Re: [OSM-talk] weird "excessive bounces" warnings from the list

[David Earl]

Lots of OSM email list mail ends up in my GMail spam. AFAICS this is
because the remailer doesn't deal with DKIM headers properly (it changes
the signed content, To: for example, so the signature test fails) and some
providers (btmail for example) have DMARC records which force the rejection
of such emails by the recipient, and even if they don't the dkim failure
can increase the spam score over the threshold. The envelope-from seems to
be correct so that it sees osm as the sender (even though that's not what
From: says) and so uses OSM's SPF correctly.

David

On Tue, 2 Oct 2018 at 07:05, Tom Hughes  wrote:

> On 02/10/2018 04:21, Paul Johnson wrote:
>
> > Only if the sender is sending from a server other than their normal mail
> > server, something readily detectable in the headers.  Google seems to
> > use the same strategy as I did running my own mail server for about 12
> > years before moving to gsuite, which is, hey, not totally
> > standards-compliant, since it'll go through DATA before deciding whether
> > or not to accept or reject, but very workable to give the sender some
> > idea what happened.
>
> Once it has gone through the list it appears to be being sent from
> our mail server.
>
> Tom
>
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Re: [Talk-GB] University of Northampton new campus - mapper required

[David Earl]

> Is this something that could be done over a series of evenings and a
couple of afternoons or is it a larger task?

I don't have a good feel for the scale of the task, but at a complete
guess, I'd say it's a couple of days on the ground and the same for data
entry, given the detail they are likely to want. But I think you'd have to
discuss that with them. I think it needs someone local who can go back
several times, and to be able to assess the scale before committing to it.

> Do they not have any architects' drawings they could share?

Quite possibly, but it depends on the copyright. I've found in the past
that sometimes contractors drawings are contaminated with Ordnance Survey,
and other times copyright is held the the contractor not the institution.
It would certainly help enormously.

David

On Sat, 14 Jul 2018 at 12:20 Steve Doerr  wrote:

> Do they not have any architects' drawings they could share?
>
>
> Steve
>
>
>
> On 14/07/2018 12:11, talk...@manet-computer.co.uk wrote:
>
> Is this something that could be done over a series of evenings and a
> couple of afternoons or is it a larger task?
>
>
>
> Bing has some images, not sure how old they are.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* David Earl [mailto:da...@frankieandshadow.com
> ]
> *Sent:* 13 July 2018 17:11
> *To:* talk-gb@openstreetmap.org
> *Subject:* [Talk-GB] University of Northampton new campus - mapper
> required
>
>
>
> The University of Northampton is opening a new campus very soon between 
> between
> Bedford Road and New South Bridge Road. They would like to get a detailed
> campus map onto OSM as soon as possible, ideally by August 1. I haven't
> looked but I'm assuming this would have to be a ground survey as it is all
> new buildings so won't be on satellite (though maybe some building
> footprints might be), and in any case that wouldn't get down to the level
> of access doors, or building occupiers. If copyright permission can be
> obtained, I'm guessing they may have plans that could serve part of the job.
>
>
>
> They would be open to employing someone to do the surveying, especially as
> it has a short timescale. I can't really do it as it's too far from home to
> do repeated trips or fit it into my current schedule, otherwise I'd have
> jumped at it (I worked with the contact doing Cambridge University maps,
> and I'm sending this with her permission).
>
>
>
> If anyone is interested, please contact Amy Moore in their estates
> services department: amy.mo...@northampton.ac.uk
>
>
>
> David
>
>
>
>
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[Talk-GB] University of Northampton new campus - mapper required

[David Earl]

The University of Northampton is opening a new campus very soon between between
Bedford Road and New South Bridge Road. They would like to get a detailed
campus map onto OSM as soon as possible, ideally by August 1. I haven't
looked but I'm assuming this would have to be a ground survey as it is all
new buildings so won't be on satellite (though maybe some building
footprints might be), and in any case that wouldn't get down to the level
of access doors, or building occupiers. If copyright permission can be
obtained, I'm guessing they may have plans that could serve part of the job.

They would be open to employing someone to do the surveying, especially as
it has a short timescale. I can't really do it as it's too far from home to
do repeated trips or fit it into my current schedule, otherwise I'd have
jumped at it (I worked with the contact doing Cambridge University maps,
and I'm sending this with her permission).

If anyone is interested, please contact Amy Moore in their estates services
department: amy.mo...@northampton.ac.uk

David
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Re: [OSM-talk] Directed Editing Policy

[David Earl]

I and colleagues are affected by this policy in that we maintain the map,
which is based on OSM data, for the estate of the University of Cambridge
(obviously, not exclusively, but in practice, most of the work is done by
us, and there are some parts of the estate that aren't generally
accessible). As well as the main map, we have a number of little spin-off
projects, like one that's going on now to locate all specialist recycling
points in the University (paper and cans etc being ubiquitous, but things
like pens less so). The main part of the project was in 2012, and in one
way or another, I did in fact informally do most of what the policy would
require in the future.

While I don't think it's particularly unreasonable, the policy feels very
off-putting to me and I think it feels quite hostile to what is a benign
and desirable activity.

It's also all rather about their obligations to OSM. I think it could work
more positively both ways, giving assurances that if they've followed the
rules, there is some expectation that what they do can last into the future
and that their investment has some degree of security. Groups are making
changes for a reason, presumably. If they are doing so reasonably, it would
be really nice to think that their efforts were supported and encouraged,
not just accepted by sufferance as this policy feels, or even undermined.
If they are putting real money into developing the map, then not
undermining their efforts, supporting the declarations made in public under
the policy into the future. Give businesses putting in real money something
back for their investment in terms of support, not discouragement. OSM can
be a very hostile place to try to work within and slews of hostile reaction
to starting a project doesn't get it off to a good start.

