at least the self intersections. ;-) -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Multipolygon fixing effort done
On Tuesday 29 August 2017, Jochen Topf wrote: > > > Would the number of visible problems in the map due to dropping > > broken geometries now, after the fixing effort, be low enough so > > this change could be made to the main map to give mappers a better > > feedback about broken geometries? > > Osm2pgsql is switching to the libosmium MP code which is more strict > than the older code before. As far as I know the code is finished and > should be in the next osm2pgsql version. I am aware of that but this does not answer my question if the fixing effort has significantly reduced the visual impact rolling out this change to the OSMF servers would have. I would assume it has but the OSMI does not really allow for a proper assessment here. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Multipolygon fixing effort done
On Tuesday 29 August 2017, Jochen Topf wrote: > > When the old-style-mp support was disabled on the main map, this left > about 50,000 broken multipolygons, in many cases clearly visible on > the map. I didn't see a single complaint about this. So, no, I don't > think being a bit more strict with broken MPs will be a problem with > the map or would be a reason to delay deployment of a new osm2pgsql > version. 10,000 intersection problems in 300 million polygons is a > rounding error. I don't really want to repeat the discussion we had in https://github.com/openstreetmap/osm2pgsql/pull/684 My original idea stands: It would be good to have an idea how far the visual impact of dropping broken geometries has been reduced and if it has reduced a lot it would make sense to actually remove them in the standard map relatively fast before the numbers increase again. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Scientific paper on "Information Seeding"
On Monday 09 October 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > today I was pointed to a recent, open-access scientific paper called > "Information Seeding and Knowledge Production in Online Communities: > Evidence from OpenStreetMap". This open-access paper is available > here > > https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3044581 Very interesting. As additional summary: The analysis made is based on the original Tiger import which produced a different level of completeness in different areas due to differences in the source data and thereby offers fairly well defined starting conditions for a comparative analysis. The analysis and the observations coming from it look pretty solid. I am not fully convinced by the interpretation of the reasons lying largely in contributors taking 'ownership' of the data they contribute. This would in my eyes - at least if meant in terms of individual ownership - require the original contributors at the beginning to continue to be significant in terms of overall contribution volume over the whole time span analyzed. This seems rather unlikely considering the active contributor turnover we have in general (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Active_contributors_year.png). -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] A thought on bot edits
Thanks, i think this is a constructive approach to automated edits and if everyone worked this way i don't think we would have a problem. In particular: * your bot is well documented * you discussed it with the local community * it has a good supervision to editing volume ratio * it runs only on a small area you are familiar with The forum discussion by the way also in this case shows how important it is to look in depth at the area you work on and its particularities. I would be careful interpreting the lack of objections to your automated edits in the local community as universal approval though. There are likely also locals who do not think this is a good idea but due to the low intensity and low volume of edits they don't see it necessary to say anything. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Could we just pause any wikidata edits for a month or two?
On Wednesday 11 October 2017, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: > From what I have seen so far, this should probably be less of a > concern, > > but it is an uncertainty (because it could be interpreted more > rigidly in the future) I am not judging here, i merely stated the observation that Wikidata in its current form would not be capable to function as an universal meta-database connecting OSM with other open data sets. To be honest - even if Wikidata was willing to change their Notability rules in a way that fully covers OSM (like by adding a rule declaring everything in OSM notable) this would still not work because it would also need to cover everything in any other open database OSM might be connected to and that quickly scales to a point where Wikidata almost certainly does not want to go. > For me, criterions pro wikidata are: > - it has a very permissive license (cc0) > - it is openly accessible > - it is fully downloadable as a dump (i.e. I don't have to use APIs > which might log what I look at or limit the speed or quantity of my > access) - there is overlap with our field of interest You should be aware that these same criteria are fulfilled by a large number of other data sets, like for example almost all geodata published by the USGS or other US federal institutions. > > But my question was specifically to what extent data has been > > transferred based on wikidata ID references. The question if such > > data transfer happened before based on other connections has > > nothing to do with this. > > Is this about reliability of the information, or about licensing > questions? If and how wikidata tags in OSM are used by Mappers to transfer additional information from Wikidata to OSM is important to know i think. I have no specific hypothesis here. But obviously such transfer can result both in legal and quality concerns. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Fixing wiki* -> brand:wiki*
On Wednesday 27 September 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > In theory, almost everything we map could be expressed by a Wikidata > ID. If welcoming a Wikidata link on a city place node means that by > extension I also have to welcome "amenity:wikidata=Q123456" on > something that is, say, an ice cream parlour because Q123456 is the > generic Wikidata category for ice cream parlours, then I think I'd > rather not have any Wikidata links in OSM at all. I am inclined to concur. The basis of accepting wikidata IDs in OSM originally was that it is difficult to reference a specific feature from our database from the outside and that wikidata provides stable IDs for real world objects and that it can be of significant use for OSM data users to be able to directly reference features in the OSM database describing the same real world objects through this ID. There are a number of prerequisites for this however all of which have been put into question in recent discussion: * There would need to be a 1:1 relationship between OSM features and the tagged wikidata ID (which apparently is often not the case for example for populated places, island countries etc.). * The wikidata ID would need to be stable (recent statements that the wikidata IDs in the OSM database require constant maintenance to not become stale indicate otherwise). * The wikidata ID would need to be verifiable - a local mapper with knowledge of the real world object represented by a certain OSM feature would need to be able to falsify the wikidata ID based on information readily available from wikidata (which does not always seem to be the case either). * The wikidata IDs are at least for the most part manually added and verified by mappers with lokal knowledge - just like any other data in OSM (which clearly does not seem to be the case any more - i have no solid numbers here but certainly the majority of wikidata tags have been added without individual verification by mappers with local knowledge). Everyone remember there is a big cultural difference between OSM and wikipedia (and i assume wikidata can be included there). OSM is founded on local knowledge and original research while wikipedia rejects original research and values secondary sources of information. This fundamental difference also translates into differences in data models and different approaches to solving problems. It is a good idea not to try pretending these differences do not exist and that you can intermix the two worlds without problems. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Misrepresentation of OSM by HOT?
I recently turned up on the HOT tasking manager page (http://tasks.hotosm.org/) and found the page is now presenting itself tautologically as an "OpenStreetMap Collaborative Mapping" portal with no indication except for the small logo on top that this is a separate project with no official character. At the same time it seems (at a first glance) there is not a single link on the site to OpenStreetMap. To the visitor unfamiliar with OSM this is quite likely to generate the impression that this is OSM and that contributing to "OpenStreetMap Collaborative Mapping" always happens via HOT tasks. In my eyes this is a fairly clear misrepresentation of OpenStreetMap not covered by the trademark policy we now have. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misrepresentation of OSM by HOT?
On Monday 23 October 2017, Simon Poole wrote: > I suspect Christophs issue is more that HOT seems to be claiming > ownership of "OpenStreetMap collaborative mapping". Yes, this is one of my points. The other is that it fails to connect the visitor to collaboration and communication within the OSM community. The visitor is invited into what is being presented as "OpenStreetMap collaborative mapping" but this whole concept as it is being presented on that site seems to be carefully segregated from the rest of the OSM community with its communication channels, wiki, local communities etc. No one can forbid HOT to do that but if they do so they IMO should not present this under the name OpenStreetMap as "OpenStreetMap collaborative mapping" in general or even as pars pro toto. Or they could rework the site to properly present OpenStreetMap and HOT and how they relate to the visitor. learnosm.org (which i think is also mainly built by HOT) shows this is possible to do. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misrepresentation of OSM by HOT?
