Re: [Talk-GB] Poll on Governance, what constitutes news, wiki front page
Hi all, This is in reference to the poll here: http://doodle.com/s2zg64vyaup72dcw An idea: can we try to make this discussion more constructive? I have tried to do so here, probably with mixed success. I am beginning to be burdened with non-constructive messages and we really don't have time for them. (If people are thinking of turning that comment on me, as an ad hominem, again, please can we be more constructive!) On 13/06/11 14:49, Dermot McNally wrote: It was put very succinctly by somebody earlier - paraphrasing, you know something is news if it's important enough that somebody other than the person who did it thinks it's news. That is an interesting point. It does avoid the obvious question, do you personally think it is news? But this is more of an issue for the community than me. Adam has chipped it to say the poll is worth putting on the front page as news [6]. In this specific case, this satisfies Dermot's point that news is news if other people think so. It is an interesting idea to ensure independence of reporting to have a link separate from the author, but in a do-ocracy of OSM, we perhaps might want some flexibility in this. (And we will always have a risk of sock puppets.) The main input on to that page is from the community, not me. Your definition of news is actually rather unworkable too. I am sure someone is crazy enough to agree that anything is news, so how do you prevent spam based on your definition. I have attempted a working definition below. On 13/06/11 15:07, Richard Fairhurst wrote: Do we all get to put our subjective favourites at the top of the supposedly objective list of News? Many intellectuals have pointed out that objective new sources don't exist - there is always a necessary slant or bias to any reporting [7]. Richard, as you are a journalist, I am surprised if you don't have personal experience of this? Recalling a certain US news network with the slogan fair and balanced and that ideal comes from a network that is very partisan. If you are unhappy with what I have done, I suggest you write some guidelines on how news should be edited. (On the other hand, many don't want rigid rules in OSM.) Until there are some guidelines, we might stop pretending the wiki news is some sacred cow. I think the news section is a bit dry myself. The fact that the number of relations passed an arbitrary number is hardly news but it was recently reported. I would define news (that might be put on the front page) as events that are topical, relevant to a broad international group of contributors, it has impact on OSM and novelty. A poll on the future of OSM meets these criteria easily. There are probably better definitions of newsworthiness that any of us have provided [8] anyway. Sure. I care too. I know people who've voted on that poll precisely to show that they do not support your current crusade. I've chosen not to vote for that same reason. Ok, I can't make you engage with my attempt to reform OSM. If we were being constructive, specifically for this poll, can you tell me how I can improve it? or is there some assumption you disagree with? If there was some documentation on guidelines on what constitutes news, Richard might have a point. Briefly flicking through the previous news items, they comprise things like statistics (e.g. 400,000 registered users), software releases, changes to the OSM website, new hardware etc. Concrete changes, not discussion. I can't see any precedent for an unofficial poll being placed there. Ok you have defined news based on what has historically appeared. This seems to be rather clunky to me because it keeps us stuck in the past: what we previous considered news is the only news we can ever have. However, for the sake of argument, lets accept your definition. And if we were to find that my post fits your definition of news, we can agree it is indeed news. Good so far. I looked through the old news, contrary to Richard's claim, there are indeed links to discussions and a doodle poll. Specifically [1]: 1) Usability improvements for osm.org? Tell us! 2) OSMF license change vote has started; unofficial community survey at http://doodle.com/feqszqirqqxi4r7w; 3) [...] comments may be submitted until March 20 4) The OpenStreetMap community petitions Google to resolve the legal ambiguity of tracing from Google's aerial imagery. (Links to google feedback site) So it is clear that links to discussions ARE news, under Richard's definition. I am surprised you didn't find the above links, and I can only suggest you are more careful in researching your evidence. I am beginning to think you, Richard, are trying to censor and obstruct me, based on the following: 1. You have never edited the news template on the wiki before [2] but did so to delete my message. 2. You stated you don't support my crusade and refuse to participate, and apparently gloating that others are opposed to my view
Re: [Talk-GB] OSM Governance: How Should Decisions Be Made?
