Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Serge Wroclawski
Eleanor,

I want to clarify some things:

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 1:06 AM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com wrote:

 Paul - If perception of mapping in the US isn't aligning with reality, we
 probably *do* need to do a better job as a chapter board of telling the full
 story.

I believe that the story that the board tells reflect the overall
experience of the board. Paul did an analysis of the mapping activites
of the prospective board members before they were elected. Some of the
board members are not active OSM mappers, so it shouldn't come as a
surprise to anyone that people who don't do manual surveying don't
talk about manual surveying.

 I see what you mean about the blog posts, though I do think your
 interpretation is a bit harsh. For example, the mapathon post that you
 characterize as an indoor event, while it does admittedly have a photo of
 people at computers, also makes it clear that the theme for the upcoming
 mapathon is the great outdoors.

The events are characterized as Edit-a-thons and they were designed
to be run indoors. They were essentially a response from some members
of the community who felt that Mapping Parties were not for them. The
advantage of an Edit-A-Thon is that they can be run indoors (unlike
Mapping Parties), but if you look at most Edit-A-Thons going on next
week, and you look at the history of them (look at the talk-us
archives) they're still largely indoor events.

The only reason that OSM NYC runs them as outdoor events is that I
believe strongly that the experience of going out and surveying has
value- not only data quality value, but emotional value. There's value
in being connected to the place you live that can't be captured via
areal photo or governmental dataset.

- Serge

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Greg Morgan
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 11:19 AM, Martijn van Exel mart...@openstreetmap.us
wrote:

 It would be nice if we could have SotM US this June be a venue to dispel
 some of the assumptions that seem to exist abroad about the U.S
 OpenStreetMap community. Reducing the U.S. community to a bunch of couch
 potatoes who are more concerned with mapping remote places and importing
 data is not only inaccurate but also disrespectful to all of us who
 tirelessly work to improve our neighborhoods and towns based on good ol'
 ground surveying and local knowledge.

 Perhaps we, as the U.S. chapter, play a role in creating or sustaining
 these false assumptions? Do we need to do a better job highlighting really
 good local mapping efforts? I would welcome opinions and ideas.



As I recall Martijn, there were a number of videos from SOTM US 2013ish
that laid out the issue. It is the size of the US project that complicates
the issue.  By the time your talk came around, you stated the same thing
once again.  By the way, I am so thankful that the US Conference records
these sessions.  I have not been able to attend but I try and view the
videos every once in awhile.

I'd have you focus on something else than trying to dispel the assumptions
about the US.  I have the sense; it is what I have observed; no mater what
is done in the US, we did not do it like the Europeans so it cannot be
good.  That's my perception of their view.

One of the most interesting things I saw from 2013 was the progress report
and the meta tile report that some of the report was based on.  I had to go
look at what some of the mappers had accomplished in these regions.  It was
so cool to see all those buildings that were imported in Chicago.  That was
a major accomplishment.  Arizona has this problematic issue about trying to
make money off their GIS data.  Sadly, there's no cost recovery even if
they think that there is.  Moreover, there is no building data set that I
know of in AZ that could match what Chicago cataloged.  The Chicago area
inspired me to trace as many buildings as I can.  One of the cool areas
that I worked on was the Scottsdale Air Park
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/33.62087/-111.91182 .  Thanks for the
inspiration Ian!  I got bored.  I moved on to other areas.  However, I
always look for those nice challenging buildings to map.

One of the Carolina meta tiles also inspired me
http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/254964599#map=19/35.84273/-78.66457 .
Wow.  Look at that!  The mapper added driveways too.  I saw a number of tag
combinations that I never thought of because of these meta tiles. I
actually setup a daily import to generate my own meta tile report.  I was
shooting for x number of nodes in each tile of the meta tile.  I found out
that Arizona has a number of zero meta tiles.  I also saw that $user in the
East Valley had a number of very dense tiles but no 100K meta tile yet.  As
for me, I got past 50,000 nodes in one meta tile but no 100K meta tiles
yet.  There's so many interesting things to see and map that when I achieve
boredom with an area, I find another interesting area to map.

I always try to think of the glass of orange juice as half full or half
empty.  Either way their's room for Vodka!  So Fredrick builds a tool to
solve a rendering problem.[1]  It is not just the US where a certain image
is painted.  The resulting discussion sounds like a Ford verses Chevy
debate __to_me__.  The debate goes like this, if your Chevy has more nodes
than my Ford, I have to find some vault with the Chevy.  The opportunity to
see a Craig's List or Rand McNally use OSM without all the great or small
contributions would not have been possible with the efforts of OSM
mappers.  The sea of change that OSM has brought is just amazing to me.

Regards,
Greg


[1] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-May/067194.html
http://fred.dev.openstreetmap.org/density/
http://fred.dev.openstreetmap.org/density/2012.html

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-May/067136.html

Because it means that this is probably dead data without a community behind
it to fix problems and to do updates.

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-May/067138.html

Endless story. That's the anti-imports theory : a map looking
complete does not call for new contributions. Which means that we
should gum out the map from time to time just to build a new community
of contributors when the previous one consider the job done or is
exhausted ;-)

Pieren

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2013-May/067142.html
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Re: [Talk-us] perceptions of OHM and other similar projects

2015-04-04 Thread Mike Dupont
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 11:08 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:

 If the two were layers in the same database, or if they have been
 tagged using railway=dismantled and railway=abandoned, then it's no
 problem to look at them, render them, edit them, analyze them


I still dont understand why we dont support multiple layers. It would seem
to be the most logical thing to do and the api could support that so simple
clients could download a different layers each time.


-- 
James Michael DuPont
Member of Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova http://www.flossk.org
Saving Wikipedia(tm) articles from deletion http://SpeedyDeletion.wikia.com
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Alex Barth
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 2:55 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote:

 The events are characterized as Edit-a-thons and they were designed
 to be run indoors. They were essentially a response from some members
 of the community who felt that Mapping Parties were not for them. The
 advantage of an Edit-A-Thon is that they can be run indoors (unlike
 Mapping Parties), but if you look at most Edit-A-Thons going on next
 week, and you look at the history of them (look at the talk-us
 archives) they're still largely indoor events.


#editathons are #mapathons since last summer and they've since at least a
year and a half now explicitly encouraged people to go outside - not least
because of your feedback Serge:

June 2013
Rather want to go outside and survey? Nothing should stop you from that.
http://openstreetmap.us/2013/06/july-summer-editathon/

In June 2014 we renamed 'editathons' to 'mapathons' to clarify: go out and
survey!
http://openstreetmap.us/2013/07/why-editathons/

I would also love to see a foot survey activity at StateOfTheMap.us in NYC
in June. I know my OSM US board colleagues Martijn and Alyssa are talking
to some people about this. If anyone here on this list is interested in
help lead a foot survey at State of the Map US, get in touch:
sot...@openstreetmap.us .

-- 
Alex Barth
Vice President
OpenStreetMap United States Inc.
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Alex Barth
I actually think it's fine Frederik has opinions about how we should do
things around here in the US and shares them. I just don't want to be
called a couch potato in the course of it ;-)

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 8:57 AM, Kate Chapman k...@maploser.com wrote:



 On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:18 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 Hi,

 On 04/03/2015 02:41 AM, stevea wrote:


 It seems to me that in the USA, what people think about OSM is one of
 these two:

 (a) A project for hackers and couch potatoes who trawl their county web
 pages and other sources to look for stuff they could upload to OSM
 (because it's such a big country and nobody could possibly, yadda yadda
 yadda)

 (b) A project for people who roll up their sleeves, travel to places of
 humanitarian crises, and help those in need by creating maps where the
 government hasn't done their job well.


