Re: [Talk-us] California is too big ;)

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, Nov 6, 2018 at 5:59 AM Tod Fitch  wrote:

>
> For background, I a 40 year resident of California and have lived, worked
> and/or performed volunteer work in five of the “six Californias”. At
> present I live in Orange County (part of the Six California’s “South
> California” and perform volunteer work, including map generation, for an
> area where the boundary between Ventura County and Kern County (“West
> California” and “Central California”) runs through the middle of the
> parking area.
>
> My guess is the only split that the majority in the state would instantly
> recognize would be “Northern California” and “Southern California”. However
> exactly where that split occurs is likely to be contested. :)
>
> Were I to hazard a guess, I would start on the coast somewhere around San
> Luis Obispo
>

I think Tod is correct here that north/south is the only split most
Californians would recognize, and that the dividing line is not consistent.
(You might also get a "Central California" from some folks, but the
dividing lines there would be similarly fuzzy.) My wife grew up in San Luis
Obispo, and people from LA tend to say she's from Northern California and
San Franciscans say she's from Southern California.

I realize this doesn't help much, just pointing out that you're probably
going to end up drawing some arbitrary lines however you slice it. Maybe
want you want is some kind of clustering based on number of nodes?

(As a further data point on the Six Californias plan, note that it is just
one of many plans introduced even this decade
.
So not useful.)

Hope that helps-
Luis
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Re: [Talk-us] Elections coming up!

[Luis Villa]

Hi, Martijn-
Are there particular skills or perspectives the current board thinks would
be useful to add to the board? In my experience, discussing those can help
bring out candidates that might not otherwise apply.

Luis (not fishing, I've got my hands full helping the legal working group :)

On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 2:57 PM Martijn van Exel  wrote:

Hi all,

The current board (Alyssa Wright, Drishtie Patel, Alex Barth, Ian Dees and
me, Martijn van Exel) is about to end its term, and elections are called
for! These will happen in the second half of November.

You should consider becoming a candidate! Anyone who is a member of the US
chapter can be a board member as well. If you would like to know more about
our work as a board and what is involved in the board work, join our town
hall on November 7 at 8pm Eastern time / 7pm central time / 6pm Mountain
time / 5pm Pacific time / 2pm Hawaii time. A link and more info will follow
shortly!

If you are already sure you will be a candidate (yay!) you can add your
name to the wiki:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Elections/2016.
You should also come up with a position statement, which does not have to
be long but it should convince the membership that they should vote for you!

Only members can vote and be a candidate, if you want to become a member,
please head over to https://openstreetmap.us/join/ and sign up now. Thanks!
If you don't know if you are a member, email us at
members...@openstreetmap.us and we will find out for you.

We all hope you will participate in this election!

Martijn & the OSM US board.
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Re: [Talk-us] Timezones in USA?

[Luis Villa]

And a timely (no pun intended) reminder that state lines can be fluid too:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/altered-state-border-redraw-leaves-16-in-different-carolina/2016/05/29/9b2d1908-25ae-11e6-8329-6104954928d2_story.html

On Mon, May 30, 2016, 9:57 AM John F. Eldredge  wrote:

> Note that "usually state lines" isn't the same thing as "always state
> lines".  The Central Time Zone/Eastern Time Zone boundary runs through the
> middle of both Tennessee and Kentucky, and the lines aren't straight.  They
> zig-zag according to which time zone the local politicians wanted.
>
>
> On 05/27/2016 07:49 AM, Greg Troxel wrote:
>
>
> Frederik Ramm   writes:
>
>
> I have deleted a couple of such time zone polygons account of not being
> verifiable on the ground.
>
> I don't know how time zones are defined "at the source" but it is very
> unlikely that someone puts up signs. I guess there'll be some kind of
> definition that can be kept *outside* of OSM, and can be translated to
> polygons with the help of OSM if desired.
>
>
> This strict on-the-ground notion is overblown.  The real issue in
> verifiability is if an ordinary mapper can check the data.  Everyone
> around me knows that timezone they are in.  I'm sure everyone near a
> boundary knows where it is.  The rules are easily accessible in
> libraries, and they refer to boundaries that are signed (in the US,
> usually state lines).  You can look at clocks displayed in public.
>
> The real issue is where to draw the line about specialized details that
> don't belong on map.  In the case of time zones, they are something that
> has traditionally been represented on maps for a long time, in a base
> map kind of way, vs a thematic data shown on a base map kind of way.
>
>
>
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Re: [Talk-us] Communications manager