On 13/06/2011 00:38, TimSC wrote: The OSMF is currently reviewing its role in OSM. I want to know the view of ordinary mapping contributors about how decisions should be made in OSM. Is OSMF a supporting body? If so what does supporting mean in this context? Is it a governing body? What decisions should be left to individuals and what decisions left to collective decision, made by OSMF, on behalf of mappers and users? The order of the options has been randomised. Apologies if I missed your real wishes, please comment. http://doodle.com/s2zg64vyaup72dcw (Sorry for the cross post if you have already seen this in talk.) ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb Dear Tim, Rightly or wrongly, I believe you have a personal agenda concerning this issue. I also believe that this type of poll is hopelessly unrepresentative (see the Pharyngula blog for countless examples). I would also expect OSM-F to make announcements about consideration of changes to their role, and ask for formal responses. OSM governance, however passioniate you feel about it, does not seem to me to belong here on the talk-gb list. I do not subscribe to talk, talk-legal and many other lists, because I do not want my inbox to be full of mails which have little or no relevance to my interests. Furthermore many of these emails seem to me to be written by people with little interest in constructive discussion, and a great interest in destructive discussion. Please do not start cross-posting about an non talk-gb issue here. Regards, Jerry ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] OSM Governance: How Should Decisions Be Made?
On 15/06/11 10:14, Jerry Clough : SK53 on OSM wrote: Please do not start cross-posting about an non talk-gb issue here. Oops, it was a mistake by me. Regards, TimSC ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Customised Maps (was OSM Analysis New Data and bot)
Hi Graham, Sorry, I got a bit over excited and subscribed to tons of OSM mailing lists and so totally missed your awesome reply :-( Sorry if I wasn't clear - I've successfully got Mapnik installed (did it a week or three ago and it was pretty painless as far as I recall), so am particularly after a sample config file to start from, particularly one with hill contours / gradients / whatever-they-are-really-called-outside-the-confines-of-my-head. Altho' having said that the package that Parveen Arora is putting together looks pretty awesome, so maybe I should hold out for that, even tho' it looks more targeted for Debian than OS X - I guess if push comes to shove I could install Debian in VMware, which I already have on my laptop. By the way townguide looks rather amazing, so adding that to my (rather long) list of things to check out :-) Thanks for the offer of helping generate the configuration file, not sure of the best way to do that tho' as I want something I can start with and hack around with and iterate a lot until it's right. The primary thing I want is pubs and post boxes available when zoomed out (ideally the same zoom range as footpaths show up on), and if possible the mountain gradients/contours - I've seen a couple of maps in the wild that use these, but not sure how possible/straightforward it is for a Mapnik newbie such as myself. Cheers, Adam On 10 Jun 2011, at 10:46, Graham Jones wrote: Adam (changed the title of the thread to keep this one separate), The simplest way to do it is to make overlays that are transparent and you can view over another set of tiles. I have done a few before now - there is one visible at http://maps3.org.uk, which highlights historic things over the normal mapnik rendering. I still have the idea to set up something to make the learning curve easier, because I appreciate that setting up mapnik and all its dependencies is quite daunting - there is something on my osm user page about it (grahamjones). If you want to do it yourself, there are a few different sets of instructions - the osm wiki 'mapnik' page is a good start. Note that linux is much easier than Windows (or at least there are better instructions!). I have a set of instructions that work for me at http://code.google.com/p/townguide/wiki/InstallationInstructions. (there may be a minor issue with postgresql authentication that I need to fix). Parveen Aurora is currently working on making a simple package that will install and configure everything for you for his Google Summer of Code project, but you will have to give him a few weeks to get something ready for testing (https://github.com/ParveenArora/MeraMap). If you would like to work out what you would like to render (ie which tag combinations), how you would like them drawn (line colour and width, icon image etc.), I can help you turn that into a mapnik configuration file and generate the map for you on my computer.I think it is better to spend time thinking about the rendering than having to worry about database configuration nuts and bolts. Regards Graham. Regards Graham. On 10 June 2011 10:27, Adam Hoyle adam.li...