 Wow Frederik,

 In your post related to one of your pet-peeves about the US OSM community
 you managed to stumble across one of MY PET PEEVES!

 Honestly I have a hard time with people who spend a lot of time on the
 country specific mailing lists telling people that live, are from or often
 travel to a specific country or area what OSM is to them. If I'm correct
 you have never lived in the US, you have never spent significant time in
 the US, you have no plans to move to the US or any other particular
 interest, right? So why do you come over to talk-US and tell the people
 that do all of those things what OSM should be to them?

 If we want a free map of the entire world we should all be free to make
 our own meaning out of OpenStreetMap. That is of course within the
 boundaries of the license.

 Signed,

 Someone who has mapped her neighborhood by hand, imported data and
 traveled to places of humanitarian crisis all with OSM.  Additionally I
 live and am from the US.

 -Kate

 P.S. Specific to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and your suggestion
 that it is mostly people from the US. That is simply not the case. HOT's
 new current board is 7 people and only one is from the US. I also suspect
 our contributors are more from a few countries in Europe than anywhere
 else.




 Bye
 Frederik

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Alex Barth
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 8:53 PM, Paul Norman penor...@mac.com wrote:

 In the current board term I counted 15 blog posts. The breakdown of these
 is

 7 conference
 3 indoor computer-based events
 2 non-OSM geo-related projects
 2 chapter administrative
 1 HOT

 Last year, it is similar, except the conference itself was within the time
 collected
 21 conference
 10 indoor computer-based events
 4 chapter administrative
 1 HOT


None of the indoor events you listed are indoor only, they are all
mapathons and we leave it explicitly up to the local organizer whether they
want to go out or stay in. Obviously there's a misunderstanding and we need
to work on better communicating this. More outside pictures everyone! -
among other things.

Looking at Eleanor email just now on this same thread I want to highlight
this sentence:

 My first editathon - led by another community member - involved walking
around outdoors on a college campus.

This is why we're doing mapathons (previously editathons) - they bring new
people into the community! How awesome is that?

-- 
Alex Barth
Vice President
OpenStreetMap United States Inc.
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Alex Barth
Also! There's still time to join the upcoming #mapathon by organizing an
event in your community
https://twitter.com/OpenStreetMapUS/status/584378522245922816

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 11:33 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 11:09 AM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Hi, Serge.
 
  As a member of the chapter board, I feel a bit erased? misrepresented? by
  your email. It hurt, especially because I think you and I share some
 common
  ground about why we map and that it is important to feel a connection to
 a
  place.

 You're right that I painted everyone with the same brush, and that
 wasn't my intent; I'm sorry. It's hard to be critical of an
 organization and not the individuals, but you're right, I probably
 could have done a better job.

  At any rate, while you are more qualified to speak to the history of OSM
 as
  a whole than I am, I do want to say a few things that will maybe help you
  get the know my personal history with OSM:

 There are people on this list who were involved in OSM longer than me.
 I don't believe I have special qualifications beyond being there.

  When I was new to OSM and first learned about editathons, I didn't know
  anyone involved with OSM or have any preconceived ideas about the
 project.
  All I knew was that editathons sounded amazing, so I made the effort to
  connect with other local mappers and start building more of a community
 in
  my region.  My first editathon - led by another community member -
 involved
  walking around outdoors on a college campus.  My second editathon - led
 by
  myself - involved walking around outdoors in a neighborhood commercial
  district.  In my experience, editathons have always been a way for
 community
  members to get together and map in whatever manner made the most sense -
  sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors.  There can be value in both.
  I remember Paul's post, I was elected to the chapter board, and - it's
 true!
  - I don't have very many OSM edits compared to many members of the
  community.  That doesn't mean I don't go out and map my community - I
  described in a different email how I do so.  But I contribute in other
 ways
  as well.  Last month, I led a group of students in a survey of a nearby
  neighborhood.  I spent hours walking through the neighborhood with them,
  helping mark points, and then helping them enter their data when they
  returned.  I did not personally make a single edit with my OSM user name.
  However, I contributed to those edits invisibly, behind the scenes, and I
  believe several of those students will become regular contributors.

 Maybe time erases this stuff, and that's a good thing.

 Again, my apologies. Especially as someone who doesn't have a car, I
 know the challenge that mapping can be for folks like us, and major
 kudos to you for your mapping and community work.

 - Serge

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Simon Poole
Am 04.04.2015 um 14:57 schrieb Kate Chapman:
...

Small reality check (not saying that this is anybodies fault, just how
it is):

- the US community shapes how the project is perceived by the media globally
- US based companies control the majority of funds spent on OSM
development and have a major influence in OSM related formal bodies
- the US community has a large (far far larger than the relative and
absolute size of the community would indicate) presence in essentially
every policy discussion in an OSM context.

I don't think pretending that the US is an unimportant, negligible
player, best left on its own, is going to work particularly well and
just as a lot of other people follow closely what is going on in the US
and feel entitled to voice my opinion when necessary.  Its the price you
have to pay for global dominance.

And the other part of the puzzle is, while we don't and likely can't
have unified quality standards for OSM, there is a certain expectation
of usefulness, at least for 1st world countries. That might not be a
concern for everybody in the US community, it is a concern for people
outside of the US wanting to use OSM based data for the US (revisit
Richard Fairhurst numerous posts on the topic) and I don't think you can
negate that such an interest is quite valid.

Simon




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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Simon Poole
Am 03.04.2015 um 02:41 schrieb stevea:
 Facts about the world
 Simon Poole writes:
 Up to now OSM has drawn the line in such a way that stuff that is
 signposted and is observable on the ground is fair game (with some
 exceptions, I believe the GR issue is still unsolved).

 Yes, all of that is fair game.  Though I don't know what the GR
 issue is, and ask you to please clarify.

Sorry for the late answer, been on the road for two days and now are on
a rather flaky network connection.  See
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Walking_Routes#France for a very
short synopsis of the GR issue.

 ..  As facts about the world, these data belong to us, and when
 true, we can put them into OSM.  (Sometimes such data, like airline
 routes, are inappropriate to put into OSM -- but that's another topic).

I think where we differ is that I see OSM (not only) as a project that
demonstrates (in practical use) what citizens can do with today's
technology, in an area that just a couple of years back was completely
controlled by government and industry.  If by doing so, more government
data becomes freely available then that is a nice side effect, but not a
primary goal.

I don't see it as a vehicle to promote any specific agenda outside of
the relatively narrow goals of the project itself. In particular I don't
see potentially impacting the primary goal of providing free (as in free
of legal restrictions by third parties) geo data to everyone by becoming
embrolied in legal fights just to prove a point.

It is my subjective impression is that we are just on the brink of the
project being unworkable because our contributors are too bold in using
third party sources -not- the other way around (and yes when I get back
home I have to deal with removing months of work by a mapper together
with the DWG because they were too bold).

Simon


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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Eleanor Tutt
Hi, Serge.

As a member of the chapter board, I feel a bit erased? misrepresented? by
your email. It hurt, especially because I think you and I share some common
ground about why we map and that it is important to feel a connection to a
place.