On Monday 23 October 2017, Frederik Ramm wrote: > [...] > > What would be *your* words to say "Hey everybody, I saw this, and I > think it is bad and needs to change"? What choice of language would > adequately express your being upset about what you have seen, without > being denounced as a poisonous person who harms the community by > seeking support from it? > > This is a honest question; I would really be interested in the, if I > may, "American version" of what Christoph has written. One that does > express how you're upset while at the same time *not* being > "combative" and all those bad things you said about Christoph's post. > > Maybe then I can use that to express myself in a more internationally > compatible way in the future ;) While i appreciate the intention to discuss and bridge cultural differences the topical background here will most likely prevent this from happening since the political dimension of this highly political topic is likely to prevent actually getting to the cultural differences. In other words: The replies you get to your request will primarily express different political views and much less different cultural backgrounds. Actually having this discussion without the fog of OSM politics in the way would be immensely interesting but i am not sure if this is possible in this venue. My own experience with Americans in non-political matters is usually that they are on average more tolerant than Europeans, at least on their own turf (or in other words: They seem less territorial in cultural matters). But if you get into politics (no matter if big politics or smaller topical matters like in OSM) my impression is that Europeans often have a better ability to put those politics aside and communicate without being affected by political differences. In other words: The likeliness of a Communist and an Ultra-conservative having a friendly and open chat about something like philosophy, science or art is much higher if they are Europeans. Note this is a completely subjective impression of me and in no way meant to imply being representative for any group of people. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] New OSM Quick-Fix service
On Monday 13 November 2017, Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > Christoph, thanks for clarifying. I should have been a bit more > careful with that word. Could you clarify one thing - if wiki is not > authoritative for deprecation, than what is? "Community consensus > that something is not to be used" has to be documented somewhere, > right? No, it does not have to. It is the nature of most societies that not all social rules that exist are also codified. The process of becoming a member of the OSM community to a large part consists of becoming familiar with and developing an intuitive understanding of the unwritten rules. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] New OSM Quick-Fix service
On Monday 13 November 2017, Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > > The wiki deprecation only lists one =no: highway=no, but we are not > discussing that one yet -- > https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Deprecated_features > > I used the word "deprecated" in a more general term, to mean anything > that community has decided to phase out, such as JOSM autofixes and > deprecation list. For the record (so people reading this later do not get a wrong impression) - 'deprecated' in the OSM context means that there is a community consensus that something is not to be used any more in new mapping. The wiki, editor presets etc. are not authoritive in that regard and deprecation does not supersede the freedom of mappers to map how they see fit (in other words: it is not forbidden to use deprecated tags). And automatic fixes in JOSM are not normally mechanical edits because they are only applied to features that are (manually) edited otherwise. Applying the same 'fixes' mechanically to all features with a certain tag however is a mechanical edit and needs to be discussed on a per-case basis - always, no matter how trivial, useful or obvious they might seem to anyone. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] How to show school icons ?
On Friday 24 November 2017, Philip Barnes wrote: > David > Is there any reason you are mapping schools as nodes? > In general there are many possible reasons why you would want to map a school with a node. Like: * you don't have verifiable information on the extent of the school grounds. * the school consists of a number of rooms in a building but not the whole building. * there are multiple schools using the same infrastructure together. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Directed Editing Policy
On Wednesday 22 November 2017, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
> > This policy applies as soon as someone is
> > directed by a third party exactly what and how to contribute to
> > OpenStreetMap.
>
> Maybe it would be a good idea to exclude small scale guided
> editing. For example my friend asked me to show how OSM worked.
>
> I showed him/her a map and asked to find something missing or mistake
> and later showed how to add this.
>
> It was clearly a guided editing as defined here - and I am not going
> to set up wiki pages etc before doing this the next time.
The question where exactly to draw the line with directed/organized
editing is something that has been in discussion since the idea first
came up. This is a tricky question. The policy tries to solve this
with two relatively simple and clear criteria but this will of course
still lead to people wondering if they are covered by this or not in
some cases.
In your example i would say this is quite clearly not covered by the
policy because your friend is not directed by you exactly what and how
to contribute to OpenStreetMap. You decide together what you use as
teaching examples (like let's find an unmapped house in X and i will
show you how to map this). There is no director-directee relationship
between you and your friend. Maybe your friend also says: Look, this
house is missing in OSM - show me how i can add this.
This is why the policy says "directed by a third party exactly what and
how to contribute to OpenStreetMap". Both the what and how are
necessary conditions here. In a one-on-one teaching situation without
a clear hierarchy between teacher and teached this is usually not the
case. You as the teacher tell how to map but this does not have the
form of instructions, you just explain the rules. If your friend then
receives a complaint from a fellow mapper he won't say "This were the
instructions i got from Mateusz".
Note this does not necessarily apply to every teaching situation - as
soon as the teaching happens with a specific agenda - like for example
a mapping event for a specific purpose (like mapping buildings in a
certain city) where newcomers are given a quick crash course to enable
them to map this specific thing at the event ("exactly what and how")
the policy does apply.
This is just my personal interpretation of the policy of course - others
might see this differently.