[Luis Villa]

To be clear, I am not volunteering myself- besides giving time to the LWG,
I have a baby coming in less than a month, so I'm trying to have fewer
projects, not more. I'm just trying to help defend the board :)

(And yes, I know all about cat herding. If the phrase translated well it
would have been on my last business card.)

Luis

On Fri, Apr 1, 2016, 9:31 PM Greg Morgan <dr.kludge...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 12:01 PM, Luis Villa <l...@lu.is> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 11:55 AM Steve Coast <st...@asklater.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> > On Apr 1, 2016, at 12:42 AM, Paul Norman <penor...@mac.com> wrote:
>>> >
>>> > On 4/1/2016 12:22 AM, Greg Morgan wrote:
>>> >> I would think that the US Board should add another board member to be
>>> a communications manager.  I now understand why corporations have paid
>>> staff that do nothing but manage all these communication options.
>>> >
>>> > Why would this need to be a board member as opposed to another
>>> volunteer managing communications without being a board member?
>>>
>>> Because volunteers tend to be terrible at doing work that isn’t fun.
>>>
>>
>> Good thing board members are paid, then! Oh, wait ;)
>>
>> Seriously, I'm with Paul- a designated group of volunteers who actually
>> enjoys and wants to do this would create a lot of value. (Casually engaged
>> people like me would get a lot out of it.)
>>
>> But making the board *more* of a working board is not a healthy trend.
>> Except in a few very, very key areas (finance, mostly) the board should be
>> about identifying issues and encouraging people to work on them, not doing
>> things themselves.
>>
>
> Luis, I am one hundred percent behind you.  Just like with Martijn, I
> helped out with a starting wiki page. A blank page is no fun.  Here you
> go.[1]  Go man Go!  If you have the secret sauce to grease the wheels, then
> document away.  You would answer the problem for US OSM and many other
> volunteer organizations. Please remember, the US Board is still the owner
> and would require approval when you have an implementation plan with your
> "casually engaged people."  I've been around enough people from Missouri to
> say, "Show Me!"  Well then there is Linus Torvalds: “Talk is cheap. Show me
> the code.”  I also found two links that provide you with another
> perspective on Steve's statement, "Because volunteers tend to be terrible
> at doing work that isn’t fun." [2], [3]
>
> As always we'll be watching and supporting you.  I've have a watch marked
> on the wiki page so that I can cheer for you.
>
> I hope this helps,
> Greg
>
>
> [1]
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Communications
> [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herding_cats
> [3] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=herding+cats
>
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Re: [Talk-us] Communications manager

[Luis Villa]

On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 11:55 AM Steve Coast  wrote:

>
> > On Apr 1, 2016, at 12:42 AM, Paul Norman  wrote:
> >
> > On 4/1/2016 12:22 AM, Greg Morgan wrote:
> >> I would think that the US Board should add another board member to be a
> communications manager.  I now understand why corporations have paid staff
> that do nothing but manage all these communication options.
> >
> > Why would this need to be a board member as opposed to another volunteer
> managing communications without being a board member?
>
> Because volunteers tend to be terrible at doing work that isn’t fun.
>

Good thing board members are paid, then! Oh, wait ;)

Seriously, I'm with Paul- a designated group of volunteers who actually
enjoys and wants to do this would create a lot of value. (Casually engaged
people like me would get a lot out of it.)