At any rate, while you are more qualified to speak to the history of OSM as
a whole than I am, I do want to say a few things that will maybe help you
get the know my personal history with OSM:

   - When I was new to OSM and first learned about editathons, I didn't
   know anyone involved with OSM or have any preconceived ideas about the
   project.  All I knew was that editathons sounded amazing, so I made the
   effort to connect with other local mappers and start building more of a
   community in my region.  My first editathon - led by another community
   member - involved walking around outdoors on a college campus.  My second
   editathon - led by myself - involved walking around outdoors in a
   neighborhood commercial district.  In my experience, editathons have always
   been a way for community members to get together and map in whatever manner
   made the most sense - sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors.  There can be
   value in both.
   - I remember Paul's post, I was elected to the chapter board, and - it's
   true! - I don't have very many OSM edits compared to many members of the
   community.  That doesn't mean I don't go out and map my community - I
   described in a different email how I do so.  But I contribute in other ways
   as well.  Last month, I led a group of students in a survey of a nearby
   neighborhood.  I spent hours walking through the neighborhood with them,
   helping mark points, and then helping them enter their data when they
   returned.  I did not personally make a single edit with my OSM user name.
   However, I contributed to those edits invisibly, behind the scenes, and I
   believe several of those students will become regular contributors.

Thanks for reading!
Eleanor

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 1:55 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote:

 Eleanor,

 I want to clarify some things:

 On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 1:06 AM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com
 wrote:

  Paul - If perception of mapping in the US isn't aligning with reality, we
  probably *do* need to do a better job as a chapter board of telling the
 full
  story.

 I believe that the story that the board tells reflect the overall
 experience of the board. Paul did an analysis of the mapping activites
 of the prospective board members before they were elected. Some of the
 board members are not active OSM mappers, so it shouldn't come as a
 surprise to anyone that people who don't do manual surveying don't
 talk about manual surveying.

  I see what you mean about the blog posts, though I do think your
  interpretation is a bit harsh. For example, the mapathon post that you
  characterize as an indoor event, while it does admittedly have a photo
 of
  people at computers, also makes it clear that the theme for the upcoming
  mapathon is the great outdoors.

 The events are characterized as Edit-a-thons and they were designed
 to be run indoors. They were essentially a response from some members
 of the community who felt that Mapping Parties were not for them. The
 advantage of an Edit-A-Thon is that they can be run indoors (unlike
 Mapping Parties), but if you look at most Edit-A-Thons going on next
 week, and you look at the history of them (look at the talk-us
 archives) they're still largely indoor events.

 The only reason that OSM NYC runs them as outdoor events is that I
 believe strongly that the experience of going out and surveying has
 value- not only data quality value, but emotional value. There's value
 in being connected to the place you live that can't be captured via
 areal photo or governmental dataset.

 - Serge

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Tod Fitch
Many areas of the western US are sparsely populated. Not only are there few 
mappers per square mile, there are simply very few people per square mile.

I map were I visit. But in more than a few cases I may only visit and area 
once. This could lead to the same issue you worry about for imports: There are 
local mappers to maintain the data I collected and entered. Or even to review 
and correct errors I may have made.

Should I only map areas that I am likely to return to so that I can be 
responsible for the maintenance? Seems pretty limiting to me.

So I think the issue of long term data maintenance is a separate issue from 
that of imports though imported data may spotlight the issue more.

Cheers,
Tod

 On Apr 4, 2015, at 6:14 AM, Volker Schmidt vosc...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 
 Hi all,
 
 I have been reading most of the exchange about the different approaches.
 My take on it is that the entire discussion is missing something that is in 
 my view much more important than the quality of the data at the moment of 
 important:
 I am much more worried about imports for a completely different reason, and 
 that is data maintenance.
 Even if data were 100% correct at the moment of import, they deteriorate over 
 time. If the data are imported directly into the main database, you have no 
 choice than to maintain them manually from then on, and you need to have 
 sufficient poeple on the ground to spot changes in the data set, including 
 the imported data.
 If the external data were not imported, but kept in a separate external-data 
 layer, the situation could be different, because you would have the option to 
 refresh the external data form time to time. But this is not the data model 
 of OSM.
 
 And in that respect there are most likely differences between countries. I 
 can see this difference between Italy and Germany:
 Germany has many more mappers per map feature than Italy has. That is why 
 there are less imports (I suppose) in Germany in the first place, and that 
 explains why they are generally much less import-inclined than the Italian 
 mappers. But Germany could deal better with the data maintenance thanks to 
 more mappers in the field. In Italy we have many imports, but the imported 
 data is generally of poor quality, we simply do not have the manpower.
 Formulated another way:
 the quantity of imported data in an area should take into account how much 
 maintenance manpower is available for that area. Where there are less active 
 mappers, don't be tempted to compensate by by more imports, simply keep the 
 map simpler.
 
 I should point out, that I have no idea what the relative mapper per feature 
 ratios are in he US compared with Germany.
 
 Volker
 
 (Padova, Italy)
 
 
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Kate Chapman
On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 7:18 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 Hi,

 On 04/03/2015 02:41 AM, stevea wrote:


 It seems to me that in the USA, what people think about OSM is one of
 these two:

 (a) A project for hackers and couch potatoes who trawl their county web
 pages and other sources to look for stuff they could upload to OSM
 (because it's such a big country and nobody could possibly, yadda yadda
 yadda)

 (b) A project for people who roll up their sleeves, travel to places of
 humanitarian crises, and help those in need by creating maps where the
 government hasn't done their job well.


Wow Frederik,

In your post related to one of your pet-peeves about the US OSM community
you managed to stumble across one of MY PET PEEVES!

Honestly I have a hard time with people who spend a lot of time on the
country specific mailing lists telling people that live, are from or often
travel to a specific country or area what OSM is to them. If I'm correct
you have never lived in the US, you have never spent significant time in
the US, you have no plans to move to the US or any other particular
interest, right? So why do you come over to talk-US and tell the people
that do all of those things what OSM should be to them?

If we want a free map of the entire world we should all be free to make our
own meaning out of OpenStreetMap. That is of course within the boundaries
of the license.

Signed,

Someone who has mapped her neighborhood by hand, imported data and traveled
to places of humanitarian crisis all with OSM.  Additionally I live and am
from the US.

-Kate

P.S. Specific to the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and your suggestion
that it is mostly people from the US. That is simply not the case. HOT's
new current board is 7 people and only one is from the US. I also suspect
our contributors are more from a few countries in Europe than anywhere
else.




 Bye
 Frederik

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

2015-04-04 Thread Richard Welty
On 4/4/15 8:29 AM, Mike Dupont wrote:

 On Fri, Apr 3, 2015 at 11:08 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com
 mailto:nel...@crynwr.com wrote:

 If the two were layers in the same database, or if they have been
 tagged using railway=dismantled and railway=abandoned, then it's no
 problem to look at them, render them, edit them, analyze them


 I still dont understand why we dont support multiple layers. It would
 seem to be the most logical thing to do and the api could support that
 so simple clients could download a different layers each time.

i was thinking that it'd be pretty easy to set up a leaflet widget to
display an OSM basemap with OHM railroad data as a vector overlay,
but then it occurred to me that Russ is frequently mapping in areas
with no cell signal so that won't work.

but OsmAnd (which i think is what Russ uses for his offline maps) can
import layers sourced elsewhere, so there may be a path there.

richard

-- 
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 Averill Park Networking - GIS  IT Consulting
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Eleanor Tutt
Thanks so much, Serge - seriously.  Your apology means a lot to me.

Happy mapping!
Eleanor

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 10:33 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 11:09 AM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com
 wrote:
  Hi, Serge.
 
  As a member of the chapter board, I feel a bit erased? misrepresented? by
  your email. It hurt, especially because I think you and I share some
 common
  ground about why we map and that it is important to feel a connection to
 a
  place.

 You're right that I painted everyone with the same brush, and that
 wasn't my intent; I'm sorry. It's hard to be critical of an
 organization and not the individuals, but you're right, I probably
 could have done a better job.