--
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] weeklyOSM #382 2017-11-07-2017-11-13
On Wednesday 22 November 2017, Richard Fairhurst wrote: > > Worth noting that WeeklyOSM is produced alongside and seeded by the > German Wochennotiz. I don't sprechen sufficient Deutsch to be > certain, but it looks like the German original[1] is more carefully > worded and less presumptuous. So the controversial second half is > very possibly just a clumsy translation. For understanding - and i don't want to support any further attempts in telling the WeeklyOSM team how to do their work with that - the German version uses the term 'uneinsichtig' - which might also be translated as unregenerate. My attempt at a translation of the German text would be: "Yuri is perceived by many in this discussion, in a similar way as in previous discussions, as unreasonable/unregenerate and questions the relevancy of the unwritten rules of OSM." -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Planned rendering changes of protected areas
On Thursday 30 November 2017, Daniel Koc4� wrote: > > I'm thinking about changes in rendering of protected areas on > osm-carto and I wanted to give community a hint, because it's a > popular kind of objects. I have no definitive opinion on the tagging question but i consider your approach here highly questionable. More details on that in the following. > 1. Currently leisure=nature_reserve (old scheme) and boundary=* (new > scheme) are frequently tagged in parallel, and it looks like the old > scheme is used as a hack just to make it visible on default map. Presenting leisure=nature_reserve as an 'old scheme' and 'boundary=*' as a 'new scheme' is a serious mischaracterization. The tags leisure=nature_reserve, boundary=protected_area and boundary=national_park all started being used around the same time. There is no old and new here. There are 62k uses of boundary=protected_area and 77k of leisure=nature_reserve and 31k of the combination - which does not really support your idea that the latter is used just as a hack. > 2. The old scheme is too generic and it causes visual clutter, > because all of the protected areas are displayed at once. That is frankly just nonsense. If rendering (or not rendering) features with leisure=nature_reserve, boundary=protected_area or boundary=national_park causes visual clutter in a map depends on if and how you render these features. That is the responsibility of you as a map designer. Blaming a tagging scheme for not being able to do that without visual clutter is a bit strange. > 3. New scheme has many classes defined, which would allow us to fine > tune the rendering (different zoom levels and only some of them). Have you looked at if these classes are actually used consistently at the moment? A tagging scheme with ~25 numerical codes as classes with fairly brief and abstract descriptions is not usually destined for success in OSM. > 4. The new scheme looks like more general than the old one, so it's > all that's we really need. Which is just another way of saying boundary=protected_area is much less meaningful than leisure=nature_reserve since the latter at least specifies it is nature protection while the former does not. You are also contradicting yourself here - in 2. you say "the old scheme is too generic" and here you say "the new scheme looks like more general" - which is it? On a general note: Please do not mix tagging discussions and rendering discussions - that is a recipe for desaster. If rendering considerations lead you to realize tagging issues and you want to discuss those that is fine but then drop arguing for certain tagging ideas based on your perceived needs for rendering. Tagging decisions should be based on how mappers can best document their knowledge about the geography. Not on what some developers find convenient for rendering. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Support OSM communities and disaster response this holiday season (by 31 Dec)
On Saturday 16 December 2017, Eugene Alvin Villar wrote: > > I'm not sure if you are aware of how the microgrant system is run, > but local OSM communities, such as OSM Zambia, submit grant proposals > which are then selected by HOT. This is what is meant by Tyler when > he wrote "OSM community leaders". These are basically the "leaders" > (in the broadest sense of the word) of local communities who do the > work of actually conceptualizing/writing a grant proposal. Hence, > "projects conceptualized by OSM community leaders". > > And surely saying that the decision-making process is "completely > intransparent" is just being plain lazy. Here are several blog posts > and documents providing quite a bit of detail into the process and > results that can be reached with just a couple minutes of Googling: Thanks for the links. I stand by my critique of how the OSM community is engrossed in how this is presented by HOT and also by my assessment of the decision making processes being intransparent (the validity of which has no bearing on the main point of critique though). -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Support OSM communities and disaster response this holiday season (by 31 Dec)
On Thursday 14 December 2017, Tyler Radford wrote: > [...] big-impact projects conceptualized by OSM community > leaders. I had hoped that HOT learned from the tasking manager problem a few months back that properly referring to OSM in a way that clarifies the difference between HOT and OSM is important. The above indicates this hope was in vain. By saying your microgrant projects are "conceptualized by OSM community leaders" you imply support and endorsement from the OSM community and draw legitimacy from this for what from my perspective seems to be a program with completely intransparent decision making processes. You also imply the existence of a hierarchy in OSM of leaders and followers which is not an accurate representation of the reality of OSM either. There is nothing wrong with supporting mapping projects with money, even if the criteria for that are unclear and subjective but you should not present this as if this financing is somehow integrated into and supervised by the OSM community. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] weeklyOSM #382 2017-11-07-2017-11-13
On Friday 17 November 2017, Steve Doerr wrote: > > Anyway, it's sad to see that WeeklyOSM has abandoned all attempt at > impartiality. Huh? "perceived by many as unreasonable as before" is a clear statement of distancing themselves from this opinion. Impartiality does not mean you have to present every marginal opinion on a matter equally. Supplementing a news item on a discussion with a summary of the results of the discussion is just good journalism. My criticism would be that "unreasonable" - while it applies - is not the main impression people have got from Yuri here. I could list a number of words i would find fitting but stating them here would probably be considered offensive by some. I could imagine the weeklyOSM editors were looking for a word that avoids this and ended up with "unreasonable". And George Bernard Shaw's idea does not work with any of these other, more fitting terms - sorry. ;-) -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] weeklyOSM #382 2017-11-07-2017-11-13
On Friday 17 November 2017, Mikel Maron wrote: > > > Yuri Astrakhan re-started the discussion on the Talk mailing list > > about the tool to do mechanical edits (it is now called Sophox). > > The discussion continues to be quite contentious. > > This is better. It gets the same substantial information across, but > does not call out judgement on an individual, and allows the reader > to enter the discussion with an open mind. -Mikel Yikes! You are aware that Yuri considers this tool not a mechanical edit tool so maybe lets also censor that part of the message... I sincerely hope the weeklyOSM team ignores such advise. No one really wants a shallow, politically whitewashed verbal ornamentation of the links carefully vetted not to hurt anyone that could be generated by a bot (yes, there is some irony in that). -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] weeklyOSM #382 2017-11-07-2017-11-13
On Friday 17 November 2017, Mikel Maron wrote: > statements like "Yuri is as unreasonable as before and > tries to ignore all the unwritten rules in OSM" is inappropriate, First: This is not what weeklyOSM has written. Second: I disagree this is inappropriate - inprecise maybe, but not inappropriate. > and > there are many better ways to summarize the topic. Here we agree - although you probably would consider most better ways to summarize the discussion to be even less appropriate. It is quite simply a fact that the way Yuri has interacted with the OSM community during the last months has led to a lot of people developing a fairly bad opinion of him, his attitude and what he does. If you try to prevent people from articulating these opinions and prevent others - those in the weeklyOSM team - from reporting on and communicating about this in the way they perceive it, including the intensity and extent of the displeasure felt by those in the discussion, you are going to do more damage to the OSM community than either Yuri or anyone maybe going on occasion a bit overboard with their choice of words in the discussion. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Effecting change in OpenStreetMap