Another part of the University, unrelated to the map group, did start
making changes, with a group of volunteers in a class, in exactly the
unfortunate way that this policy is designed to prevent (and I still
haven't undone all of them) because they just blundered in without thinking
about the co-operative nature of the project. They got stamped on pretty
promptly though by several of us (both within the University mapping
project and others, and not least because they broke the public map of the
University!) But unfortunately the effect of that was for them just to
abandon what they were doing rather than try to take advice in how to do it
right. Waving a formal policy in their face would have made things worse, I
think: the problem was they didn't understand, and a policy wouldn't have
made them understand any better - they wouldn't have been any more aware of
it than they were of any other aspect of what they were doing.

Putting other hats on, I sometimes produce paper maps for people, for
example, as a paid job. On the whole that need not concern OSM - I'm just a
data consumer for those purposes. However, it's a rare project where I
don't find something is wrong or incomplete in the data as I do it, and of
course I go in and correct it, either by surveying, or from local knowledge
or whatever - or, perhaps somewhat closer to this discussion - based on
information from the client, like building plans (copyright permitting of
course). So sometimes, it's only a side effect of a project that I discover
errors and fix them, things I would have done anyway without it being part
of a paid project, had I been aware of them.

But leaving aside the general points, there's some specific things:

(a) the policy is focussed around new activity, but we've been doing the
University map project for many years, so some of the requirements and
recommendations don't really fit.

(b) B2 starts "You *must* aim to comply with...".  Surely either "must" or
"should"; "must aim to" = "should" and "aim to" is fuzzy.

(c) A6 says 24 hours to reply to something. That seems a ridiculously short
time, especially as this is aimed at people who will most likely follow a
pattern of working days, possibly part time, take holidays and time off,
sleep and the like. Just because OSM keenies work at it 24/7 doesn't mean
everyone else does.

David
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Re: [OSM-talk] The Top Ten Tasks list

[David Earl]

The link https://pads.ccc.de/k4rlFOGIHb reports an invalid https
certificate!


On Thu, 6 Apr 2017 at 11:55 Christoph Hormann  wrote:

> On Thursday 06 April 2017, Simon Poole wrote:
> >
> > The other issue is brain storming is nice and so on, but you are
> > going to disappoint a fair number of people if you don't scope it a
> > bit, does "world peace" count as a worthy top 10 task? Or perhaps
> > "turn osm.org in to a gmaps replacement"?
>
> I think doing this completely open in scope and allowing people to think
> outside the box and bring up crazy ideas has its virtues.
>
> But still it is of course to be for a task list so what you write there
> should have the form of something that could - at least in principle -
> be an engineering task.  Things like 'make osm.org the most used map
> website of the world' would for example not be an engineering task.
>
> And if the ultimate list is limited to ten items i don't think it would
> be too disappointing if something is not on that list.  It would not
> means the task in question is undesirable or even unimportant, it just
> means that ten other things are considered to be more important.
>
> --
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> http://www.imagico.de/
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Re: [Talk-GB] Mapping dangerous - but valid - routes

[David Earl]

I also marked some cycle crossings as hazardous, but perhaps with a certain
amount of official legitimacy, in that I was preparing the data to use in
cycle maps for Cambridgeshire County Council, and the ones I marked were
ones they had provided but *they* recognised were not satisfactory: marking
them as interim solutions, links between bits of route that they were
content with. A bit of a cop out, recommending routes but then marking them
as hazardous, but it did reflect realioty and was somewhat more objective
than just my judgement as a mapper. I can't remember the tag I used now, it
was some years ago, but it triggered a warning triangle and/or different
colour on the map rendering I was doing.

David

On Mon, 5 Dec 2016 at 18:04 ael  wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 05, 2016 at 04:12:22PM +, Stuart Reynolds wrote:
> >
> > At Stirling Corner, on the A1 in Barnet, there is a cycle way (hence
> also available for pedestrians) that goes around the outside of the
> roundabout (http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/78315291). A cursory glance
> at satellite mapping shows it to be well defined, and marked. But it will
> also highlight that where you cross the southbound A1 to the south of the
> roundabout (and likewise the northbound A1 to the north) it is highly
> dangerous. You have to cross three lanes of traffic, and there is always a
> flow of some sort, either from the A1 or from the side roads.
> >
>
> So far no one has mentioned the hazard tag. Surely that is the obvious
> and flexible solution here?
>
> I have tagged some dangerous open mine shafts in Cornwall with
> hazard=yes. Being too strict about what is "subjective" can get silly.
>
> ael
>
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Re: [Talk-GB] John Watson School, Oxford

[David Earl]

Fwiw, there is the exact same situation in Ely:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/52.40627/0.25878

David
On Thu, 6 Oct 2016 at 19:19, Lester Caine  wrote:

> On 06/10/16 18:56, Christian Ledermann wrote:
> > How to map this?
> The staring point is if you can identify separate buildings. I've mapped
> a couple of sites where the playgrounds are shared space, so the 'site'
> is an amenity=school, but the names go against each building. Closer
> surveying of a couple of the sites did establish a separation of some of
> the playing areas but a 'common' car park so it does need at least some
> local knowledge to include the finer detail.
>
> I've been lucky that each was on a separate area, while a know I number
> of inner city schools have separate floors of the same building for
> infants and junior with separate governance, but they time share the
> outside space. Not easy to map the third dimension on OSM, but each has
> to have it's own 'level' tag.
>
> --
> Lester Caine - G8HFL
> -
> Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
> L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
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> Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk
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[OSM-talk] Adding notes on www.openstreetmap.org

[David Earl]

It is my experience that many notes people add to the map in my area are
misunderstanding what notes are for: they try to add an annotated marker in
the hope they can use it to send people directions, and similar. Is this
other people's experience too?

Could this maybe be discouraged by changing the wording. Instead of "Add a
note tot he map" on the hover tool tip, could it say something like "Report
a correction or addition needed to the map" or some such, and instead of
"New Note" in the panel heading, say "Report a problem on the map" (no one
reads the small print underneath).