  At any rate, while you are more qualified to speak to the history of OSM
 as
  a whole than I am, I do want to say a few things that will maybe help you
  get the know my personal history with OSM:

 There are people on this list who were involved in OSM longer than me.
 I don't believe I have special qualifications beyond being there.

  When I was new to OSM and first learned about editathons, I didn't know
  anyone involved with OSM or have any preconceived ideas about the
 project.
  All I knew was that editathons sounded amazing, so I made the effort to
  connect with other local mappers and start building more of a community
 in
  my region.  My first editathon - led by another community member -
 involved
  walking around outdoors on a college campus.  My second editathon - led
 by
  myself - involved walking around outdoors in a neighborhood commercial
  district.  In my experience, editathons have always been a way for
 community
  members to get together and map in whatever manner made the most sense -
  sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors.  There can be value in both.
  I remember Paul's post, I was elected to the chapter board, and - it's
 true!
  - I don't have very many OSM edits compared to many members of the
  community.  That doesn't mean I don't go out and map my community - I
  described in a different email how I do so.  But I contribute in other
 ways
  as well.  Last month, I led a group of students in a survey of a nearby
  neighborhood.  I spent hours walking through the neighborhood with them,
  helping mark points, and then helping them enter their data when they
  returned.  I did not personally make a single edit with my OSM user name.
  However, I contributed to those edits invisibly, behind the scenes, and I
  believe several of those students will become regular contributors.

 Maybe time erases this stuff, and that's a good thing.

 Again, my apologies. Especially as someone who doesn't have a car, I
 know the challenge that mapping can be for folks like us, and major
 kudos to you for your mapping and community work.

 - Serge

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

2015-04-04 Thread Serge Wroclawski
Russ,

Replies in-line. I also mention my work in the DWG, but I'm not
representing the DWG here, just reporting on what happened.

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 12:31 AM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
 Brad Neuhauser writes:
   So, is the argument here that we should no longer delete features that no
   longer exist, just retag them? Is the argument that we generally should
   delete such features, but railways are a special case where we shouldn't?

 Yes, they are, because railroads went continuously from point A to
 point B, and they leave their mark on the world.

This is really the core of the issue. We're not talking about unused
railroads, where the tracks remain, but ones where the track does not
exist.

 Maybe you don't see
 it. Maybe I don't see it when I add a railroad=dismantled. But maybe I
 can USE THE MAP to do field work to find it.

But if you can't discover them while on the ground, eg if there's been
a building placed over it, if the area has been paved over, or is now
used as a field, then I see two problems:

1. It's not possible to validate
2.The railroad is no longer present, by definition

Let's look at #1 in context. If there was once a battlefield in an
area, but it's now a shopping center, what clues would I look for to
determine that there was a battlefield here? If there were signs
there, that might be doable, but in the absence of it, then I have
don't know how I'd identify a battlefield from a regular field. Maybe
an expert could. They could tell me that a certain land feature was
indicative of a bunker being there once, but without training, I
couldn't find it.

As for the second problem, the way I see it is that a battlefield
that's now a shopping center is now a shopping center in OSM. I don't
think you'd disagree with me here, just as I don't think you'd
disagree that a former playground in NYC that gets demolished and a
tower put in its place is no longer a playground.

 That's why I'm making a
 fuss -- because having even dismantled railroads in OSM is
 *useful*. It's useful to me, it's useful to railfans, it's useful to
 rail-trail creators, it's useful to property managers, it's useful to
 surveyors.

I hear you. This is something you care deeply about, that you've put
enormous sweat equity into in both time and effort, and you're
concerned about your work being for naught. That's something I don't
think anyone is forgetting, but in case you feel that it's being lost
in the discussion, let me be as clear as I can in saying Thank you
for doing this hard work, Russ.

That said, and not diminishing from it, the question before us is
about whether or not this data belongs in this particular dataset, and
utility is not the only measure we use.  Propertly boundaries is
something that people have wanted, and we've resisted putting in OSM,
despite it being useful for a variety of people. Similarly, we've had
people who wanted to put in sea routes which change weekly into OSM.
That's also *possible* to map, but something that has been generally
discouraged because despite its utility, is hard to verify.

 I don't understand why people are so eager to delete accurate and
 useful data, that people have spent hours, days, weeks, months, years,
 and decades adding.

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

The issue came to my attention because we had a user (User A)
complaining about another user (User B) who had deleted a few
dismantled rail lines. User A contacted the DWG regarding this and
wanted User B to have administrative action taken against them. I
looked at what User B did, looked at the changeset comments, looked at
the discussions about it, and User B reports that they went to the
area, manually surveyed it, created new data where there were unmapped
features, and removed features which they could not see with boots on
the ground.

This area isn't anywhere near me, so I was stuck using the Bing
imagery, but what I saw was that some of what was being deleted had
other features on, such as houses where the rail line had been.

In my capacity as a DWG member, I basically punted, saying We have
two users who are both acting in good faith. User A believes the
railroads should stay despite no evidence on the ground, and User B
believes that former railroads that don't have visible evidence should
be removed. Both parties are are acting within what they believe to
be community mapping standards for data in OSM, and neither one is
acting with malice.

In this thread, I see people basically playing out this same dispute.
There's no consensus between groups on this issue- both parties are
acting on what they believe to be good faith.

My *personal* view is that OHM is a far better fit for this, because
not only could you have the tracks, but you could capture data about
them, such as what rail companies they used to serve, and what speeds
they used to support. It makes 

[Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Volker Schmidt
Hi all,

I have been reading most of the exchange about the different approaches.
My take on it is that the entire discussion is missing something that is in
my view much more important than the quality of the data at the moment of
important:
I am much more worried about imports for a completely different reason, and
that is data maintenance.
Even if data were 100% correct at the moment of import, they deteriorate
over time. If the data are imported directly into the main database, you
have no choice than to maintain them manually from then on, and you need to
have sufficient poeple on the ground to spot changes in the data set,
including the imported data.
If the external data were not imported, but kept in a separate
external-data layer, the situation could be different, because you would
have the option to refresh the external data form time to time. But this is
not the data model of OSM.

And in that respect there are most likely differences between countries. I
can see this difference between Italy and Germany:
Germany has many more mappers per map feature than Italy has. That is why
there are less imports (I suppose) in Germany in the first place, and that
explains why they are generally much less import-inclined than the Italian
mappers. But Germany could deal better with the data maintenance thanks to
more mappers in the field. In Italy we have many imports, but the imported
data is generally of poor quality, we simply do not have the manpower.
Formulated another way:
the quantity of imported data in an area should take into account how much
maintenance manpower is available for that area. Where there are less
active mappers, don't be tempted to compensate by by more imports, simply
keep the map simpler.

I should point out, that I have no idea what the relative mapper per
feature ratios are in he US compared with Germany.

Volker

(Padova, Italy)
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Serge Wroclawski
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 11:09 AM, Eleanor Tutt eleanor.t...@gmail.com wrote:
 Hi, Serge.

 As a member of the chapter board, I feel a bit erased? misrepresented? by
 your email. It hurt, especially because I think you and I share some common
 ground about why we map and that it is important to feel a connection to a
 place.

You're right that I painted everyone with the same brush, and that
wasn't my intent; I'm sorry. It's hard to be critical of an
organization and not the individuals, but you're right, I probably
could have done a better job.

 At any rate, while you are more qualified to speak to the history of OSM as
 a whole than I am, I do want to say a few things that will maybe help you
 get the know my personal history with OSM:

There are people on this list who were involved in OSM longer than me.
I don't believe I have special qualifications beyond being there.