But making the board *more* of a working board is not a healthy trend.
Except in a few very, very key areas (finance, mostly) the board should be
about identifying issues and encouraging people to work on them, not doing
things themselves.

Luis
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Re: [Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Slack

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 10:25 AM Bill Ricker  wrote:

>
> On Tue, Mar 29, 2016 at 11:37 AM, Ian Dees  wrote:
>
>> Slack offers an irc gateway if you'd prefer to connect to slack from your
>> irc client. Just sign up for the slack team and look in the "integrations"
>> section for information about how to connect your irc client.
>>
> ​Our software consultancy is using Slack for communications both
> internally and with the client (who adopted it internally at our
> suggestion). In general it s very nice.
>
> 1) History evaporates quickly ... unless you have a paid account.​
>This may be good for Corps with (anti)retention policies, but could be
> a problem for a FLOSS/OpenData project.
>

My understanding is that open source projects can get a free corporate
account that retains history (details here
, I think?) That said,
as I pointed out earlier, history available only to logged-in/signed-up
members is an anti-pattern for open source communities. So some tradeoff is
inevitable there. (That said, most projects have pretty unsearchable IRC
logs as a practical matter anyway, so this may not be much of a loss.)


> 2) The Xmpp / Jabber gateway works with Pidgin etc, but is buggy and
> inconsistent in handling of advanced/new  features (re-edited messages
> don't re-send; multi-user private chat invites don't, emoji as
> :smiley-cat:, display literal as data text with `markdown` only,  ...)
> mapping down to traditional and back. I expect the IRC gateway will be
> similar. The gateway should not re seen as a a panacea; try it before you
> jump hard there!
>
> ​I do concur with sentiment of preferring to base open development on open
> infrastructure.
> ​But if the freemium product provides sufficiently better capability, it
> is not wrong to use it to enable the project.
>

+1 to this. OSM should be seeking to broaden the base of potential mappers,
and that means making sure that gateways to the community are user-friendly
- which these days includes good UX/onboarding experience and mobile apps.
Slack is a clear winner there.

Luis
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Re: [Talk-us] Slack

[Luis Villa]

+0.5 to Slack. It's clearly better than IRC on a number of fronts, but if
it replaces publicly browseable/searchable interfaces, information can be
lost for the casual folks who are the lifeblood of a community. (Meeting
announces there won't be seen by the public, for example.) This usually
isn't a problem for IRC since it is so clearly unfit for that purpose.

Luis

On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 11:26 AM Charlotte Wolter 
wrote:

>
> Slack is easy to use and intuitive. It's a good way to
> communicate with a team, much better than (ugh!)  Github or IRC (which is
> really primitive compared to Slack).
> I think it is a stronger tool for small to medium-sized groups,
> such as a working group, than all of OSM. It may also be useful for some
> national chapters, if they are not too large.
> My Maptime group in Los Angeles, which has about 50 active
> members, uses Slack for notices about meeting content, to organize projects
> and just to communicate one-to-one about activities and special interests.
> It works well and can be learned in about 15 minutes.
>
> Charlotte
>
>
>
> At 12:59 PM 3/26/2016, you wrote:
>
>
>
> Ok so look, Slack took over the world. And it turns out it's pretty good
> and useful. Let's have an official OSM slack.
>
>
>
> Due Diligence:
>
> https://www.google.com/#q=slack+site:wiki.openstreetmap.org
> https://www.google.com/#q=slack+site:lists.openstreetmap.org
>
> I've found two OSM-related Slacks. Someone owns openstreetmap.slack.com
> and there is also osmus-slack.herokuapp.com as a front door to the US
> slack. The former I can't find a lot about. The latter is mentioned here:
>
>
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Maryland
>
> And it has a neat thing to throw out invites to people. There's also a
> neat bot that it looks like tmcw wrote:
>
> https://github.com/osmlab/osm-slackbot
>
>
>
> I'm proposing that a) we have a global slack and b) it be ‘official’
> whatever that means. Having not been able to find this, I invite everyone
> over to:
>
>
>
> https://awesomestreetmap.slack.com
>
> So unless there is a secret slack somewhere that I missed, or something, I
> need help:
>
> * Come join this slack, send me an email for an invite
> * Can someone please add the osmbot to this slack?
>
> * Can someone please make the magic “send me an invite thing†for this
> slack?
>
>
> * Please help edit http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Slack and also make
> slack a prominent part of other methods of communication
> * Please announce this on your favorite existing mailing list, forum or
> IRC channel
>
> I realize that I’m inviting a discussion about how slack is an evil
> company or that we should all just use IRC, and those are fine arguments I
> don’t have the energy for.
>
> Best
>
> Steve
>
>
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> Santa Monica, California
> 90403
> +1-310-597-4040
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> Skype: thetechlady
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Re: [Talk-us] Increasing the number of US Mappers