@dotankstudios.com wrote: Sorry in advance - after writing this I've realised I'm possibly heading off on a tangent (I do that). Speaking of the awesomeness of Cycle Map and how that encourages people - I really want an openwalkingtothepubmap, which would basically be a clone of the gorgeous cycle map, but with the coloured cycle routes removed in favour of coloured paths and also pubs visible when quite zoomed out (and prolly post boxes too, but that is probably particularly niche). I'm starting to realise that I might need to roll up my sleeves and do this myself. Every now and then I try to install Mapnik on my Mac, and mostly fail, but I tried t'other day and it worked, so I'm wondering where the various styles that are used on OSM are kept (or even if they are actually available for derivative use) - I'm most keen on cyclemap or something that has gradients, cos as a walker I'm quite interested in whether I am about to walk over a massive hill or not. Can anyone point me in the right direction? All the best, Adam On 10 Jun 2011, at 09:35, Bob Kerr wrote: I agree with Andy about increasing the number of mappers is essential. With Cycle map he has increased the interest in the cycling communities. Getting interest and publicity is very difficult. I can see many other communities that we could encourage to start helping us, from NHS to golfers but we have no organised way of doing this at the moment. Using a bot to replace large sections of data in the UK is going to be counterproductive or destructive, especially as the UK is now 80% (road name)complete. However restricting a bot by area to the size of small villages may help. I believe we can both encourage people to join us
Re: [Talk-GB] OSM Analysis New Data and bot
Craig Loftus wrote: Richard can you give the following URLs a go? Thanks for setting that up - really encouraging. But good news and bad, I'm afraid. The good news is that P2 can get the files from the server no problem. The bad news is that Ordnance Survey appear to have broken it. When I was originally testing the feature I was using some VectorMap District files I had sitting around from the original release. These were supplied in files of 10km x 10km each (e.g. SO99). However, I now see that OS (as of March, it seems) have started to supply VMD in 100km x 100km chunks. As a result, P2 will load TQ_Airport fine, but not (say) SK_AdministrativeBoundary, which is a whopping 14Mb: Flash Player tries to process it and times out with a pitiful please spare me this torture message. SK_Road is about 175Mb. I think my computer would catch fire if I tried to load that. My first thought is that it might be possible to use ogr2ogr's -clipsrc option to make 10km x 10km tiles out of the 100km x 100km ones pretty easily. What do you reckon? cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OSM-Analysis-New-Data-and-bot-tp6455312p6478844.html Sent from the Great Britain mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] [OSM-talk] Announce: Beginning of Phase 4 of license change process
On 15/06/11 11:44, Andy Street wrote: On Tue, 2011-06-14 at 22:33 +0200, Michael Collinson wrote: As per the implementation plan [1], we intend to move to phase 4 this Sunday 19th June or as soon after as is technically practical. This will mean that anyone who has explicitly declined the new contributor terms will no longer be able to edit, (unless they decide to accept). Can someone please point me to the outcome of the OSMF legal review into the compatibility of the CTs with the OS Opendata licence? I've been waiting patiently for it to be announced but must have missed it seeing as phase 4 is about to begin. I'm also waiting for this... I've no real issues with the new terms, but cant accept them until this issue is resolved. It seems a bit backward to block my new contributions just because nobody got around to talking to the OS folks yet... -- Chris Jones, SUCS Admin http://sucs.org ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] OSM Analysis updated with new OS Locator data and a review of progress to date
On 10/06/11 11:28, Peter Miller wrote: On 10 June 2011 11:20, Chris Jones roller...@sucs.org wrote: On 08/06/11 07:58, Peter Miller wrote: Warwickshire is the biggest gainer/looser with 33 new names; over half of the districts have got at least one new road and there are now only 8 places still at 100%. We do have 51 at over 99% and only 32 at under 50%. There is serious work in Wales, parts of Scotland, the West Midlands and Norfolk at present and in other places as well. Hi I've taken a look at a few towns in mid/south Wales using musical chairs. It seems that many of the listed 'no matches' are because the OS Locator data lists the Welsh Name for the street and when mapped the English name was used in the name tag. Often the welsh name is there too but in the 'name:cy' tag. Would it be possible to include 'name:cy' (and also 'name:gd' for Scotland) in your algorithm? Sorry. I don't understand exactly what you mean. Is this OSM Analysis or 'ITO Map source:name' that you are referring to? If it is OSM Analysis then could you spell out what exactly you want us to be doing that we are not doing? I also realise now that ITO Map source names should probably recognise 'name:cy' and 'name:gd' and also 'source:name:cy' and 'source:name:gd'. Will take a look at that soon. Apologies, I miss read the inital message.. the feedback was intended for musical chairs rather than the ITO OSM Analysis. It would of course be massively helpful if the OS Locator data provided bilingual names but that's another issue all together... ;) Thanks! -- Chris Jones, SUCS Admin http://sucs.org ___ Talk-GB mailing list Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