The other thing people do with notes is to report missing names, when they
are already there if only they zoomed in (I don't know what the solution
there is - people won't read instructions). Sometimes this is not shown
because the caption is there but not shown because it would clash with
another caption or icon nearby, but very often it is there all along, they
just didn't look hard enough. Maybe it could zoom the map in when you click
- that would also help the gross innaccuracy of where people tend to put
markers.

David
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Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

 (perhaps just
federated_operator would do.

 Cheers,

 Jerry



 On 22 May 2015 at 14:49, Andy Allan gravityst...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 22 May 2015 at 14:27, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote:
  Andy, the operator tags are all the same, not the building names.

 No, they really aren't.

 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/148247775 - Churchill College
 (University of Cambridge)
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/12861651 - University of Cambridge
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/98523431 - Clare College (University
 of Cambridge)

  But also the assertion within a few dozen miles is wrong, as for
  Nottingham in China.

 Read what I said, please:

  If there were two objects tagged as universities with
  identical names within a few dozen miles, I could make a guess they
  are the same university and write some rendering rules to suit.

 I make no assertion that all parts of the same university are within a
 dozen miles.

 I hope you realise that your tagging (using tags that imply 1200
 different universities) is causing problems, and think what could I
 do to help other people rather than I don't want to change
 anything.

 Thanks,
 Andy

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Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

Indeed, they would need unique IDs of some kind for this to work globally.
I nearly said that in that mail. I would probably prefer that in a
different tag that wasn't actually usually presented to a human reader, and
I'm not sure about the UK company registration number as an ID, because not
all operators are companies and it'#s UK specific. A URL as an ID might be
OK though, as those must belong to the organisation in question. Though
they are always subject to change.

On Sat, 23 May 2015 at 13:36 David Woolley for...@david-woolley.me.uk
wrote:

 On 23/05/15 12:02, David Earl wrote:
  There is a problem having 'operator=Magdalene College' and similar
  rather than operator='Magdalene College (University of Cambridge)'


 Although I think, where operator is  used at all, it is largely used
 with a loose choice of name, in this case, if you want an unambiguous
 name for use in the UK, simply use the formal name of the royal charter
 company, i.e. Magdalene College Cambridge and Magdalene College
 Oxford (company numbers RC000333 and RC000334 respectively), rather
 than a name based on their trading name.

 Legally these are the legal names of the entities that own and operate
 the land in question.

 Companies house actually use monocase, so the capitalisation is arbitrary.

 If you want globally unique names, I think you need an additional tag to
 indicate the namespace (England or Wales registered company, in this case).

 Note that the name attribute is generally the trading as name, which is
 also consistent with the what is on the ground principle.  If you
 actually used the company name for most MacDonalds people would find it
 very confusing, as a lot of them are franchises run by companies with
 MacDonalds nowhere in their name.  For operator, I would expect to see
 the legal entity.


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Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

Can you put that on a different thread.

On Sat, 23 May 2015 at 12:15 Dave F. dave...@madasafish.com wrote:

  Hi

 Going minorly off on a tangent - One item I would change is leisure=pitch
 which current represents whole areas of sports grounds to
 leisure=recreation_ground,  have leisure=pitch to indicate just the
 pitches (ie the white lines of a football pitch). Currently there are
 situations with two 'pitches' on top of each other.

 http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/51.40868/-2.37860

 David Fox

 On 22/05/2015 14:58, David Earl wrote:

 Yes, the operator tags are the same when it is the same institution - the
 colleges are independent institutions, part of the larger federation. This
 is part of the complexity of this.

  I'm not arguing I don't want to change anything, just that there's too
 much gratuitous change which breaks real, existing products because of
 hypothetical futures.The wiki analogy is wrong here I think - that's the
 content. It's much more an API, as I think you were essentially agreeing,
 and people go to great lengths to try to maintain backward compatibility,
 only deprecating things when they absolutely have to.

  And it's not so much me not wanting to change things, of course change
 happens, it's random, arbitrary, incompatible change that is such a problem
 to deal with. Dan's not arguing for that, and I've already said I'll look
 at it and see what's involved. But not today!



 On Fri, 22 May 2015 at 14:49 Andy Allan gravityst...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 22 May 2015 at 14:27, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote:
  Andy, the operator tags are all the same, not the building names.

 No, they really aren't.

 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/148247775 - Churchill College
 (University of Cambridge)
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/12861651 - University of Cambridge
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/98523431 - Clare College (University
 of Cambridge)

  But also the assertion within a few dozen miles is wrong, as for
  Nottingham in China.

 Read what I said, please:

  If there were two objects tagged as universities with
  identical names within a few dozen miles, I could make a guess they
  are the same university and write some rendering rules to suit.

 I make no assertion that all parts of the same university are within a
 dozen miles.

 I hope you realise that your tagging (using tags that imply 1200
 different universities) is causing problems, and think what could I
 do to help other people rather than I don't want to change
 anything.

 Thanks,
 Andy



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Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

I'm sure there are many ways of doing this, but that is what I did.

This thread seems determined to undermine the University of Cambridge map
by wanting to change everything it relies on. I did spend a long time
thinking about how to do it at the beginning of the project, and did
publish the details then. Reorganising it dramatically four years on for
the sake of it would probably mean U of C abandoning OSM as being too
costly to maintain.

On Sat, 23 May 2015 at 12:43 Andy Mabbett a...@pigsonthewing.org.uk wrote:

 On 22 May 2015 at 14:58, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote:

  Yes, the operator tags are the same when it is the same institution - the
  colleges are independent institutions, part of the larger federation.

 Is it necessary to show the college = university relationship in
 OSM? If we tag one (set of) structures as King's College, and
 another as Peterhouse, won't that suffice?