[Luis Villa]

Just a data point, if OSM is anything like Wikimedia: anywhere outside of
the US and Western Europe, mapper conversations are likely already
happening *primarily* (and possibly even *exclusively*) on Facebook. And in
the US and Western Europe, mapper conversations among people who joined in
the past 1-3 years are also likely already happening at least in large part
on Facebook. The question is not whether you should start conversations
there; the question is whether or not you're engaging with and benefiting
from the conversations that are already happening.

Luis

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 10:30 AM Greg Troxel  wrote:

>
> Bryan Housel  writes:
>
> > Relax, I am not saying “contributors must have a Facebook account”,
> > rather I am saying “People with a Facebook account should be able to
> > join a local interest mapping group”.
> >
> > This is about increasing the number of casual mappers interested in
> > OSM. For example, Maptime is an organization that runs local meetups
> > for this purpose.  They currently seem to prefer Meeetup/Twitter, but
> > I think a stronger presence on Facebook would do more to further their
> > aims.
>
> Sure, but what tends to happen is that the local osm group the organizes
> on $OBJECTIONABLE_PLATFORM and those that don't use it are marginalized.
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Re: [Talk-us] User HomocideBaltimore adding fake / fictional / old data all over Baltimore

[Luis Villa]

Agreed that clearly these edits need to be reverted and the account
probably blocked, but just curious: is there no alternate service (akin to
the historical maps project) for this person to play in?

Luis

On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 2:13 PM Elliott Plack 
wrote:

> It looks like the user is at it again with the old account, has two edits
> 2 hours ago!
>
>
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Homicide%20Baltimore/history#map=15/39.2903/-76.5970
>
> Here they just undid one of the reverted EDITS again:
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/33966044
>
> Here they just undid another one of the reverts, deleting Johns Hopkins
> Hospital and a bunch of the road infrastructure was altered.
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/33966182
>
> The last one I had already manually changed back, as it was one POI edit,
> again the fake police station from the NBC show with the users name.
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/29141714
>
> Block and revert?
>
> Elliott
>
>
>
> On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 4:58 PM Mike Pruett  wrote:
>
>> I see that most everything looks to be reverted. I noticed though there
>> is a second account 'Baltimore Homicide' with a space. This account is
>> older but with only 3 edits.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>>
>> On Friday, September 11, 2015, Mike Pruett  wrote:
>>
>>> I didn't change anything since HomicideBaltimore, only looked at the
>>> damage.
>>>
>>> Mike
>>>
>>
>>>
>>> On Friday, September 11, 2015, Elliott Plack 
>>> wrote:
>>>
 Mike, did you change anything since?

 Mike and I were chatting offline about this but I don't think either of
 us edited anything. I'm on mobile now, will need to check the versions when
 I get back to a desk.