On Saturday 18 November 2017, Ilya Zverev wrote: > john whelan wrote: > > No you need to build up trust again and it takes time. Only then > > will your ideas start to gain acceptance. > > Oh come on. I've been a mapper since 2010, I've hosted dozens of > events, I've written many articles and tools, some of which you might > have used, I'm on the Board currently, and still my proposals and > pull requests fail again and again, because there is no trust in > OpenStreetMap. There is nothing you can to to build up trust. Your > ideas will never get acceptance, it's just nitpicking and "unwritten > rules" all over. I hope you are aware that with this you deny everyone who has ever voiced critique on any of your proposals and pull requests to have a competent opinion on the topic in question. I understand and partly share your frustration that it can be difficult to effect change in OpenStreetMap because of strong inertia but most of the subjects we are talking about here with proposals and pull requests are complicated matters and it is always good advise to be a bit humble and consider the possibility that even if you have looked into a matter in depth and think you know what the right thing to do is there might be others who have a deeper understanding and more experience on this matter and based on that disagree with you - on the facts and independent of if they trust you as a person or not. I have been in this situation from both sides - as someone who wrongly thinks he knows what is best and thought people should just trust him and as someone who sees the ideas of others and is aware exactly what knowledge and experience they are missing to recognize the flaw in their idea. The key to solving this kind of problem is respectful and considerate communication, caring about each other's opinions and reasoning - and above all patience. People are always more likely to accept and support change if they come to realize the need for it themselves, at their own pace. And a rejected idea does not necessarily need to be considered failure. It is an opportunity to talk to the people who have rejected it, re-evaluating your assumptions and motives and maybe develop a better solution (or let others do that when they recognize the need). I have seen lots of examples where a failed attempt at something created the impulse for a better and successful solution. (Changed the subject because this of course does not have much to do with the original subject of this thread - still i think this is an important topic to discuss) -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Effecting change in OpenStreetMap
On Tuesday 21 November 2017, Ilya Zverev wrote: > > You can mask the issue by saying "you have to be humble and listen to > others more and understand there is always somebody who know better", > but with that, you kill any trace of motivation to effect change in > OpenStreetMap. My suggestion to "be a bit humble" was meant to avoid doing exactly that to others what you criticise is being done by "the core group", namely not assessing opinions and positions based on their merit but based on a feeling of superiority and group perception. > Because people who know better will not try new things > — they are worried that things we already have will break. The whole > core services group (people who maintain code and servers) have been > working in the life-support mode for years. Any change should conform > to all the current policies of OSM, which virtually say "no changes". > Any proposal should not contradict any of existing wiki pages, > especially if existing wiki pages contradict each other. I think you are exaggerating a bit here but i also think there is some truth to the perceived structural conservativism based on fear to loose something (something that is dear to you or something you feel responsible for). This is no different from big politics probably (why should it be after all). The key to overcoming this is not to try running up against it (which would just increase the fear and strengthen the conservativism) but to create independent alternatives and demonstrate change is possible and worthwhile. The good thing about OSM is that very little outside the main database and the API is strictly tied to the core systems. Even for the wiki - if a group of people from the OSM community would decide to create an independent tag documentation system that is better structured, more logical and easier to understand that would not automatically become the authority in tagging questions of course but it would have weight as soon as mappers start using it as a guideline. Such endeavours are always a long shot of course and most attempts fail before they gain enough footing. Most successes with that approach have some kind of larger outside backing (iD Editor is a good example i think). But most importantly i firmly believe that embrancing the ideas of newcomers independent of their merit out of misguided friendliness is at least as bad as rejecting them because of fear of change or loss of power and influence. This would be the path to universal mediocrity. Which leads me to what i have already said: The only way to make good decisions is to have open arguments about the merits of the different ideas and where everyone is open to reasoning and ultimately the better argument wins. This is hard but if it works it is worth it. And of course the older people have more responsibility here than the newcomers. > I don't care about failure of my proposals and pull requests. I care > about OSM being an active, maintained, growing, ever-changing > project. I believe I will see that — but I'd prefer it in 5 years, > not in 50. Not sure if you know this - but there is a famous quote by Max Planck i had to think of when reading this: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." (see https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck) Of course the turnover in people is much faster in OSM than in science (see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:Active_contributors_year.png). -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] New OSM Quick-Fix service
On Monday 13 November 2017, Yuri Astrakhan wrote: > Andy, I can only assume you agree with the rest of my argument. [...] If you have made this assumption about anyone who you have communicated with in the OSM community in the past you would be well advised to stop that and review the views you have developed based on that assumption. https://xkcd.com/386/ is something something most of us have stopped doing relatively soon after we discovered the internet... -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Planned rendering changes of protected areas
On Sunday 03 December 2017, Daniel Koc4� wrote: > > TL;DR summary: I think that for now we should render all the existing > tags with osm-carto, but make some of them appear earlier to > encourage smooth migration to a more precise scheme. You are clearly out of line here - the suggestion that the standard style might be entitled to steer the mappers to use a different tagging because it is deemed more desirable by you is presumptuous and in clear violation of the existing design principles of the style[1]. It is a clear case of the tail wagging the dog. If you want to render/not render certain tags for cartographic reasons that is completely up to you. If you want to point out that documentation for certain tags is lacking that is most welcome. Likewise if you want to create a proposal to deprecate certain tags and replace them by others. But creating little argument buildings attempting to prove certain tags are bad and others are good for the sole purpose of justifying rendering decisions that are based on wishful thinking that the mappers will adjust to the desires and needs of your style to make it work is not acceptable. Don't do that. As said before: *do not mix rendering and tagging discussions*. [1]https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/blob/master/CARTOGRAPHY.md -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] weeklyOSM #379 2017-10-17-2017-10-23
On Saturday 28 October 2017, Éric Gillet wrote: > > That's what I meant by do-o-cracy, and I think it applies all the > same to the wiki, which really is a part of the OSM project. I was understanding do-o-cracy as a political philosophy here where influence and power of individuals is based on how much they do. And i tried to explain that if you'd apply this to the OSM wiki in isolation it would not be able to fulfill its function in OSM in the long term any more. For that influence and power of people on the wiki needs to be influenced by how beneficial their work is for OSM as a whole. I am not claiming this is easy to determine but it should be the benchmark to apply - which is what i am suggesting everyone to do here. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] weeklyOSM #379 2017-10-17-2017-10-23
On Saturday 28 October 2017, Éric Gillet wrote: > [...] OSM is a do-o-cracy; blaming people > (especially people investing a lot of time) for their implication is > not the way to go. A quick note - since i think it is important to make this distinction: Mapping in OSM is based on do-o-cratic principles, always subject to the basic principles of mapping we have of course (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/How_We_Map). But the OSM wiki as a meta-project for documenting and communicating about mapping is not a do-o-cracy on its own. You cannot simply invest a lot of time in the wiki and expect your ideas about how things are supposed to be there to supersede those of others, especially those who might not spend so much time on the wiki but on other OSM related things and who rightfully expect to be able to use the wiki for those activities. The wiki is a means to facilitate better mapping and social interaction between mappers, not a platform to express yourself independent of that. This is not meant to put blame on anyone here but i would suggest everyone to evaluate things under the question if what the different people desire and argue for has a clear benefit for OSM and the OSM community beyond the wiki itself. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misrepresentation of OSM by HOT?