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Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

As I said, I think the upward compatible change for this is to use a tag
with the unique ID of whatever operator (and I think URL would be a good
one, not as a link, but an ID, since two people can't have the same one,
and all orgs we'd be interested in would have one). That way operator
remains the human-friendly item it already is.

On Sat, 23 May 2015 at 15:24 Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:

 On 23/05/15 13:26, Dan S wrote:
  This thread seems determined to undermine the University of Cambridge
 map by
   wanting to change everything it relies on.
  Well no, clearly no-one's doing this with an intent to destroy the
  university map! I assume everyone here just wants to make sure OSM is
  good.

 On the particular point of what goes IN the operator tag ... which is
 all that is actually being discussed here ... Therre needs to be good
 reason to change data that is already in common use and is actually
 cleanly documented. If there is some overriding reason why the content
 of this tag needs changing I have yet to see it. In the absence of any
 other may of including the objects hierarchy, this seems to be the
 sensible way of handing things, and I can see the need for
 'Collage-UofX-X' especially where even the collage's campus way be
 across several places. Does the University of Oxford have any satellites
 in Cambridge? The current documented sytle works and should perhaps be
 documented as the general standard?


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Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

On Fri, 22 May 2015 at 11:54 David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote:

 The schema for tags that make the University map work is at
 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cambridge/University_of_Cambridge
 (I've just realised I haven't updated that page with a recent, unrelated
 new bit, I must do so).


Oh, I did, I'd forgotten! It's this bit at the end I meant:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cambridge/University_of_Cambridge#Non-university_references
. It's what makes the red buildings on the University map (like ARU).
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Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

 to render a map using a UK-wide rendering scheme that indicates
 each university prominently

What *would* you show for Cambridge (or other spread out ones) for this?
Where actually *is* the University of Cambridge? What would you show that
the current tagging doesn't already achieve?

On Fri, 22 May 2015 at 12:30 David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote:

 Does the main OSM rendering understand building=university?


 On Fri, 22 May 2015 at 12:27 Dan S danstowell+...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi David,

 Thanks for the detailed info. My main concern is in terms of the
 consequences for other data consumers. If someone tries to use OSM
 data for anything - such as:
  (a) to plot the density of universities per county
  (b) to render a map using a UK-wide rendering scheme that indicates
 each university prominently
 - the results will be utterly wrong. So we do need some consistency,
 at least at the country-wide level. (I'm pragmatic enough not to aim
 for global consistency ;)

 So I'm not offended, but I do care that our data is good for everyone.
 I suggest that we should make a change but I will not rush anything!

 I don't know what this camp is that didn't like building=university.
 Was it an OSM camp (eg a discussion on the tagging email list)? Either
 way, building=university is now used quite a lot worldwide
 http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/building=university#map - I
 think it's pretty uncontroversial as a building tag.

 So the question, I guess, is what jobs amenity=university is doing
 in your scheme. Is it being used as a selector for extracting data? Is
 it being used as a selector for rendering-rules? You've got your
 operator=* tagging which looks good for selecting a data extract.

 If we made a two-step change such that all building=yes,
 amenity=university, operator=.*University of Cambridge.* were first
 modified to building=university, and then after a few months to remove
 the amenity=university from buildings and leave it on
 sites/universities/whatever-we-agree-it-should-be-on - would that work
 for you? My quick overpass check suggests that would address about 800
 of the 1200 objects.

 Best
 Dan


 2015-05-22 11:54 GMT+01:00 David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com:
  Hi Dan,
 
  Yes, Philip's right - I developed and continue to maintain the
 University
  map at http://map.cam.ac.uk (as well as doing all of the original
 street
  pattern mapping for Cambridge back in 2006). The University has put a
  considerable investment and negotiated permission for college access
 into
  the map and contributed tens of thousands of pounds of survey data into
 OSM
  - it's not just some of its maps, it's completely central to the
  University map, not just a casual effort.
 
  The schema for tags that make the University map work is at
  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cambridge/University_of_Cambridge
 (I've
  just realised I haven't updated that page with a recent, unrelated new
 bit,
  I must do so).
 
  As it happens, I was also thinking about this the other day. The three
 main
  things are that is (a) consistent and (b) doesn't change under our feet
 and
  break the map, (c) it needs a way to distinguish these buildings from
  others. It possibly wasn't the best decision to do it like this, though
 I
  still don't think it is a terrible way to do it. Relations would be
 awful:
  they are very hard to maintain accurately, and incidentally they are
 hard to
  work with in consumers because they come at the end of the data so you
 have
  to do multiple passes or keep lots of data in memory, and I think you'd
 lose
  most of the distinctive renderings off the OSM map, though since that's
 such
  an opaque process it's hard to know.
 
  building=university would work, but only if done in a controlled way so
 that
  we don't break the map while it's being done. But do you really want to
  spend your days in front of a computer changing all the university tags
 in
  Cambridge though?! I can think of more productive and helpful things to
 do.
  I did consider building=university, but like all things OSM, there was a
  camp that only wanted building=yes, and that is what the Map_features
 page
  then decreed (it has more now, but university isn't among them). The
 more
  critical tags from my point of view are the operator ones.
 
  This raises some other points though...
 
  1. What about the sites and the colleges? These are also tagged
 University,
  and there isn't an obvious alternative that won't mean the ordinary OSM
 maps
  don't show them. Fundamentally, is a part of a university a
 university? I
  think it's helpful to do it like that. Did you know the University of
  Nottingham has a branch in China - would it really be helpful to link
 these
  with relations spanning the world? I think there's cases both ways.
 
