[Talk-GB] Post Boxes no longer present

2015-09-14 Thread SK53 
This is really a question for Robert, but I think it might be of more
general interest.

I surveyed a fair bit of the town centre of Stockport on Saturday morning &
have just been checking against Post Hoc
 to see if I
missed any possible postboxes so that I could recheck my photos.

In doing so I came across a couple of post boxes outside Carphone
Warehouse/Halifax in Merseyway Shopping Centre which no longer exist (SK1
408  & SK1 409). They are visible in this Geograph image
 taken in April 2014. The area
has obviously been re-modelled since then: including a big hole cut out so
one can see the Mersey. Bollards & other street furniture have changed, and
in the approximate location of the post boxes there is now a K6 telephone
kiosk (the one visible in the geograph photo having gone).

I have no plans to add disappeared post boxes to OSM, so wanted to know is
there any other way to flag up that these have gone, so as to simplify
hunting down ones which are truly missing?

Jerry
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Re: [Talk-GB] Post Boxes no longer present

2015-09-14 Thread Robert Whittaker (OSM lists) 
On 14 September 2015 at 16:02, SK53  wrote:
> I surveyed a fair bit of the town centre of Stockport on Saturday morning &
> have just been checking against Post Hoc to see if I missed any possible
> postboxes so that I could recheck my photos.
>
> In doing so I came across a couple of post boxes outside Carphone
> Warehouse/Halifax in Merseyway Shopping Centre which no longer exist (SK1
> 408  & SK1 409). They are visible in this Geograph image taken in April
> 2014. The area has obviously been re-modelled since then: including a big
> hole cut out so one can see the Mersey. Bollards & other street furniture
> have changed, and in the approximate location of the post boxes there is now
> a K6 telephone kiosk (the one visible in the geograph photo having gone).
>
> I have no plans to add disappeared post boxes to OSM, so wanted to know is
> there any other way to flag up that these have gone, so as to simplify
> hunting down ones which are truly missing?

Yes, there is a way for my tools to be told that a box on Royal Mail's
list is no longer in existence / use. They then come out as grey
markers on the district maps (e.g.
http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/postboxes/progress/IP/IP24/ ) and should
be omitted from any reports of missing boxes.

However, there's no public interface to allow people to add the
"missing" flag themselves, but if you send me the details, I can do it
manually. If there's lots of demand (i.e. I get too many requests to
deal with manually) then I'll have a look at setting up an interface
that people can use to mark the boxes themselves. The best way to
contact me for this, is via my OSM use profile:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Robert%20Whittaker

Since the Royal Mail locations are not always correct, I'd like to
those requesting boxes to be marked to have evidence (such as what you
posted above) that the box definitely used to be present, so we can be
sure that it's not always been in alternative location. Also, with
boxes like the ones described above, is there a chance that the box
has been moved elsewhere, and the box number lives on at a new
location?

Best wishes,

Robert.

-- 
Robert Whittaker

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[Talk-GB] Post boxes!

2012-05-11 Thread Rob Nickerson 
Heard about this on the radio. See link below:

Here's a guy who is photographing post boxes in the UK - could be of real
help for OSM. Anyone have contact with him or any other members of the 'Letter
Box Study Group'?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2142313/Retired-postman-embarks-epic-mission-photograph-115-000-Britains-post-boxes.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Rob
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Re: [Talk-GB] Post boxes!

2012-05-11 Thread Gregory 
 Royal Mail grid reference every post box 
Erm, a request made under the Freedom of Information Act only returned
textual descriptions (usually names of roads, often a side road it is
'near'). I believe Hull has been very hard to find postboxes from this
list. If there is grid reference data for every post box, then Royal Mail
may have broken the FoI Act. Although my information may be out of date, or
slightly wrong.

Mr Willis photographs the base to record the manufacturer’s name and logs
a grid reference on a map
Hmm, maybe he is making the grid referenced database?

I wrote this blog post a while back, which is good to reference if you talk
to someone about OSM  Postboxes.
http://www.livingwithdragons.com/2009/06/my-postbox-obsession


On 11 May 2012 13:49, Rob Nickerson rob.j.nicker...@gmail.com wrote:

 Heard about this on the radio. See link below:

 Here's a guy who is photographing post boxes in the UK - could be of real
 help for OSM. Anyone have contact with him or any other members of the 'Letter
 Box Study Group'?


 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2142313/Retired-postman-embarks-epic-mission-photograph-115-000-Britains-post-boxes.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

 Rob

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-- 
Gregory
o...@livingwithdragons.com
http://www.livingwithdragons.com
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Re: [Talk-GB] Post boxes!

2012-05-11 Thread Mike Evans 
On Fri, 11 May 2012 14:24:05 +0100
Gregory nomoregra...@googlemail.com wrote:

  Royal Mail grid reference every post box 
 Erm, a request made under the Freedom of Information Act only returned
 textual descriptions (usually names of roads, often a side road it is
 'near'). I believe Hull has been very hard to find postboxes from this
 list. If there is grid reference data for every post box, then Royal
 Mail may have broken the FoI Act. Although my information may be out
 of date, or slightly wrong.
 