Re: [Talk-GB] Customised Maps (was OSM Analysis New Data and bot)
Hi Adam, No problem - these lists have been a bit busy over the last few days If you have got mapnik running and generating maps using the 'standard' osm stylesheet, you have got over the biggest learning curve.You will probably have noticed that the 'standard' osm stylesheet is very complicated - this is because it renders lots of different information differently at different zoom levels. If you want to add contours, it is possible to do that by importing the contours into your postgresql database, and modifying the standard osm style file to plot them. I have a crude example of this at http://code.google.com/p/ntmisc/source/browse/#svn%2Fkefalonia_map - all my changes compared to the standard osm style file are in the 'inc' directory - I added a file that defines the style for the contour line drawing, and also changed some other files to include the new one - search the osm wiki for contours to see how to get contours into your postgresql database. I did a little write up on how I did this (but not much detail I am afraid) at http://nerdytoad.blogspot.com/2011/04/kefalonia-map.html. To work on building up a mapnik stylesheet from scratch to get a better understanding of how it works, I would suggest starting on a simple transparent overlay to display over other map tiles. I put together a few slides on my version of how to render map data with mapnik, which you can see at http://maps3.org.uk/doc/index.html. If you look at http://maps3.org.uk/osm_opendata, the 'about' link has a bit of a descripton of how I produced the overlays for that map (another example of a very simple overlay). Both of the above examples use the standard xml stylesheet for mapnik. I have been experimenting with a different way of producing the xml stylesheet using a different language and a pre-processor called 'carto'. I did a little write up at http://nerdytoad.blogspot.com/2011/05/rendering-openstreetmap-data-using.htmlon where I have got to - It is much less complete than the full OSM stylesheet, and I think I need to learn some of the tricks used in that style to make the map look better, but I think it is simpler to see what it is doing, so I think I will stick with this for simple things. Hope that gets you started. Let me know if you get stuck and I will see what I can do. The mapnik-users mailing list is a good place to ask for help too. Regards Graham. On 15 June 2011 14:22, Adam Hoyle adam.li...@dotankstudios.com wrote: Hi Graham, Sorry, I got a bit over excited and subscribed to tons of OSM mailing lists and so totally missed your awesome reply :-( Sorry if I wasn't clear - I've successfully got Mapnik installed (did it a week or three ago and it was pretty painless as far as I recall), so am particularly after a sample config file to start from, particularly one with hill contours / gradients / whatever-they-are-really-called-outside-the-confines-of-my-head. Altho' having said that the package that Parveen Arora is putting together looks pretty awesome, so maybe I should hold out for that, even tho' it looks more targeted for Debian than OS X - I guess if push comes to shove I could install Debian in VMware, which I already have on my laptop. By the way townguide looks rather amazing, so adding that to my (rather long) list of things to check out :-) Thanks for the offer of helping generate the configuration file, not sure of the best way to do that tho' as I want something I can start with and hack around with and iterate a lot until it's right. The primary thing I want is pubs and post boxes available when zoomed out (ideally the same zoom range as footpaths show up on), and if possible the mountain gradients/contours - I've seen a couple of maps in the wild that use these, but not sure how possible/straightforward it is for a Mapnik newbie such as myself. Cheers, Adam On 10 Jun 2011, at 10:46, Graham Jones wrote: Adam (changed the title of the thread to keep this one separate), The simplest way to do it is to make overlays that are transparent and you can view over another set of tiles. I have done a few before now - there is one visible at http://maps3.org.uk, which highlights historic things over the normal mapnik rendering. I still have the idea to set up something to make the learning curve easier, because I appreciate that setting up mapnik and all its dependencies is quite daunting - there is something on my osm user page about it (grahamjones). If you want to do it yourself, there are a few different sets of instructions - the osm wiki 'mapnik' page is a good start. Note that linux is much easier than Windows (or at least there are better instructions!). I have a set of instructions that work for me at http://code.google.com/p/townguide/wiki/InstallationInstructions. (there may be a minor issue with postgresql authentication that I need to fix). Parveen Aurora is currently working on making a simple package that will