  2. What is a University anyway? Almost no university is in one physical
  area. Even campus universities like UEA have outlying premises (in UEA's
  case in London too

Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

 a Cambridge mapper, but I'd advise doing nothing until you've spoken
 with David Earl who was contracted by Cambridge University to actually map
 the university - see this link
 http://soc2012.soc.org.uk/node/16.html
 Thanks



  On 21 May 2015, at 22:39, Dan S danstowell+...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Hi all,
 
  I don't relish bringing this up since it's a bit of a tangle, but I
  noticed Cambridge has a lot more universities than I thought!
  Apparently 1219, judging from the number of amenity=university tagged
  objects. In real life I'm aware of two: Cambridge Uni, Anglia Ruskin
  Uni.
 
  I think someone mentioned Cambridge Uni was using OpenStreetMap for
  some of its maps,* so I'd be nervous about proposing anything radical
  right now. But is there anyone on this list who is a Cambridge mapper,
  or connected to the university's use of mapping? It's possible that
  some team decided to use the tag to mark every college building (etc),
  when really amenity=university is supposed to mark a university, not a
  piece of a university.
 
  To do it properly it might need some neat relations to group these
  things. (Might be fun for someone who loves relations - various
  multi-site and hierarchical connections among the buildings scattered
  across town!) Alternatively there are tags in use such as
  building=university which might be good drop-in replacements...
 
  Best
  Dan
 
 
  * They use OSM for their basemap: http://map.cam.ac.uk/ - I wonder if
  they're getting their POI info from it too
 
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Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

Does the main OSM rendering understand building=university?


On Fri, 22 May 2015 at 12:27 Dan S danstowell+...@gmail.com wrote:

 Hi David,

 Thanks for the detailed info. My main concern is in terms of the
 consequences for other data consumers. If someone tries to use OSM
 data for anything - such as:
  (a) to plot the density of universities per county
  (b) to render a map using a UK-wide rendering scheme that indicates
 each university prominently
 - the results will be utterly wrong. So we do need some consistency,
 at least at the country-wide level. (I'm pragmatic enough not to aim
 for global consistency ;)

 So I'm not offended, but I do care that our data is good for everyone.
 I suggest that we should make a change but I will not rush anything!

 I don't know what this camp is that didn't like building=university.
 Was it an OSM camp (eg a discussion on the tagging email list)? Either
 way, building=university is now used quite a lot worldwide
 http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/building=university#map - I
 think it's pretty uncontroversial as a building tag.

 So the question, I guess, is what jobs amenity=university is doing
 in your scheme. Is it being used as a selector for extracting data? Is
 it being used as a selector for rendering-rules? You've got your
 operator=* tagging which looks good for selecting a data extract.

 If we made a two-step change such that all building=yes,
 amenity=university, operator=.*University of Cambridge.* were first
 modified to building=university, and then after a few months to remove
 the amenity=university from buildings and leave it on
 sites/universities/whatever-we-agree-it-should-be-on - would that work
 for you? My quick overpass check suggests that would address about 800
 of the 1200 objects.

 Best
 Dan


 2015-05-22 11:54 GMT+01:00 David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com:
  Hi Dan,
 
  Yes, Philip's right - I developed and continue to maintain the University
  map at http://map.cam.ac.uk (as well as doing all of the original street
  pattern mapping for Cambridge back in 2006). The University has put a
  considerable investment and negotiated permission for college access into
  the map and contributed tens of thousands of pounds of survey data into
 OSM
  - it's not just some of its maps, it's completely central to the
  University map, not just a casual effort.
 
  The schema for tags that make the University map work is at
  http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cambridge/University_of_Cambridge
 (I've
  just realised I haven't updated that page with a recent, unrelated new
 bit,
  I must do so).
 
  As it happens, I was also thinking about this the other day. The three
 main
  things are that is (a) consistent and (b) doesn't change under our feet
 and
  break the map, (c) it needs a way to distinguish these buildings from
  others. It possibly wasn't the best decision to do it like this, though I
  still don't think it is a terrible way to do it. Relations would be
 awful:
  they are very hard to maintain accurately, and incidentally they are
 hard to
  work with in consumers because they come at the end of the data so you
 have
  to do multiple passes or keep lots of data in memory, and I think you'd
 lose
  most of the distinctive renderings off the OSM map, though since that's
 such
  an opaque process it's hard to know.
 
  building=university would work, but only if done in a controlled way so
 that
  we don't break the map while it's being done. But do you really want to
  spend your days in front of a computer changing all the university tags
 in
  Cambridge though?! I can think of more productive and helpful things to
 do.
  I did consider building=university, but like all things OSM, there was a
  camp that only wanted building=yes, and that is what the Map_features
 page
  then decreed (it has more now, but university isn't among them). The more
  critical tags from my point of view are the operator ones.
 
  This raises some other points though...
 
  1. What about the sites and the colleges? These are also tagged
 University,
  and there isn't an obvious alternative that won't mean the ordinary OSM
 maps
  don't show them. Fundamentally, is a part of a university a
 university? I
  think it's helpful to do it like that. Did you know the University of
  Nottingham has a branch in China - would it really be helpful to link
 these
  with relations spanning the world? I think there's cases both ways.
 
  2. What is a University anyway? Almost no university is in one physical
  area. Even campus universities like UEA have outlying premises (in UEA's
  case in London too). Do you really not want the campus area to be tagged
  university just because it isn't the whole thing? You said Anglia Ruskin
 was
  one of the two universities in Cambridge - no it isn't, it's HALF a
  university, the rest is in Chelmsford. I don't think it would do any harm
  and would be helpful to group them with relations, if that were
 maintainable

Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

If this discussion were happening at the start of the project four years
ago. It wasn't as if the scheme wasn't public then. But it's been
implemented now for several years, and to reorganise it is unhelpful and
costly, with little benefit other than a sense of it being right. (And in
any group of 10 mappers, there seem to be 11 opinions as to what is right,
concensus is very hard to achieve).

On Fri, 22 May 2015 at 12:22 Richard Mann richard.mann.westoxf...@gmail.com
wrote:

 A quick scan of Oxford shows the colleges (and a few multi-building areas
 such as the Science Area) as amenity=university, with buildings within
 colleges and odd departments as building=university. So we have a lot of
 universities too.