 When I was new to OSM and first learned about editathons, I didn't know
 anyone involved with OSM or have any preconceived ideas about the project.
 All I knew was that editathons sounded amazing, so I made the effort to
 connect with other local mappers and start building more of a community in
 my region.  My first editathon - led by another community member - involved
 walking around outdoors on a college campus.  My second editathon - led by
 myself - involved walking around outdoors in a neighborhood commercial
 district.  In my experience, editathons have always been a way for community
 members to get together and map in whatever manner made the most sense -
 sometimes outdoors, sometimes indoors.  There can be value in both.
 I remember Paul's post, I was elected to the chapter board, and - it's true!
 - I don't have very many OSM edits compared to many members of the
 community.  That doesn't mean I don't go out and map my community - I
 described in a different email how I do so.  But I contribute in other ways
 as well.  Last month, I led a group of students in a survey of a nearby
 neighborhood.  I spent hours walking through the neighborhood with them,
 helping mark points, and then helping them enter their data when they
 returned.  I did not personally make a single edit with my OSM user name.
 However, I contributed to those edits invisibly, behind the scenes, and I
 believe several of those students will become regular contributors.

Maybe time erases this stuff, and that's a good thing.

Again, my apologies. Especially as someone who doesn't have a car, I
know the challenge that mapping can be for folks like us, and major
kudos to you for your mapping and community work.

- Serge

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Kate Chapman
Hi Frederik,

On Sun, Apr 5, 2015 at 3:36 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:

 Hi,

 On 04/04/2015 07:20 PM, Simon Poole wrote:
  I just don't want to be called a couch potato in the course of it ;-)

  Seriously, I believe Frederik was more referring to how OSM is viewed by
  third parties

 Indeed. I don't have much exposure to US Americans outside of OSM but in
 the few interactions like that I had, if people did have any conception
 about OSM it usually fell into one of the two categories I mentioned -
 either OSM the hacker project to re-purpose government data or OSM
 the humanitarian project.


I know we've gotten a bit off topic regarding the subject. My point is that
that OSM is going to work differently in different cultures. I understand
the need for legal compliance completely, but I also think people can
certainly do well thought out imports. The question of stale data in
imports? Honestly at this point that to me is more a matter of tools than
anything else. Are there ways to make it easier to update?

Japan and France spend a lot of time importing data. Do you spend as much
time over there telling them how their OSM culture should be?


 I always put it down to people in the USA traditionally having much
 freer access to data their government has collected (viz. TIGER) and
 therefore more likely to respond to hey, here's people finally making
 their own map with a shrug than with enthusiasm.


It is true, it is hard to excited about mapping roads for example when
there is okay data already existing.


 Creating that enthusiasm is a huge challenge (anyone remember
 CloudMade's ambassadors?) and in my opinion, every time someone says ah
 we don't have to map this and that, we can take that data from third
 party source, the enthusiasm dampens a bit. Because who wants to be
 seen doing something that might turn out not to be necessary?


The Cloudmade ambassador program was complicated. The people that had the
most success reaching the widest audience were people that came outside of
the OSM community. To me that might be an indication that US culture
developers less people that have the traditional OSM culture fit.

-Kate



 Bye
 Frederik

 --
 Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09 E008°23'33

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Mike N

On 4/3/2015 5:32 PM, Eleanor Tutt wrote:

I'm interested in hearing more about how and why people contribute to
the map.


 It's just a hobby for me, a way to get out and learn some obscure 
facts about a place.   Most contributions come from a GPS survey or 
local observation.   Although I believe I could get permission from my 
county and an adjoining county for importing buildings and addresses, 
I'm intentionally not bothering with that import because I'm not sure 
who would use the data yet anyway.   (In the US, everyone uses Google, 
so they shrug at OSM).   In the meantime, I am adding addresses of most 
POIs / landmarks that I enter into OSM.


  There are now 3 major contributors in my area, up from 1 for many 
years.  One pulls extensively from survey data he collects from daily 
travels.   The other one has created some detailed landuse coverage for 
the region.   I'm ashamed to admit that he hasn't actually traversed 
each landuse area with a GPS, but is instead using Bingg, and by the 
way NOT AN IMPORT.





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

2015-04-04 Thread Mike N

On 4/3/2015 9:17 AM, Richard Welty wrote:

i think the long term future of OSM will probably involve more
OHM like projects to supplement OSM. my question is how will
the core OSM community treat them? right now it seems very
mixed.


 I think it's a great idea.   There may be some definition about when 
to add things to OHM.  For Ghost tracks for example, should it be added 
when -


 The track is not operational?
 The bleachers are dismantled?
 The track is torn up?
 When the banked oval no longer leaves a depression in the terrain?
 When the variation in tree growths no longer take the shape of the oval?
 When an archeologist digging in the area would not reasonably expect 
to find any racing artifacts?


  OHM would be something to get used to.  Now I'm all too happy to 
obliterate all items in a construction zone when the bulldozers and 
wrecking ball arrive on site.   I'm not sure any random buildings would 
be of interest to OHM unless they had some special significance.


  I can see Russ's point that even if the dismantled tracks are moved 
to OHM, it breaks the relation and continuity of railroad track 
analysis.   I hope that we can postpone railway deletions until we have 
had a chance to explore the issues and come up with some solutions.



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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread TC Haddad
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 2:21 PM, Darrell Fuhriman darr...@garnix.org wrote:

TIGER is much older than reasonably portable GPS units.


According to [1] pre-TIGER paper map sources were below the quality of the
1:100,000 DLG data outside of urban areas. Many of the crazy spaghetti data
areas we see probably haven't changed geometry in TIGER much since since
the mid-1980's when they were digitized the first time. They were never
intended for mapping, but rather were attribute rich for relative
geocoding. We shouldn't be surprised they as bad as they are. Many of the
processes for rural counties to contribute modern geometry (not attributes)
to TIGER only gained steam after the date that OSM sucked it it's first big
import, so the bad areas never benefitted from the geometry improvements.
It is what it is...

All this is to say is that it's important to understand the origins of any
data - many of the complaints people have about government data sources are
easily explained if you trace the origins. For example many people don't
know that the original source of the digital spatial coordinates of
uncorrected GNIS point data was the centroid of the cartographic labels on
24k topo quads. This entirely explains why the points are most often next
to, rather on top of the feature being labeled. Yet complaints abound
because for OSM scales, the data is imperfect. So it goes.

[1] http://geospatial-solutions.com/tiger-database-historical-perspective/
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Re: [Talk-us] North Carolina Outer Banks

2015-04-04 Thread Peter Dobratz
The OpenStreetMap database covers the whole world.  It's often too resource
intensive to do processing on the whole world's dataset at once, so often
third party applications will use extracts of data.  It sounds like you are
using an extract of data which doesn't fully cover the area you are
interested in.  Where are you getting your map datasets?

Peter

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Jeff Klein jeff.klein...@gmail.com wrote:

 If I am correct, probably confused, the map sets only go as far east as
 -76 West, which excludes the Outer Banks of North Carolina. How do I get
 maps that go further east?
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Bryce Nesbitt
I feel the OSM project is missing a major opportunity to find mappers, by
focusing on finding mappers.
Instead find enthusiasts for .  It
could be RV toilets, street art,
abandoned railways (ahem), free book stands, fairy houses, whatever.

OSM is far behind Google in transportation routing via any mode (from
walking to airline/train travel) that that won't work right now.
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Minh Nguyen

On 2015-04-03 22:25, Russ Nelson wrote:

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

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


I wonder if it was even about the resolution in some counties. It's as 
if the data was traced off a cartogram, or maybe reconstructed from a 
table of intersections.