On Monday 30 October 2017, Blake Girardot HOT/OSM wrote: > > We have updated the text on the HOT Tasking Manager in light of the > suggestions from this email thread. > > They will be deployed to our live instance later this week, but you > can review them here: > > http://tasks-stage.hotosm.org/ Looks like a big step in the right direction, thanks. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Using Wikipedia to add names in other languages
Arguing about licenses and their compatibility does not really help in this context since having formally compatible license (or the related argument that Wikidata is CC0 and therefore by definition the license is a non-issue) would not help. We have just seen in https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/karitotp/diary/43824 that trusting third parties with assurances that data they don't actually own is all right to use does not work. So even if the Wikimedia foundation would specifically allow OSM to use certain information from Wikipedia without restrictions this is not really helpful since what they certainly will never do is give assurances that information in Wikipedia or Wikidata is free of third party rights. From the perspective of OSM things would actually be quite simple: We are based on original research and on-the-ground verifiable information. Any data that is not gathered through original research by the mapper should only be used if specific permission is given by whoever did the original research generating that data. That specifically excludes Wikipedia since Wikipedia is specifically not meant for collecting original research. Sticking to this principle would serve both in avoiding legal troubles and maintaining high quality of data in OSM. Unfortunately not everyone agrees to that. The Contributor Terms: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Licence/Contributor_Terms are somewhat solomonic in that regard - The contributors agree to only contribute data that is legally sound as far as they know - but nothing requires you to refrain from burying your head in the sand so to speak. Practically we have already seen lots of systematic copying of name tags from Wikipedia/Wikidata to OSM in the past years. You can see this from correlations in the naming patterns (including errors) and from the editing patterns (mappers adding names in many different languages they cannot possibly all have first hand information about). IMO the quality and data maintainance problems resulting from this are much more pressing than the legal issues. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] proposed mechanical edit - moving building=building to building=yes
On Saturday 09 June 2018, Michael Reichert wrote: > > Did you investigate who used that tag and maybe why? Was it a bot, a > editor preset, an import or manual user input? I would like to have > this question answered before a mechanical edit. I had looked at this after Mateusz's announcement and it seems fairly broad in origin: * Both iD and JOSM * mostly manual mapping * a large portion seems from HOT mapping in southern Africa and Bangladesch (probably about half) so it might be a good idea for HOT to look into improving education of their mappers in proper use of building tags and diligence and exactness in entering tags. * occurrences look fairly scattered in most cases so it seems this is rarely mappers always using the wrong tag. By the way - do editors, in particular JOSM validator of course, detect tagging mistakes of this kind in some form? This is a slippery slope because you easily end up with the condescending Google style 'did you mean to search for Y instead of X?'. But things like: * key and value identical * single character variation of a common tag with no significant use on its own * mixup of common keys like landuse/leisure, water/waterway etc. are things that could be hinted cautiously to the user to be possible errors. From JOSM i only know the message that a value is not in presets - which would catch these errors as well but which is not that meaningful. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Carto design
On Friday 29 June 2018, Frederik Ramm wrote: > [...] > > So the ease of participating or customising has more or less already > gone down the drain; what's still good about OSM Carto is that at > least you can easily install it as-is on your own infrastructure (I > regularly do that for business clients), but I fear it is only a > matter of time until this aspect of usability, too, will be > abandoned, and you will have to run massive pre-computation jobs in > order to even get your map off the ground... I think this is unlikely to happen. Pre-computation is essential for good quality maps at low to mid zoom levels but OSM-Carto was never particularly predestined for a leadership role in this field. In the past year or so many decisions have been made that define a fairly tight framework pointing away from using pre-computation. It is doubtful that even the move to water polygons for the coastlines, i.e. a small change in the way pre-computation is employed, will happen since there are design choices incompatible with this. There are other open map design projects which are more open to pre-computation techniques, in particular OpenTopoMap. Regarding splitting OSM-Carto into two styles - i have my doubts about this - both regarding if this makes sense and if it would work. But i think it would be very good to have this discussion on a more abstract level, i.e. what kind of map style or styles should the OSMF render on its infrastructure. The OSMF should obviously not try to initiate or manage map design projects themselves but existing or new independent projects might be interested in what it takes to have a chance to be supported by the OSMF in this form. We have guidelines for layers on osm.org hosted elsewhere: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_tile_layers/Guidelines_for_new_tile_layers but we don't have any sort of policy or guideline regarding what is rendered on OSMF servers. As long as OSM-Carto is set for this and considered 'alternativlos' this is a non-issue but since it is clear that this will not necessarily be the case in all eternity and the idea is floated to maybe even render more than one style this becomes a relevant question. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] OSM and new Wikipedia map features
On Thursday 03 May 2018, Joe Matazzoni wrote: > [...] > > We don’t anticipate that these new maps will put any strain on OSM > performance. The impact I do foresee—and hope for—is that the new > exposure of multilingual map data will inspire many more Wikimedians > to contribute to OSM. This is likely to happen when users start to > see, as they will for the first time, that names in their language > for some features and places are not available. The first and most fundamental thing you should do is add automatic transliteration as a fallback for multilingual names. Otherwise people will inevitably add tons of non-verifiable transliterated names in a misguided attempt improve the map. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misrepresentation of OSM by HOT?
On Monday 23 October 2017, Blake Girardot HOT/OSM wrote: > > It clearly says the HOT Tasking Manager, which it is. We were asked > to change it from OSM Tasking Manager because people felt that was > misrepresenting, it was not the OSM Tasking manager, it was HOT's > Tasking Manager, so I changed that in TM v2. As i said in the previous discussion about this the name "OSM Tasking manager" to me seems perfectly fine as a name for the tool in general. My critique here is about this instance of the tool running as a public service and containing the tasks of the HOT project. I have no specific suggestion about the heading/catchphrase but there were already a few ideas mentioned by others in what direction this could go. Independent of that prominently linking to learnosm.org (or a different page explaining OSM and providing relevant links) on the starting page (like with a second button next to "Start Mapping") would be good. In addition i would suggest to add * links to openstreetmap.org (and OSM wiki, communication channels) from the About and Learn pages. * a disclaimer according to the trademark policy on the About page. * adding at least brief verbal credits to OSM - for example like Frederik cited from Missing Maps - to the starting page somewhere. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Misrepresentation of OSM by HOT?
On Monday 23 October 2017, Mikel Maron wrote: > [...] However ... I hope we can > also agree that it is counter productive to start off such > discussions in such an argumentative pose. I hear a lot of distrust > in phrases like "misrepresentation", "claiming ownership", "exactly > what HOT doesn't do". This has nothing to do with trust, i looked at the website and describe my observations here. The term "misrepresentation" is from the trademark policy: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Trademark_Policy#5.3._Misrepresentation If you think it is inappropriate to use such a term w.r.t. OSM trademarks this is probably something you need to discuss with the LWG. > It's emotionally draining for me to read things > like this, and I don't think I'm alone. Have you considered that it might be "emotionally draining" for OSM contributors to see the name of the project being used on a website like this without any links to OSM and mentioning of the fact that OSM is all about collaborative global mapping even without HOT or the tasking manager? FWIW - i do not feel emotionally drained about this, but i feel rather offended by your, Ian's and Clifford's reactions deflecting a matter-of-factly critique of that website and the resulting discussion about this and possible ways to improve it (and i welcome the constructive suggestions so far) into a discussion about what words may be used in discussion here. I would also like to remind you that one of the most important guiding principle in communication in OSM is to "assume good faith". I followed this principle here by describing my observations of the tasking manager without any interpretation as for why it is designed this way - although this is of course a question i did contemplate. It would be nice to see you doing me the same courtesy by arguing the topic at hand without insinuating "an argumentative pose", "distrust", "Combative questions" or a lack of respect. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Standard map style contributions
On Friday 29 December 2017, Andy Townsend wrote: > [...] As described in > https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/blob/master/CARTO >GRAPHY.md , OSM Carto has somewhat conflicting goals - both as "an > important feedback mechanism for mappers" and as an "exemplar > stylesheet". Note the above document was originally written as the first part of a longer document that ends with more specific guidelines that were meant specifically to help contributors to recognize what kind of changes are desirable and which are not. The maintainers could not agree on more specific design principles though which ultimately left this in an incomplete state that can be used to justify either accepting or rejecting a very wide range of changes. https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/pull/2462 > With the last two issues it's difficult to know what to suggest - > there has to be an overall style "direction" otherwise you just end > up with something that is a bit of a mess. Likewise there have to be > some standards, but sometimes I suspect that if the maintainers > actually want to see a fix to a particular problem that they'll need > help potential contributors a bit more. Actually if there is a need of a shared, overall design direction has been a subject of quite a bit of debate over the last 1-2 years - see for example here: https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/2270 While i agree with you that from my perspective a style direction or design paradigm is needed for successful development i try to be open to the possibility that it is not. How to attract contributors in such a framework is not something i can provide a competent opinion on though. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Mapping rivers that flow into/through lakes?