 Other big difference is that we haven't generally added (University of
 Oxford) to the end of all the college names...

 I'd tend to go for amenity=university for a contiguous site with a single
 name, with the occasional split site (eg on two sides of a public road) as
 a multi-polygon. Then I'd add a *tag* to show that the site was part of a
 collection making up the University (probably operator, though that feels
 wrong, since the colleges are independent entities). It's *not* a candidate
 for a relation because there are no geographical relationships between the
 components.

 Richard

 On Fri, May 22, 2015 at 11:54 AM, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com
 wrote:

 Hi Dan,

 Yes, Philip's right - I developed and continue to maintain the University
 map at http://map.cam.ac.uk (as well as doing all of the original street
 pattern mapping for Cambridge back in 2006). The University has put a
 considerable investment and negotiated permission for college access into
 the map and contributed tens of thousands of pounds of survey data into OSM
 - it's not just some of its maps, it's completely central to the
 University map, not just a casual effort.

 The schema for tags that make the University map work is at
 http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cambridge/University_of_Cambridge
 (I've just realised I haven't updated that page with a recent, unrelated
 new bit, I must do so).

 As it happens, I was also thinking about this the other day. The three
 main things are that is (a) consistent and (b) doesn't change under our
 feet and break the map, (c) it needs a way to distinguish these buildings
 from others. It possibly wasn't the best decision to do it like this,
 though I still don't think it is a terrible way to do it. Relations would
 be awful: they are very hard to maintain accurately, and incidentally they
 are hard to work with in consumers because they come at the end of the data
 so you have to do multiple passes or keep lots of data in memory, and I
 think you'd lose most of the distinctive renderings off the OSM map, though
 since that's such an opaque process it's hard to know.

 building=university would work, but only if done in a controlled way so
 that we don't break the map while it's being done. But do you really want
 to spend your days in front of a computer changing all the university tags
 in Cambridge though?! I can think of more productive and helpful things to
 do. I did consider building=university, but like all things OSM, there was
 a camp that only wanted building=yes, and that is what the Map_features
 page then decreed (it has more now, but university isn't among them). The
 more critical tags from my point of view are the operator ones.

 This raises some other points though...

 1. What about the sites and the colleges? These are also tagged
 University, and there isn't an obvious alternative that won't mean the
 ordinary OSM maps don't show them. Fundamentally, is a part of a
 university a university? I think it's helpful to do it like that. Did you
 know the University of Nottingham has a branch in China - would it really
 be helpful to link these with relations spanning the world? I think there's
 cases both ways.

 2. What is a University anyway? Almost no university is in one physical
 area. Even campus universities like UEA have outlying premises (in UEA's
 case in London too). Do you really not want the campus area to be tagged
 university just because it isn't the whole thing? You said Anglia Ruskin
 was one of the two universities in Cambridge - no it isn't, it's HALF a
 university, the rest is in Chelmsford. I don't think it would do any harm
 and would be helpful to group them with relations, if that were
 maintainable sustainably, but not at the expense of losing the tags from
 the outline itself. And the building thing only extends this further. Is
 a University a geographical thing at all? It's an institution, which may
 have some buildings but really it's a concept not a physical object -
 ultimately everything on the map is just a part, not the whole.

 4. Constantly changing tags creates a moving target that is extremely
 hard to maintain for data consumers, and is a major off-putting factor in
 using OSM, especially if you can't manage

Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

Andy, the operator tags are all the same, not the building names.

But also the assertion within a few dozen miles is wrong, as for
Nottingham in China.

On Fri, 22 May 2015 at 14:23 Andy Allan gravityst...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 22 May 2015 at 14:03, Christopher Baines m...@cbaines.net wrote:
  On 21/05/15 22:39, Dan S wrote:
  I don't relish bringing this up since it's a bit of a tangle, but I
  noticed Cambridge has a lot more universities than I thought!
  Apparently 1219, judging from the number of amenity=university tagged
  objects. In real life I'm aware of two: Cambridge Uni, Anglia Ruskin
  Uni.
 
  I think that it is a poor assumption to make that there exists a one to
  one mapping between objects (nodes, ways, relations) tagged with
  amenity=university, and actual organisations.

 Sure, but then you need to look at what is actually being tagged.
 We've already heard that there are 1219 different universities in
 Cambridge, so I was intrigued as to what they are. After all, I would
 expect amenity=university; name=University of Somewheresville to be
 a university. If there were two objects tagged as universities with
 identical names within a few dozen miles, I could make a guess they
 are the same university and write some rendering rules to suit.

 But they are all different. There's a university named Music Centre.
 There's another university called Pavillion D. There's a third
 university called Forbes Mellon Library which is a surprising thing
 to call a university. There's a bunch of little unamed universities.
 And they all have different operator tags too.

 I suspect these are the names of buildings, not universities. I
 suspect they are operated by different sections of the one university,
 but there's no easy way to tell from the operator tag without a
 natural-language parser coupled with a wikipedia-based explanation of
 the constituent college system.

 Have a look at the data, and you'll see it's not as straightforward as
 you think. Sure, there's no one-to-one mapping between the real world
 and OSM features. But that's not what we're talking about here.

 Thanks,
 Andy

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Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

Sorry, that wasn't intended to be provocative, it was a serious question.
Irrespective of how it is tagged, how should one show a spread out
institution on a map? If you do ARU with two mortar boards or some such
should Cambridge be 10, one for each site, 41 including the colleges, or
what? One could argue that it's the mapping you cited that's inadequate
because it should collapse them into one when they are sufficiently close
together to not be distinct (like ios does for photo locations on a map for
example*), and that when zoomed in you *do* want them to be shown
separately. In any case neither the current scheme nor a relation scheme
preclude that, they are currently group-able by operator (which is a much
more sustainable way of relating them IMO than relations).