--
m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us


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

2015-04-04 Thread Minh Nguyen

On 2015-04-04 05:23, Serge Wroclawski wrote:

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 12:31 AM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:

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


That shows an incredible level of dedication, but in OSM we generally
don't require specialized equipment to contribute, including
validation.


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


What would you do about someone who was cleverly adding tracks that
didn't exist?

Imagine if there was a vandal who was clever. We'll call this vandal
User V. User V decides to have a bit of fun and makes dismantled
railroad ways.

How do you propose we, as a community, handle User V? My normal way of
handling such a matter, in or out of a DWG context, would be to go to
the place and see if I see what they see. But my understanding from
your mail (and you can correct me if I'm wrong) is that I personally
have the expertise to make that determination?

Who does? What makes one mapper more qualified than another mapper?
This question gets to the heart of this project, which is that we
don't make people take tests to map in OSM. This is such a generalist
project that anyone can contribute. Now you're saying that, in
essence, some features can only be evaluated by certain users.

I don't think that's really what you mean, but that's what I'm hearing.

Let me reframe the question. Instead of Yes they should be in OSM or
No they shouldn't be in OSM, here's the new question:

If a user deleted an object that a layperson can't see in OSM, what do
you think the process be for evaluating that edit should be?


I appreciate your emphasis on verification. The community necessarily 
puts in a lot of effort into data integrity, but we don't really promote 
the more manual side of QA. As OSM grows in profile, our defenses 
against vandalism will increasingly be tested. Personally, I don't find 
ground verification to be nearly as fun as mapping, but if someone's 
going to volunteer to do that work, we shouldn't throw needless 
obstacles in their way.


We should assume that verifiers are every bit as diverse as the OSM 
community at large, rather than a lowest common denominator group of 
laypeople. I'd be much better at verifying administrative boundaries 
than mountain biking trails. You shouldn't trust me to make good calls 
on mtb:scale= values, but don't stop a skilled cyclist from using that 
important tag and another skilled cyclist from verifying it.


On the other hand, mappers who feel the need to rely on detective work 
should document that work, for example by adding a note= tag or 
accompanying that railway=abandoned with some additional clues. If it 
really comes down to spikes you've dug out of the ground, an OSM diary 
post with photos can go a long way. We all love a good story!


--
m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us


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

2015-04-04 Thread Bryce Nesbitt
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 5:23 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote:
 But if you can't discover them while on the ground, eg if there's been
 a building placed over it, if the area has been paved over, or is now
 used as a field, then I see two problems:

 1. It's not possible to validate
 2.The railroad is no longer present, by definition

Such railroads are definitely possible to locate, precisely because of
their linear nature.
Sometimes the signs are the curve of a wall, or a strange row of trees.
Sometimes the signs are subtle, such as a series of gas pipeline markers.
But they can be validated.

Disused railroads are different than playgrounds or demolished buildings.
The boundary between inactive and active is somewhat subtle: some lines
linger on with one train per year for decades.
The boundary between abandoned and razed is subtle: it often happens in
bits and chunks.



But the linear nature of a railroad is not subtle.

To understand what remains, you want to understand the linear nature:
railroads (almost always) connect to other railroads. * Making sense of a
remaining railroad feature (e.g. a tunnel) requires understanding where the
tracks went.* The process of trail building, for example, is reclaiming all
of those legal right of ways, or negotiating alternative routes.

I oppose deletion of a railroad until all of it is gone.  As long as bits
remain, the connecting context is important.  It's minimally verifiable as
well, as a boots on the ground mapper can visit the visible parts, and
infer the connections.
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread stevea

exceptions, I believe the GR issue is still unsolved).


Yes, all of that is fair game.  Though I don't know what the GR 
issue is, and ask you to please clarify.


Sorry for the late answer, been on the road for two days and now are 
on a rather flaky network connection.  See 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Walking_Routes#Francehttp://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Walking_Routes#France 
for a very short synopsis of the GR issue.


Thank you.  A quick GR synopsis:  hiking routes in France, even with 
trailblazers marked on-the-ground (!), are under a restricted 
copyright and cannot be OSM-entered.  Wow!  Our oft-quoted test is 
it on-the-ground-verifiable? to determine whether data are 
OSM-enterable is not as clear-cut as yes or no?


We need discussion, sometimes a Legal Team determinations, good will 
and open hearts as we figure this all out.  Sometimes on a 
case-by-case basis.  Not dogma, dig-in-our-heels zealotry.  That 
isn't easy, so let's face that squarely and cut each other some slack 
that while there may be friction, we won't burst into flame.


..  As facts about the world, these data belong to us, and 
when true, we can put them into OSM.  (Sometimes such data, like 
airline routes, are inappropriate to put into OSM -- but that's 
another topic).


I think where we differ is that I see OSM (not only) as a project 
that demonstrates (in practical use) what citizens can do with 
today's technology, in an area that just a couple of years back was 
completely controlled by government and industry.  If by doing so, 
more government data becomes freely available then that is a nice 
side effect, but not a primary goal.


Recall what made me start this thread:  I want to clean up/improve 
crusty/wrong TIGER railway data.  THAT, in the instant case, is my 
primary goal.  I assert, I believe 100% correctly, that the names of 
long industrial things hundreds of km long are both my business and 
facts about the world that belong to nobody in particular, but 
rather everybody, and hence deserve to be in OSM as correct.  I'm not 
necessarily doing an import, I'm better naming crusty/wrong data OSM 
already has with facts about the world.  Yes, these happen to be 
confirmed by data published by my employees (government agencies). 
That's it.  Please don't conflate the process just outlined with 
government data becoming more freely available as a side effect as 
that is not what I just described nor is it what is happening here.


I don't see it as a vehicle to promote any specific agenda outside 
of the relatively narrow goals of the project itself. In particular 
I don't see potentially impacting the primary goal of providing free 
(as in free of legal restrictions by third parties) geo data to 
everyone by becoming embrolied in legal fights just to prove a point.


I like proving points when it suits me (especially when I am right!) 
but again, that's not what this is.  It is cleaning up old, wrong 
data so they are correct, appropriate-to-be-in-OSM data (but only 
when correct, and they are wrong now).


It is my subjective impression is that we are just on the brink of 
the project being unworkable because our contributors are too bold 
in using third party sources -not- the other way around (and yes 
when I get back home I have to deal with removing months of work by 
a mapper together with the DWG because they were too bold).


I respectfully and strenuously disagree.  We still (and likely will) 
continue to have some predictable and manageable problems with import 
of data from third party sources, but we have procedures in place to 
make imports and third party data sources (two different things, but 
they do often overlap) better.  Emphasis on manageable.  My turn to 
ask:  How much of these problems are OUR FAULT?  The obvious answer 
is every last bit.  We need to educate people, train them and be 
vigilant.  We do all of these things, but if we still have problems 
(we do, but they do not threaten to make the project unworkable) we 
simply must do better.


That's roll-up-our-sleeves work, but it isn't throw-up-our-hands the 
project is almost unworkable.


Respectfully,
SteveA
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Simon Poole
Am 04.04.2015 um 18:40 schrieb stevea:
 Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world
 I respectfully and strenuously disagree.  We still (and likely will)
 continue to have some predictable and manageable problems with import
 of data from third party sources, but we have procedures in place to
 make imports and third party data sources (two different things, but
 they do often overlap) better.
Just as a a clarification the case in question is not an import, but
actually exactly a they are only facts so I can extract them from the
original source(s) and use them in OSM situation.