 On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 11:48 Frederik Ramm 
 wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 09/11/2015 05:08 PM, Ian Dees wrote:
> > I've added at least one changeset comment and have also sent a
> message.
> > The user has not responded to either.
>
> Given that the user has obviously read and ignored Paul's block
> message,
> I have had to put in a new block, and have reverted all his edits in
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/33960782.
>
> There were a few objects touched by HomicideBaltimore and later edited
> by someone else so that they could not be reverted cleanly:
>
> relation 1572798 to version 44
> relation 1793885 to version 9
>
> way 16678913 to version 14
> way 16667804 to version 2
> way 336294939 to version 9
> way 239149691 to version 3
> way 16710628 to version 3
> way 357518688 to version 1
> way 16667977 to version 5
> way 16667803 to version 2
> way 277183033 to version 1
> way 237042447 to version 1
> way 16667806 to version 2
> way 16720899 to version 8
>
> node 172413345 to version 4
> node 251856525 to version 2
> node 251856526 to version 2
> node 251856527 to version 2
> node 172413348 to version 6
> node 172413352 to version 5
> node 172413355 to version 5
> node 172413357 to version 5
> node 251856534 to version 1
> node 172413345 to version 4
> node 251856534 to version 1
> node 172413355 to version 5
> node 172413348 to version 6
> node 251856526 to version 2
> node 251856525 to version 2
> node 1631252463 to version 1
> node 251856527 to version 2
> node 172413357 to version 5
> node 172413352 to version 5
>
> I *can* force these objects back to their pre-HomicideBaltimore state
> but that would lose information potentially added by someone
> post-HomicideBaltimore. Perhaps someone could have a look and suggest
> the best course of action.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09"
> E008°23'33"
>
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Re: [Talk-us] US Chapter board elections - time is running out!

[Luis Villa]

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 5:30 AM, Richard Welty rwe...@averillpark.net
wrote:

 this sort of thing happens from time to time. i wouldn't worry about it
 much. i was at one time the only holdover from one board to the next.


Again, outsider/lurker, take with grain of salt, IANYL, etc., etc., but in
my past experience this sort of turnover is hard for an org to handle - you
lose a lot of institutional knowledge. The next board might consider either
growing (which reduces the odds of everyone burning out at once) or moving
to longer, staggered terms so only some seats are up for election in any
given year. Or both. :)

Luis

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Re: [Talk-us] US Chapter board elections - time is running out!

[Luis Villa]

Hi, Martijn, others:

[Lurker here for a while, not a very active OSMer; possibly asking dumb
questions as a result.]

I've found in the past when recruiting for boards like this one that it is
helpful to talk about things like:

   - What kinds of skills does the current board think would be
   helpful/desirable in a candidate?
   - What kind of work do board members do? Is it mostly fulfilling legal
   obligations/formalities? Other?
   - In particular, what sorts of things do board members do that they
   might not otherwise have done as volunteers?
   - What's the time commitment?
   - What do current board members enjoy the most?

Putting this kind of thing out there might help shake some potential
candidates loose.

Luis (not a member, so not doing this on my own behalf :)


On Mon, Sep 29, 2014 at 1:42 PM, Martijn van Exel mart...@openstreetmap.us
wrote:

 Hi all,

 With just a few days to go, we only have two names on the ballot for
 the upcoming US Chapter board elections. We have all five positions up
 for election, so this is clearly not enough!

 Let me tell you what made me run the first time, and why I am running
 for a fourth term. I love OpenStreetMap and care about its future, and
 its community here in the United States. Serving on the board has
 allowed me to work with a small group of committed people to organize
 great events, spread the word about OSM, support local communities
 around the nation and help OSM grow in the US. Sure, it requires time
 and commitment, but it has really been extremely rewarding. In the
 years I have served on the board, I have seen (and helped) the Chapter
 evolve into a more professionally run organization, and I am
 periodically blown away by how much we've been able to do.

 If you've been thinking about putting your name on the ballot but
 haven't yet, feel free to reach out to me with questions, ideas,
 plans, anything you would like to discuss.

 --
 Martijn van Exel
 President, US Chapter
 OpenStreetMap
 http://openstreetmap.us/
 http://osm.org/
 skype: mvexel

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