 Mr Willis photographs the base to record the manufacturer’s name and
 logs a grid reference on a map
 Hmm, maybe he is making the grid referenced database?
 
 I wrote this blog post a while back, which is good to reference if
 you talk to someone about OSM  Postboxes.
 http://www.livingwithdragons.com/2009/06/my-postbox-obsession
 
 
 On 11 May 2012 13:49, Rob Nickerson rob.j.nicker...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Heard about this on the radio. See link below:
 
  Here's a guy who is photographing post boxes in the UK - could be
  of real help for OSM. Anyone have contact with him or any other
  members of the 'Letter Box Study Group'?
 
 
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2142313/Retired-postman-embarks-epic-mission-photograph-115-000-Britains-post-boxes.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
 
  Rob
 
  ___

There is this website for documenting postbox locations
http://www.dracos.co.uk/play/locating-postboxes/

Mike Evans

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Re: [Talk-GB] Post boxes!

2012-05-11 Thread Robert Whittaker (OSM) 
On 11 May 2012 14:24, Gregory nomoregra...@googlemail.com wrote:
  Royal Mail grid reference every post box 
 Erm, a request made under the Freedom of Information Act only returned
 textual descriptions (usually names of roads, often a side road it is
 'near'). I believe Hull has been very hard to find postboxes from this list.
 If there is grid reference data for every post box, then Royal Mail may have
 broken the FoI Act. Although my information may be out of date, or slightly
 wrong.

See http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/postbox_data_in_central_collecti

Royal Mail fought really hard not to release the location data they
have, and despite my best efforts managed to convince the Information
Commissioner that the public interest lay in withholding the
coordinates. :-( But then they released a rather nice CSV file
including two columns of numbers that look remarkably like numerical
OS grid references... Go figure. I'm planning to ask for an updated
list in June (when it will have been a year since that release).

Unfortunately the coordinates in that file are not consistently good.
Most seem to be accurate to within a few meters, but there are quite a
few that are 50-200m out. And then I've found a few that are
completely out -- probably with the coordinates from another box
altogether put in by mistake. From their responses to my FOI request,
I can't see Royal Mail giving us permission to import the coordinates.
Though I don't think we'd want to anyway, since the accuracy isn't
good enough, and it would be a hard job to deal with the merging with
existing data. Nevertheless, the file can be useful for finding where
to look for boxes that might be missing from OSM.

I haven't polished this up yet, but if you want to see a quick
comparison and indications of missing or incorrect boxes in OSM when
compared with Royal Mail's data, have a look at
http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/postboxes/2/map.html . You can use the
results to suggest where you might want to go and survey, but
shouldn't directly copy any Royal Mail data into OSM.

Other postbox tools can be found at http://robert.mathmos.net/osm/postboxes/

Robert.

-- 
Robert Whittaker

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Re: [Talk-GB] Post boxes!

2012-05-11 Thread Craig Wallace 

On 11/05/2012 14:24, Gregory wrote:

 Royal Mail grid reference every post box 
Erm, a request made under the Freedom of Information Act only returned
textual descriptions (usually names of roads, often a side road it is
'near'). I believe Hull has been very hard to find postboxes from this
list. If there is grid reference data for every post box, then Royal
Mail may have broken the FoI Act. Although my information may be out of
date, or slightly wrong.

Mr Willis photographs the base to record the manufacturer’s name and
logs a grid reference on a map
Hmm, maybe he is making the grid referenced database?


The article is unclear, but it may be referring to the Letter Box Study 
Group database.
I'm not sure whether that database is based on the Royal Mail lists, or 
just what members of the group have surveyed. So I don't know how 
complete or accurate it is.


They do have a website ( http://www.lbsg.org/ ), though it seems the 
database is only available to paid-up members.



Craig

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Re: [Talk-GB] Post boxes!

2012-05-11 Thread Rob Nickerson 
Was thinking more along the line of asking him is he minds us using his
photos to add the extra details to OSM (e.g. ref numbers, collection times,
and royal cyphers). This would of course depend on how good the photos are
- the ref numbers and collection times are quite small on the details pane
of the postbox.

Rob
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Re: [Talk-GB] Post boxes!

2012-05-11 Thread John Sturdy 
On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 5:16 PM, Rob Nickerson
rob.j.nicker...@gmail.com wrote:

 Was thinking more along the line of asking him is he minds us using his
 photos to add the extra details to OSM (e.g. ref numbers, collection times,
 and royal cyphers).

Or we could invite him to sign up to OSM himself!

__John

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Re: [Talk-GB] Post boxes!

2012-05-11 Thread Robert Norris 

NB There's a group on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/postboxbypostcode/

With a reasonably active number of members and photos with varying amounts of 
tag info.

Photographs are under the copyright terms of the original taker.

Be Seeing You - Rob.
If at first you don't succeed,
then skydiving isn't for you.
  
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