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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Simon Poole
Am 04.04.2015 um 17:03 schrieb Alex Barth:
 I just don't want to be called a couch potato in the course of it ;-)
Couch carrot? :-P

Seriously, I believe Frederik was more referring to how OSM is viewed by
third parties and the impression outsiders could get from the image we
tend to market. And however at odds with reality such an impression is,
it probably can't be ignored and needs a conscious effort to correct.

Aka no more rooms of people staring at computer screens, more people on
bicycles or whatever :-)

Simon
 



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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Paul Norman

On 4/3/2015 10:06 PM, Eleanor Tutt wrote:
Paul - If perception of mapping in the US isn't aligning with reality, 
we probably *do* need to do a better job as a chapter board of telling 
the full story. I see what you mean about the blog posts, though I do 
think your interpretation is a bit harsh. For example, the mapathon 
post that you characterize as an indoor event, while it does 
admittedly have a photo of people at computers, also makes it clear 
that the theme for the upcoming mapathon is the great outdoors. 
 Eventually, most people do enter the data they collect in the field 
into the OSM while at a computer, and as a mapathon organizer, I don't 
always remember to take good action shot photos.  Rather than assume 
no one set foot outdoors, why not assume that no one remembered to 
stop mapping to take a photo, because mapping outdoors is really fun?
I thought hard about the mapathon/editathon posts. I ended putting them 
down as indoors because that's how their publicity has historically 
been. I'm aware that not all are indoors-only events, but I was looking 
at what the US chapter publicizes.


Seattle has mapping parties that go outdoors in suitable weather which I 
attend - it's not that I'm unaware of surveying going on in the US, but 
Martijn asked about the role the US chapter plays, which I think the 
data solidly answers.


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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Greg Morgan
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 10:04 AM, Minh Nguyen m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us
wrote:

 On 2015-04-03 22:25, Russ Nelson wrote:

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

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


 I wonder if it was even about the resolution in some counties. It's as if
 the data was traced off a cartogram, or maybe reconstructed from a table of
 intersections.


I think TIGER is genius.  I think of TIGER like the walking papers
project.  You print out a piece of paper and mark a few Xs and Os on it.
You go back and record the real data.  TIGER serves its primary purpose:
collecting census data by getting boots on the ground in the right area.  I
base my thoughts/opinion on some of the trailer courts, retirement
communities, and travel trailer parks around AZ.  They were so out of
scale.  It felt like that is what could fit on an 8 by 11.5 sized paper
that could be carried by a census worker.

The intersection table ideal feels right.  There have been a number places
where I cut a street at an intersection.  Where that intersection was good
enough for a census worker, it may drive a person crazy that is trying to
use the same data for a visual representation of an area in a car.

Resolution is another good idea. From my experience with Yahoo imagery, I
like to over zoom when I map.  My node placement is vastly different as
zoom 17 verses 1.25m in JOSM.  With MapBox Satellite, I click on the slider
in JOSM.  I can use the arrow keys to over zoom layer 17 down to 50.1m
before I get to the same Bing looking layer.  Woot! Woot!  I just ran
across this video last week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05_eABTrXq8
 It is a very interesting process that MapBox uses to solve many problems
with imagery.

Regards,
Greg
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[Talk-us] CloudMade's ambassadors

2015-04-04 Thread stevea

Creating that enthusiasm is a huge challenge (anyone remember
CloudMade's ambassadors?)


I do!  That's how I discovered OSM back in 2009.  Thank you Sarah 
Manley, where ever you are.


SteveA
California

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[Talk-us] North Carolina Outer Banks

2015-04-04 Thread Jeff Klein
If I am correct, probably confused, the map sets only go as far east as -76 
West, which excludes the Outer Banks of North Carolina. How do I get maps that 
go further east?
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread stevea
OSM started out with the do-it-yourself, clean room approach of 
on-the-ground surveying. It offers the strongest guarantee of legal 
compliance and appropriateness for OSM -- no legal analysis 
required. All of us certainly hold such efforts in the highest 
esteem, but I do see an argument for letting contributors be 
resourceful in other ways, to *carefully and judiciously* 
incorporate other sources, as long as they do their best to document 
their work.


Thank you, Minh.  That really is all I did with rail subdivisions in 
California.  As others have said, I could have asked the rail 
companies (not by web, which yielded twin brick walls of gotta log 
in and copyright) perhaps by telephone or letter, in which case I 
would have likely been given the answers, these being facts about 
the world.  Or, I could have asked random people on the street, not 
a good idea, so I didn't.  What I did do was to *carefully and 
judiciously* confirm these data thanks to publications by my 
employees (the CPUC), and then I well documented that fact in my 
changeset tags.  Easy, peasy:  being resourceful where it makes 
sense to do so.  And it seems to me, that should be totally fuss-free.


By the way, along with my GPS, a little wire-page note pad with 
pencil and my decent memory/brain, I certainly do my fair share of 
on-the-ground surveying, too.


SteveA
California

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Frederik Ramm
Hi,

On 04/04/2015 07:20 PM, Simon Poole wrote:
 I just don't want to be called a couch potato in the course of it ;-)

 Seriously, I believe Frederik was more referring to how OSM is viewed by
 third parties 

Indeed. I don't have much exposure to US Americans outside of OSM but in
the few interactions like that I had, if people did have any conception
about OSM it usually fell into one of the two categories I mentioned -
either OSM the hacker project to re-purpose government data or OSM
the humanitarian project.

I always put it down to people in the USA traditionally having much
freer access to data their government has collected (viz. TIGER) and
therefore more likely to respond to hey, here's people finally making
their own map with a shrug than with enthusiasm.

Creating that enthusiasm is a huge challenge (anyone remember
CloudMade's ambassadors?) and in my opinion, every time someone says ah
we don't have to map this and that, we can take that data from third
party source, the enthusiasm dampens a bit. Because who wants to be
seen doing something that might turn out not to be necessary?

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Tod Fitch

 On Apr 4, 2015, at 1:36 PM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:
 
 Indeed. I don't have much exposure to US Americans outside of OSM but in
 the few interactions like that I had, if people did have any conception
 about OSM it usually fell into one of the two categories I mentioned -
 either OSM the hacker project to re-purpose government data or OSM
 the humanitarian project”.
 
I wonder if there might be a sampling bias going on. Going out an gathering 
data in the field and then entering it is relatively straight forward and 
non-controversial. So people doing that often don’t join or follow the mailing 
lists. You are much more likely to run in to them at 
https://help.openstreetmap.org or http://forum.openstreetmap.org than on this 
or any other list.

If you get to a situation where it seems to you that an import might be a good 
idea then you join a mailing list and discuss the idea. First with the mappers 
in your country (talk-us in this case) and then if it still seems like a good 
idea with the imports people.

But if all you ever do is “traditional” OSM field mapping you are seldom seen 
or heard of. So the lists will be biased toward discussion of things like 
importing data.

Might be interesting to see a breakdown of current map objects in the US to see 
how many last had manual edits or corrections versus how many are imports.

Cheers,
Tod

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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Mike N

On 4/4/2015 1:04 PM, Minh Nguyen wrote:

I wonder if it was even about the resolution in some counties. It's as
if the data was traced off a cartogram, or maybe reconstructed from a
table of intersections.


 Or recorded with a GPS back in the days when the signal was scrambled, 
that is with the deliberate random error measured by non-military grade 
GPS receivers.