On Thursday 22 February 2018, Rory McCann wrote: > > What's the best way to map rivers that flow into lakes, especially > when another river flows through it? Should they be connected? > > [...] This has been discussed in the past occasionally and IIRC there was never full agreement on the matter. A few things that are important to consider: * The question if a river flows through a lake or if it enters a lake and ends there is not generally something that can be answered verifiably. * In well mapped areas where a lake has one large outflow and only one or a few similarily large inflows they are often connected. * In most cases with larger lakes smaller inflows are not connected. * In contrast to riverbank polygons where there is in principle a well established rule where to place the waterway (the thalweg) there is no established rule how rivers that are connected within a lake are to be placed or connected. * There is also no established rule if waterways within a lake get the name and other tags from the tributaries they connect or if they are to be without name tag. Both variants are common. * The vast majority of waterbody imports import without connectivity, even if connected data is available like in the US and Canada. Part of the problem is of course that the task of generating waterway connectivity within a water area or supplementing an incomplete connectivity are cumbersome mechanical tasks. So the ultimate question probably is if this is something editors should provide support to produce automatically or if it is something that data users should generate automatically as needed. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap 2008
On Monday 19 February 2018, Ilya Zverev wrote: > > The planet file for 20.02.2008 is slightly over 3 gigabytes, but when > you cut USA out, you're left with a 400 MB pbf file. Checked out the > latest OSM Carto 3.x style, and voila — OpenStreetMap as it looked > exactly ten years ago: > > http://osmz.ru/osm2008.html Have you tried running OSMCoastline on that planet? Might be tricky but would significantly improve the realism of the historic image. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Mapping rivers that flow into/through lakes?
On Friday 23 February 2018, Rory McCann wrote: > > But then how far do you go? Should every stream be connected to the > central river? e.g. what about here ( > http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/?view=water=28.57869=-16.75136 >=11 )? > > If some rivers/streams shouldn't be connected, then some data > consumers will have to do an automatic connection anyway. When > measuring water run off and pollution, you probably want to know that > "stuff going into stream X will eventually get to point Y downstream" > (right?). For simple formal connectivity that is essentially a routing problem. Not having connectivity on the waterway level will require you to use the water area data in analysis and this will more than double the data volume to process and if you need more than formal connectivity, i.e. quantitative information like path length or route geometry things become very expensive computationally. > Connecting all means that large lakes will be full of a "skeleton" of > joining rivers/streams, and a small 1km stream could get a lot > longer. You could detect the 'virtual' waterways as those within a non-river water area. This is hampered by the problem that we mostly have no consistent distinction between river and lake areas in OSM (i.e. standing and flowing water areas). -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Is it technically and legally possible to add the Open Location Code to the OSM search?
On Friday 10 August 2018, Blake Girardot HOT/OSM wrote: > > The idea of tagging encoded coordinates is so ridiculous to anyone > > with a bit of understanding of computer programming, data > > processing and data maintainance that even after ignoring all the > > arguments in substance that have been voiced this should be > > universally rejected if for no other reason then because it would > > make OSM the laughing stock of the whole geodata world. > > Ok, enough of your overly polite, gentle feedback stuff, tell us how > you really feel :) I am afraid that even after reading it several times i have no idea what you want to say with that. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Is it technically and legally possible to add the Open Location Code to the OSM search?
On Friday 10 August 2018, Blake Girardot wrote: > [...] > > Let us find a local community that is asking for this and give it a > trial there. I read this as "lets find some country with no sufficiently organized local community to resists and push this nonsense idea of adding encoded coordinates as tags to features there in a hope to sneak this into OSM". This is exactly the arrogant and abusive approach what3words used for their proprietary system. The idea of tagging encoded coordinates is so ridiculous to anyone with a bit of understanding of computer programming, data processing and data maintainance that even after ignoring all the arguments in substance that have been voiced this should be universally rejected if for no other reason then because it would make OSM the laughing stock of the whole geodata world. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Learning to Use Machine Learning - A learn along for folks who want to be using ML in their work.
As a quick reminder to any mapper who wants to use algorithmically generated data as a source for mapping work: If you upload such data without manually verifying the individual features against local knowledge or suitable primary data you are doing a mechanical edit or import and must follow the rules we have for those: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Automated_Edits_code_of_conduct https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Guidelines Practically this would for example be the case if - when being asked about the validity of your mapping by a fellow mapper - you'd be inclined to answer "I don't know, that's what the algorithm generated". You would then be in the mechanical edit/import domain. This is not a new topic, we have had this kind of problem in the past on several occasions, for example with use of automated tracing tools like scanaerial - which can be used both productively and responsibly for manual mapping as well as for doing bad quality mechanical edits/imports. And in particular with algorithms advertised with the terms 'learning' and 'intelligence' implying human like capability and thereby a lack of need for human control and verification this is important to keep in mind. If you are not controlling the algorithm yourself but are being given pre-generated data by others for the purpose of uploading it to OSM - with or without manual verification - you are always doing an import and need to follow the guidelines. Side note: It would be a responsible thing to include a reminder like what i wrote above with a message like the one i reply to here or in the welcome messages/FAQs etc. of dedicated communication channels. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Is it technically and legally possible to add the Open Location Code to the OSM search?
On Saturday 11 August 2018, Blake Girardot wrote: > >> > >> Ok, enough of your overly polite, gentle feedback stuff, tell us > >> how you really feel :) > > > > I am afraid that even after reading it several times i have no idea > > what you want to say with that. > > My apologies Christoph, it was sarcasm. You were anything but polite > or gentle with your feedback. I thought it was a friendly, funny way > to de-escalate the discussion and hopefully spark some personal > reflection. Well - i wasn't really trying to be polite, i was trying to be direct because polite arguments by others why tagging encoded coordinates is not a good idea were ignored. Anyway i think we have now made the arguments agains tagging this very clear with Frederik also explaining the practical scenarios in detail. Nothing has been brought up against these arguments except the continued expression of the political desire to push this into the OSM database despite all the arguments against it. Everyone is entitled to their political views but i don't think the OSM database is a place where these can be articulated. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] highway=* + area=yes vs area:highway=*
On Saturday 11 August 2018, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: > > > > The wiki has definitely had problems recently and we should have a > > good discussion about what we want from it. > > I don’t know since when you are following the wiki development, but > from my point of view, there is nothing that would be worse > “recently” that couldn’t have happened 10 years ago. On the contrary, > I think it is now more stable and there are more eyes on it than > before. It seems, questionable edits are often discovered and > reverted within some hours or few days, while it took months and > years when there were only few users. This is part of the problem. There is a certain trend towards a wikipediarization of our wiki in the sense that there are many active editors who essentially try to maintain the status quo in tag documentation, even if it does not represent how a tag is used or who try to document a subjective view what a tag should mean instead of documenting how it is actually used. In other words: If tag documentation pages on the wiki are out of touch with the reality of tag use this is often not the result of undiscovered questionable edits but because active wiki editors want them to be this way or don't care they are this way. We don't really have a mechanism that forces or even incentivizes editors to ensure documentation is accurate. This is not a new phenomenon - like in wikipedia this is a fairly natural result of the transit from expansion (where edits were predominantly writing new documentation) to maintainance (with predominantly changes of existing documentation). -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Is it technically and legally possible to add the Open Location Code to the OSM search?