I asked about the building=university rendering because it would be a shame
to lose the university buildings as distinct on the main map, and I have no
control over fixing that. No doubt someone would catch up with it
eventually.

I would have to go back to the code to see what the exact implications of
removing the amenity tags are, it's three years since I wrote it. I am
almost certain that changing building=yes to building=university is
harmless, but if I then have to rely on it, we have to be careful that
university libraries aren't tagged building=library for example as the
information gets lost.

David

* in similar vein one of the developments that's been requested for the
university map is that when you get a search hit where the result blobs are
overlapping they should be merged into one. This is very hard to do, so it
will cost a lot.


On Fri, 22 May 2015 at 12:40 Dan S danstowell+...@gmail.com wrote:

 2015-05-22 12:33 GMT+01:00 David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com:
  to render a map using a UK-wide rendering scheme that indicates
  each university prominently
 
  What *would* you show for Cambridge (or other spread out ones) for this?
  Where actually *is* the University of Cambridge? What would you show that
  the current tagging doesn't already achieve?

 It doesn't matter what I would do. The UoC tagging is inconsistent
 with the tagging for other universities, in a way that means no-one
 can currently design a UK-wide map render that can handle universities
 properly.

 I understand that you don't like this erupting under your feet, but
 I'm afraid that's what happens in wiki-like systems. Please, please be
 happy that I'm a considerate map editor who tries to discuss rather
 than just to edit. We have absolutely no guarantees that a map editor
 who loves consistency but doesn't love communication will not break
 your schema at any moment!

 I'd be really grateful if you could comment on my suggestion about
 modifying the building tags.

 Best
 Dan


  On Fri, 22 May 2015 at 12:30 David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com
 wrote:
 
  Does the main OSM rendering understand building=university?
 
 
  On Fri, 22 May 2015 at 12:27 Dan S danstowell+...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  Hi David,
 
  Thanks for the detailed info. My main concern is in terms of the
  consequences for other data consumers. If someone tries to use OSM
  data for anything - such as:
   (a) to plot the density of universities per county
   (b) to render a map using a UK-wide rendering scheme that indicates
  each university prominently
  - the results will be utterly wrong. So we do need some consistency,
  at least at the country-wide level. (I'm pragmatic enough not to aim
  for global consistency ;)
 
  So I'm not offended, but I do care that our data is good for everyone.
  I suggest that we should make a change but I will not rush anything!
 
  I don't know what this camp is that didn't like building=university.
  Was it an OSM camp (eg a discussion on the tagging email list)? Either
  way, building=university is now used quite a lot worldwide
  http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/building=university#map - I
  think it's pretty uncontroversial as a building tag.
 
  So the question, I guess, is what jobs amenity=university is doing
  in your scheme. Is it being used as a selector for extracting data? Is
  it being used as a selector for rendering-rules? You've got your
  operator=* tagging which looks good for selecting a data extract.
 
  If we made a two-step change such that all building=yes,
  amenity=university, operator=.*University of Cambridge.* were first
  modified to building=university, and then after a few months to remove
  the amenity=university from buildings and leave it on
  sites/universities/whatever-we-agree-it-should-be-on - would that work
  for you? My quick overpass check suggests that would address about 800
  of the 1200 objects.
 
  Best
  Dan
 
 
  2015-05-22 11:54 GMT+01:00 David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com:
   Hi Dan,
  
   Yes, Philip's right - I developed and continue to maintain the
   University
   map at http://map.cam.ac.uk (as well as doing all of the original
   street
   pattern mapping for Cambridge back in 2006

Re: [Talk-GB] too many universities in Cambridge

[David Earl]

Yes, the operator tags are the same when it is the same institution - the
colleges are independent institutions, part of the larger federation. This
is part of the complexity of this.

I'm not arguing I don't want to change anything, just that there's too much
gratuitous change which breaks real, existing products because of
hypothetical futures.The wiki analogy is wrong here I think - that's the
content. It's much more an API, as I think you were essentially agreeing,
and people go to great lengths to try to maintain backward compatibility,
only deprecating things when they absolutely have to.

And it's not so much me not wanting to change things, of course change
happens, it's random, arbitrary, incompatible change that is such a problem
to deal with. Dan's not arguing for that, and I've already said I'll look
at it and see what's involved. But not today!



On Fri, 22 May 2015 at 14:49 Andy Allan gravityst...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 22 May 2015 at 14:27, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote:
  Andy, the operator tags are all the same, not the building names.

 No, they really aren't.

 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/148247775 - Churchill College
 (University of Cambridge)
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/12861651 - University of Cambridge
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/98523431 - Clare College (University
 of Cambridge)

  But also the assertion within a few dozen miles is wrong, as for
  Nottingham in China.

 Read what I said, please:

  If there were two objects tagged as universities with
  identical names within a few dozen miles, I could make a guess they
  are the same university and write some rendering rules to suit.

 I make no assertion that all parts of the same university are within a
 dozen miles.

 I hope you realise that your tagging (using tags that imply 1200
 different universities) is causing problems, and think what could I
 do to help other people rather than I don't want to change
 anything.

 Thanks,
 Andy

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Re: [Talk-gb-midanglia] Cambridge meeting tonight

[David Earl]

Thanks - that fits very neatly with a previous meeting in town, so I will
try to get along to it.

David

On 10 February 2015 at 08:27, A. Mayer o...@mayera.net wrote:

 Hi -

 for those of you who haven't seen on Meetup or elsewhere:

 Our First meeting of the year
 Cambridge OpenStreetMap
 Tuesday, February 10, 2015
 7:00 PM
 The Castle Inn
 38 Castle Street

 Best,
 Toni

 PS: I will only make it for a short time at the beginning due to a
 previous engagement.