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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Bryce Nesbitt
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 6:14 AM, Volker Schmidt vosc...@gmail.com wrote:

 I am much more worried about imports for a completely different reason,
 and that is data maintenance
 If the external data were not imported, but kept in a separate
 external-data layer, the situation could be different, because you would
 have the option to refresh the external data form time to time. But this is
 not the data model of OSM.


*Not necessarily true*:
I run several ongoing synchronization scripts.  These keep OSM in sync with
a commercial dataset.  The longest running is for car sharing: data from
the reservation system is compared to OSM. OSM mapper additions are
respected.  But if the car is removed by the operator, it's deleted from
OSM.

And this is a two way ongoing import:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Dero_Bike_Repair
Improvements on either side flow to the other (except in the UK, due to
community preferences regarding imports).
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Minh Nguyen

On 2015-04-02 17:41, stevea wrote:

Simon Poole writes:

Up to now OSM has drawn the line in such a way that stuff that is
signposted and is observable on the ground is fair game (with some
exceptions, I believe the GR issue is still unsolved).


Yes, all of that is fair game.  Though I don't know what the GR issue
is, and ask you to please clarify.


If you are using
a collection of facts, be it a list, a map, a file on a computer or
whatever, we have to now always taken the, fairly high ground, position
that you either need explicit permission (by agreement, licence or
similar) or that the use of the source is clearly not subject to
copyright any longer. Forgetting about other rights, regulations etc
that may exist for the purpose of this discussion.


When a collection of facts about the world are data published by a
government (around here, those are our employees), ESPECIALLY if/as one
is in a jurisdiction where geo data published by us (via the government)
are explicitly prohibited to be encumbered by copyright or onerous
Terms -- as I do -- then use of those data flowing into OSM should be
absolutely uncontroversial.  As the explicit example I used in the
instant case, road/rail crossing data published by our PUC that became
reverse-engineered names of subdivisions sufficient to tag
nastily-tagged TIGER data (just plain wrong, but better than nothing and
an OK starting place) so they are more correct is a perfectly valid use
of such data.  I believe anybody in any of the 49 other states can do
this, but I am not as familiar with their Public Records Acts (or/stare
decisis/) as I am California's.  Nor am I an attorney.  But I can read
and make these determinations.  In fact, I believe any reasonably
intelligent adult can do so.  If we can't, it is incumbent upon OSM to
help us do better.  Erring on the side of high ground safety might be
a good place to plant an initial flag, but if it's location is wrong and
we need to move it to a more accurate place, we must do so.


Not every state's public records law is as generous as California's. For 
instance, the Ohio Attorney General's office publishes an annual 
Sunshine Laws Manual [1] that interprets the sunshine law as providing a 
right for public inspection and authorized copying of public records, 
but not necessarily a right to create and distribute unauthorized 
derivative works. Assuming that position is correct, we can't 
automatically treat a PUCO publication as a potential import source. 
Unfortunately, Ohio is no exception. That said, I'm nobody's idea of an 
IP lawyer and I'd love to be proven wrong in this instance.


Moreover, I think Simon and Frederik are arguing from the perspective 
that compliance with U.S. copyright law is necessary but insufficient 
for OSM. To European contributors, concerns over copyright are 
compounded by concerns over moral rights and database rights, hence the 
requirement for explicit permission. I'm uncomfortable with the notion 
of imposing European legal restrictions on American imports, but this 
discussion is more about what *should* be included than what *may* be 
included. A Wikipedia administrator would swiftly delete a perfectly 
copyright-free article about your backyard swing set for being 
unencyclopedic; likewise, the OSM community can decide that 
large-scale inclusion of certain outside sources would take the project 
too far from its founding mission.


OSM started out with the do-it-yourself, clean room approach of 
on-the-ground surveying. It offers the strongest guarantee of legal 
compliance and appropriateness for OSM -- no legal analysis required. 
All of us certainly hold such efforts in the highest esteem, but I do 
see an argument for letting contributors be resourceful in other ways, 
to *carefully and judiciously* incorporate other sources, as long as 
they do their best to document their work.


[1] http://www.ohioattorneygeneral.gov/YellowBook

--
m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us


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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Darrell Fuhriman
TIGER is much older than reasonably portable GPS units. It was originally 
developed for the 1990 Census, which means work began much earlier than that. 
In 1990, handheld GPS units were not even available to the military.

Much of the original data was traced from paper maps (which is also true of a 
great deal of GIS data in use today).

They have an ongoing project to update the data in cooperation with local 
governments, but those entities are often resource constrained themselves. It 
would be great if we could share OSM data with them all, but of course we can't.

d. 



 On Apr 4, 2015, at 13:30, Mike N nice...@att.net wrote:
 
 On 4/4/2015 1:04 PM, Minh Nguyen wrote:
 I wonder if it was even about the resolution in some counties. It's as
 if the data was traced off a cartogram, or maybe reconstructed from a
 table of intersections.
 
 Or recorded with a GPS back in the days when the signal was scrambled, that 
 is with the deliberate random error measured by non-military grade GPS 
 receivers.
 
 
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Re: [Talk-us] Facts about the world

2015-04-04 Thread Darrell Fuhriman
 So I think the issue of long term data maintenance is a separate issue from 
 that of imports though imported data may spotlight the issue more.

Agreed. Data maintenance is a much duller task than adding new data, and that’s 
going to be an issue anywhere and has nothing to do with the origin of the 
data. Many of the common imports (buildings and addresses) are quite slow to 
change anyway, so ongoing maintenance becomes a different kind of beast.

Anyway, there are reason why there are companies whose business is keeping 
business listings up to date — because it’s hard, tedious work.

On that note, I actually sent this as a feature suggestion to the Pushpin 
developers a while back, but I think it’s a concept that could be extended to 
any OSM data, especially now that most of us are carrying around smartphones. 
The idea is make data currency checking as painless as possible. I wrote it 
with POI data in mind, but it could be extended to other data types as well, 
with varying scheduling based on how often the data is likely to change (i.e. 
streets and buildings don’t change that often, businesses do).

d.

===
I was thinking that it would be helpful  to add some geofencing to the Pushpin 
app, so that if you come near a POI you can be asked to check if it's current. 
It could work something like:

Establish geofence for each POIs that has not been updated/verified in some 
interval (let's say 6 months + some random interval, so as to avoid someone 
getting pinged for every POI on the street if they happen to walk down the 
street six months after someone else did).

When user comes near such a geofence, they get a notification and a few options 
to verify. 

For example, let's say Joe's Coffee hasn't been verified for 9 months. When I 
walk past it, I get a notification that says:

Hey, you're right near Joe's Coffee, at 123 Main Street. Would you like to 
verify its information is current?

And it presents me the options:

• Not right now
  - I no longer get notified for Joe's Coffee for some period of time (say, a 
week, or until it's verified by someone else)

• Yes, it's current
 - POI is flagged as current in OSM, app says Thanks! and the geofence is 
removed

• Yes, it's current, but let me change/add to the info
- Takes me to the update screen, I make changes, POI is flagged as verified in 
OSM, app says Thanks! and the geofence is removed

• No, it's out of date
- User is prompted:
   - Let me update it (update as above)
   - It's gone, just delete it
   - It's gone, but let me replace it with what is here now

I think you guys get the idea.
===





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Re: [Talk-us] North Carolina Outer Banks

2015-04-04 Thread Clifford Snow
On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Jeff Klein jeff.klein...@gmail.com wrote:

 If I am correct, probably confused, the map sets only go as far east as
 -76 West, which excludes the Outer Banks of North Carolina. How do I get
 maps that go further east?


Have you search for the Outer Banks in OSM? It returns
http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/357813099, which looks like the outer
banks to someone living in Washington State.


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OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
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