On Saturday 11 August 2018, mmd wrote: > > With all due respect, I think we've long crossed that point: > > https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/KSJ2%3Alat > https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/ngbe%3Alat_ed50 > https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/gns%3ALAT > https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/latitude I hope you are aware that you are defending a bad tagging idea with the existence of other bad tagging ideas. While pointless tags added by imports are an unnecessary burden to data maintainance and bad for the reputation of OSM since they demonstrate a lack of quality control for imports in OSM they are not even remotely as damaging as would be the deliberate large scale addition of encoded coordinates as tags to millions of features. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] AI detecting of buildings Idle thoughts
On Thursday 16 August 2018, john whelan wrote: > Could this be used to detect villages and towns which have not yet > been mapped. > > If something could drop some sort of marker where it thinks a cluster > of buildings are then we could use overpass to pull them into JOSM > and map them as places, landuse=residential, village or whatever. As you might already imagine reality is way ahead of you - for example someone has recently been dumping a whole bunch of garbage exactly like this in eastern Congo: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/61401087 https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/614459980 From a purely technical point of view if it wasn't littering OSM this would just be droll. Verifiability my ass... -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] AI detecting of buildings Idle thoughts
On Thursday 16 August 2018, Warin wrote: > > As that particular mapper has local knowledge on their side I'd not > challenge them. Why not? I would love to see some ground level or aerial/satellite images documenting the verifiability of those outlines. The good thing about verifiability and the core of OpenStreetMap in general is that you don't have to trust some imagined authority about the data, you can independently verify it. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt and assume in such cases they are just ignorant of these principles or do not get why they are important but with organized efforts like this i can't help but get the impression there is a certain amount of malice to sabotage or at least an excessive amount of carelessness. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] AI detecting of buildings Idle thoughts
On Thursday 16 August 2018, Warin wrote: > > Satellite imagery is available for the world.. > But how much do you know of Africa? > [...] You maybe don't realize that but the kind of data garbage i pointed to is the direct result of projecting ideas and experiences of settlement structures of some part of the world onto a different one. We are mostly talking about scattered dwellings of what are probably mostly subsistence farmers here. The pointless polygon geometry drawing is the failed attempt to regard those as a typical European/North American residential area. If this is due to a lack of knowledge about the actual geography or because of a misguided belief that making it crudely look a bit like an European/North American residential area is kind of beneficial for the people there i don't know. Anyway we are drifting off-topic here and this does not really help the original question from John. My answer to that would be: Yes, automated methods can help to find unmapped settlements in OSM - less though in actually mapping them. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] AI detecting of buildings Idle thoughts
> And we took the decision to use this info > to spot rapidly the populated areas. «Take time» to look at these > polygons one by one (we did) and you will see that they reflect > adequately the density of housing in these areas. No, they don't (at least not for any meaningful definition of "density of housing"). In any case even if they did - iso-lines of some model of a building density field are quite fundamentally not something that is mappable in OSM, especially not with landuse=residential. It seems i need to clarify one thing: My harsh criticizm of the data imported (which i stand by firmly) is about the data. I - just like probably everyone else here - am aware that clairedelune did not generate this data. The kind of problem we see here is exactly the reason why we have import guidelines and why we need a directed editing policy so mappers do not get into a situation where they add bad data in larger volume because they follow - usually with good intentions - the unqualified instructions of others or wrongly believe the quality claims of data providers. If the import plans had been properly discussed we could have had this discussion in advance and could have considered useful options - like for example the idea of impoting the buildings as Rory suggested. I also want to make sure this example is not blown out of proportion. There are plenty of bad quality imports and bad mapping in OSM. If you look at landuse=residential mapping in Eastern Africa this is not the worst data in the database, not by a large margin. I just pointed it out here as an example because it was a perfect fit for the idea John brought up. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] AI detecting of buildings Idle thoughts
On Thursday 16 August 2018, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > In a way, it's what we did in Western Europe when we only had Landsat > imagery: "Uh, this looks like a settlement, let's draw a grey blob" Absolutely not. The settlement structure of Western Europe can be pretty accurately mapped from Landsat images. What the data import linked to contains has no similarity to this. And even if it did superficially this would be a pretend similarity because the settlement structure in this part of the world looks nothing like that of Western Europe. This is just taking some auto-detected buildings, throwing some random algorithms at it and labeling the resulting abstract geometries landuse=residential. Ironically if you did do a halfway reasonable classification of settlement areas in Landsat data for this area the result would probably be much more like a verifiable mapping of settlements in the area than what we can see now in the database. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] AI detecting of buildings Idle thoughts
On Thursday 16 August 2018, Rory McCann wrote: > What's funny is that this import was (according to the changeset > comment) based on "DigitalGlobe extracted building data". A straight > up import of the original building geometries would probably be (i) > less contentious (since a building is a building is a building), and > (ii) more accurate for calculating population figures (a use for > building data for humanitarian purposes) and (iii) better for OSM > since lots of buildings is better than landuse=residential polygons. I found this peculiar as well - the most likely explanation seems to be that the quality of building detection and especially of building geometry generation (if that is being done at all) is probably quite bad and by not using the building data directly you can kind of disguise such deficits. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Fwd: 2 Great Lakes missing
Note you can easily check if there are broken multipolygons in the OSM inspector: http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/?view=areas=-84.14378=46.10509=8 If a lake multipolygon is broken the lake outline will be shown as context there and the location of the error usually in red (self interaection) or magenta (ring not closed). -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Fwd: 2 Great Lakes missing
On Monday 13 August 2018, SelfishSeahorse wrote: > > Thanks for the tip; I din't think of it. Actually my computer had > more difficulties to calculate that i had to find the errors. :-) Note checking this kind of errors on large multipolygons is not really that difficult. For each of the big lakes that is a few dozen MB of download via overpass API and then a few seconds with osmium to assemble the multipolygon. You can easily set this up to run on a daily basis to check a few lakes you want to keep an eye on. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Representing places with no housenumber
On Friday 24 August 2018, Rory McCann wrote:
> >>
> >> 35% of addresses in Ireland aren't unique.
> >
> > I strongly suspect we have a different understanding of either
> > 'address' or 'uniqueness' here.
>
> Possibly. The Irish definition is "a property has the same address
> with a least one other property". I'm not talking about 2 postboxes
> that are beside each other in an apartment block, but 2 houses which
> could be a distance apart. Post/Packages is delivered partially based
> on surname, or "local knowledge" . It is/was a pain. The new
> postcode ("eircode") will help. Now, you may say the surname is part
> of the address, but what happens when someone moves house? And we
> shouldn't put surnames into OSM. So the "address" isn't unique. I
> don't bring it up to disprove you or argue, just to point out that
> the world is weird.
Obviously there are large parts of the world without addresses and also
large parts with what you might call 'partial addresses'. But i would
see it from a practical point of view: If something you call an
address does not fulfill the main function of an address (to address a
specific place) it is something fundamentally different from what is
widely understood and tagged as an address. Therefore i think (but it
is obviously not up to me to decide that) that it would be better if in
OSM we'd distinguish between unique addresses and partial/non-unique
addresses. Therefore i still think in these cases tagging
noaddress=yes and documenting the associated street of a property or
any other partial address information in a different way might be a
better approach.
And i fully agree that this is weird because for a country like Ireland
it is obviously not a matter of the Irish society not having been able
to create a system of unique addresses. Still you have not done so for
a long time. This is quite remarkable. And it probably will get
weirder in the future - not so much because of this fashion of encoded
coordinate systems but because of digital technology increasingly
allowing dynamically connecting people with locations (and Amazon will
just send you your order to whereever you are - or where you are likely
to be when the order is shipped).
--
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Representing places with no housenumber
On Wednesday 22 August 2018, Nelson A. de Oliveira wrote: > > Specifying addr:street on a building that does not have an address > > is either pointless or non-verifiable. > > But this happens here :-) > Sometimes they are big buildings/areas (which occupies a whole city > block, for example), with addr:street, addr:postcode but no > addr:housenumber You probably have to give a real world example since i have no idea if you want to say you have a building with a unique address consisting of addr:street and addr:postcode (could be if there is only one building at this street or with this postcode) or if you want to defend pointless or non-verifiable tagging of addr:street for buildings without a unique address. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Representing places with no housenumber
On Wednesday 22 August 2018, Rory McCann wrote: > > The single most important property of an address is that it is > > unique > > 35% of addresses in Ireland aren't unique. I strongly suspect we have a different understanding of either 'address' or 'uniqueness' here. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Representing places with no housenumber
On Wednesday 22 August 2018, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: > > > > What's wrong with noaddress=yes? > > > > https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:noaddress > > the wiki says noaddress is for places without an address, but the > places I have in mind do have an address, they have a street, > postcode, city, just no housenumber. The single most important property of an address is that it is unique so a building or other place than does not have a housenumber, housename or another component that makes the address unique does not have an address at all even if you can specify a street, city etc. at/in which it is located. Specifying addr:street on a building that does not have an address is either pointless or non-verifiable. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Representing places with no housenumber
On Wednesday 22 August 2018, Nelson A. de Oliveira wrote: > > You know that we live in a heterogeneous world with many oddities and > peculiarities, that what makes sense in one country or region may not > make sense in another, that these definitions are beyond our control > and that we are only trying to represent what exists in the real > world, right? Well - tags are generally invented for a specific part of our heterogeneous world and you need to be careful when using the same tags in a very different geographic setting based on some superficial similarity. If in your area there are addresses that are very different from elsewhere it might not be a good idea to use the same tags for those. > But for example, multiple government offices are listed in this page > https://www.ma.gov.br/contatos/ and some, despite having a proper > address, don't have a housenumber (where "S/N" is the abbreviation > for "sem número" = "no number") I still don't know if the addresses listed there are unique (in the sense that only those government offices have this address) or if there are maybe a dozen other unrelated buildings which happen to have the same address (which clashes with my understanding of the concept of an address). Note to document a building/place belongs to a certain street we also have the concept of the associatedStreet relation. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relation:associatedStreet -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Representing places with no housenumber
On Thursday 23 August 2018, Nelson A. de Oliveira wrote: > > Usually the places without a housenumber here have some kind of > intrinsic distinctiveness/uniqueness. > For example, an airport located in a road (there won't be 2 airports > at the same road), some big industries/factories, an university > campus, parks, places related to the government, etc. Ok, if the address is essentially "The airport on X-street" or "The government office on Y-street" then i think the type of feature is part of the address and this needs to be indicated in tagging somehow. And And I don't think the fact that there is no house number needs to be specifically indicated then. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Representing places with no housenumber
On Wednesday 22 August 2018, Nelson A. de Oliveira wrote: > What is the best way to represent places which have no housenumber? > > [...] I assume you mean no addr:housenumber and no addr:housename. What's wrong with noaddress=yes? https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:noaddress -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Representing places with no housenumber
On Thursday 23 August 2018, Roland Olbricht wrote: > > An example from Germany: > https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/526129541 > https://www.izb.fraunhofer.de/de/impressum.html > > The whole campus just fills up the complete street. Hence, the street > alone makes it already unique. I can confirm from having worked there > that it has indeed no housenumber. Yes, that looks like a good example for the first case. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Representing places with no housenumber
On Thursday 23 August 2018, Nelson A. de Oliveira wrote: > > Ok, if the address is essentially "The airport on X-street" or "The > > government office on Y-street" then i think the type of feature is > > part of the address and this needs to be indicated in tagging > > somehow. And And I don't think the fact that there is no house > > number needs to be specifically indicated then. > > Take a look at https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/BiJ please > (probably there are much more variants that people use than the ones > from this query) > > All these objects have some kind of "no housenumber" abbreviation at > addr:housenumber (which is exactly the same problem of using name="No > name"). Ok, these look primarily like the opposite of Roland's example in that: * it seems to be common practice to explicitly mention the lack of the house number when specifying the address. * the address is not unique without the name of the object in question, there are often multiple independent and unrelated features (like different shops in different buildings) with the same address. I would say that if you want to specify per object address tags here (which as indicated is somewhat questionable because the lack of uniqueness and in substance the only meaningful information you specify is the associated street) it is at least as important to indicate in tagging that the address to be unique needs to include the name - kind of like name_is_a_necessary_part_of_address=yes (not a serious suggestion in this form but you probably get the idea) as to explicitly indicate the lack of a house number. Also i kind of doubt if this form of specifying the lack of a house number is that common mappers would be inclined to give it up in favour of a different tagging scheme. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Extend natural=shingle tag also for city stone areas.
(Note: since this is a tagging question this is in a way the wrong group). On Friday 31 August 2018, Tomasz Wc3b3jcik wrote: > As we map different physical landcovers by eg. landuse=grass, > landuse=forest, natural=sand, natural=water etc. There is > theoretically no tag for urban areas covered by little stones like on > this photo: > > ]...] Urban area mapping in OSM is primarily functional - in case of your example: If this is a walkable area (likely since it is easily accessible and there are no signs forbidding it apparently) it would probably be highway=pedestrian + surface=gravel/pebbles. If it is not walkable it would be more like a japanese rock garden so you could use leisure=garden + garden:style=rock_garden. What you are suggesting here is essentially like the old mapping for the renderer habit of tagging sand bunkers on golf courses natural=beach. It would degrade the quality of the data of what is tagged natural=shingle which fortunately at the moment is pretty good (since it is a relatively young tag documented precisely from the beginning and rendered in a way that supports correct use). So no, i would be strongly against extending natural=shingle to urban areas artificially covered with loose stones based on a physical similarity. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Representing places with no housenumber
On Saturday 01 September 2018, Johnparis wrote: > I would disagree with Christoph's assumption that addresses must be > unique. The purpose of an address is to help someone locate > something. Well - then everything in the OSM database is an address and noaddress=yes is universally a nonsense tag. Taking refuge in arbitrariness is a natural reaction to the complexity of the world but it ultimately does not solve any problems. If you don't agree that an address needs to be unique that is fine but so far i have not seen any other consistent concept of an address being presented that makes sense, somethings that helps someone to locate something does not cut it. -- Christoph Hormann http://www.imagico.de/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