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Re: [Talk-GB] Life Ring - British English

[David Earl]

On 16/06/2014 12:04, Brad Rogers wrote:

On Mon, 16 Jun 2014 11:05:34 +0200
Andreas Goss andi...@t-online.de wrote:

Hello Andreas,


Is life ring how it is commonly referred to in British English. Just


Always been referred to as lifebelts wherever I've been in England.

Lifebuoy immediately makes me think of soap.




OED...
---
lifebelt   n.  (a) a belt or jacket of buoyant or inflatable material, 
worn to support the body in water;  (b) a (usually rigid) buoyant ring 
used to support the body in water; cf. lifebuoy n.


lifebuoy   n. a (usually rigid) buoyant ring or other device used to 
support the body in water; = buoy n. 1b.


life ring   n. chiefly N. Amer. = lifebelt n. (b).


In other words 'life ring' is an americanism. lifebelt is something you 
wear and can also be used synonymously with lifebuoy, the thing you find 
on promenades and ships that you throw to someone.


David



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Re: [OSM-talk] This has to stop: User Diaries Spam

[David Earl]

Just to say, @osmblogs is not the diaries, it is just a conversion of the
osm aggregate blogs RSS feed, using ifttt.com. If spam were not in the RSS
feed it would not be on twitter either.

David
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Re: [Talk-GB] Town v City (again, sorry!)

[David Earl]

If you want to know population, we should use a population tag. Given 
its history, much as we might like to pretend otherwise, place=city etc 
really *is* no more than an arbitrary hint to the renderer, and not much 
good either because it doesn't reflect the other criteria that would 
determine how prominent a place appears on a map. And of course those 
criteria would differ depending on what and who the map is for. Until 
there is another more diverse way of working out prominence, we'll keep 
going round in circles on this one.


Current definition notwithstanding, I think I favour the place value 
being what people locally say the place is - if they think they are a 
city, then by the what you see on the ground method of mapping, that 
is what it is.


But how the place (label in particular) is represented on a map ought to 
be up to that renderer, probably based on some weighted average of 
various criteria, perhaps including that local subjective judgement, the 
population bracket, home of an important institution, ...


For example, on car maps I think there's an argument for bumping up the 
prominence of the set of place names used on green/blue (trunk/motorway) 
road signs in the UK, because of their usefulness in navigation. Scotch 
Corner is useful in this respect, but tiny (is it even a village?).


David



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Re: [Talk-GB] Mapping Indoor walkways

[David Earl]

On 04/04/2014 19:40, Dudley Ibbett wrote:

I visited the NEC this week and tried using Osmand to navigate between
Birmingham International Railway Station and the Hilton Hotel.  Whilst
the map was very helpful and has lots of detail, the suggested route
took you via roads.  How might you map the walkways through the NEC
building which would hopefully provide the actual walking route you
would take, assuming the building is open?  Or is this something that
isn't suitable for OSM mapping?


Here's an example of what I have done consistently for the University of 
Cambridge in similar situations:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/147456596
http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/148248008

I'll post some photos of what these actually look like in a moment.

There's some documentation of the schema we used here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cambridge/University_of_Cambridge

David




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Re: [Talk-GB] Mapping Indoor walkways

[David Earl]

On 04/04/2014 20:01, David Earl wrote:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/147456596
http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/148248008

I'll post some photos of what these actually look like in a moment.



http://www.frankieandshadow.com/xref/covered1.jpg
http://www.frankieandshadow.com/xref/covered2.jpg




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Re: [Talk-GB] Town v City

[David Earl]

place=city, contrary to various differing cultural uses of the word 
City, used to be somewhere over a certain population, 100K IIRC. 
However, it appears the definition on the wiki has been substantially 
relaxed, as has town. Nevertheless it is still defined by size, albeit 
woolly: The largest urban settlements in the territory and in OSM has 
nothing to do with ceremonial or institutional status.


I think it is a shame that this happened, but it is hard to change now. 
I think it would be better to state the facts, and then leave it up to 
the consumer (renderer, router, whatever) to decide on how it interprets 
those facts.


Naively, a renderer would use population to decide on label sizes. But 
that has a problem in how the data is sourced (the US often has 
population on city limit signs, but we don't here).


But population isn't the only criterion. Some places punch above their 
weight, because they are regional markets or transport hubs or whatever. 
The ceremonial status (Ely) sometimes reflects this, but is sometimes 
just a historical anomaly (St Davids). But somnetimes it can be quite 
extreme: for example Hay-on-Wye, population about 2,000, isn't even 
really a town in OSM parlance, but is a very important settlement 
locally in an area where west of Hereford there isn't much of any size, 
and would probably be shown on most maps just one grade down from Hereford.


Similarly, Bedford is probably not populationally a city, but I think 
most people would subjectively class it alongside Cambridge, which isn't 
much bigger.


I think there's also a problem at the top end. Cambridge (120,000) is at 
the very low end from a population POV, and is completely qualitatively 
and quantitatively different from places like Birmingham and Manchester. 
I think we are missing something to distinguish these massive 
conurbations. And Manchester and even London pale before places like 
Mexico City. There seem to me to be Cambridge and Bedford-like places - 
essentially large and important towns, Sheffield and Leeds-like places 
(small cities), Birmingham and Manchester-like places (large 
metropolitan areas), London and New York-like like places (very large 
cities) and the real giants like Mexico City and Tokyo (megacities)


More generally, I think we still need a way to reflect cultural 
references and concepts while linking to global commonalities.


David


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Re: [Talk-GB] Town v City

[David Earl]

On 25/02/14 13:07, Philip Barnes wrote:



 That is absolutely my point, we should tag the facts and leave it to

 different renderers to then use those facts in the way that best suits

 their users.



The question that needs to be answered is what fact does place=city  
represent in UK mapping.



Your assertion is that it should be those places granted city status by  
the government. Other people are suggesting alternatives.



There is a long history of tags in OSM not meaning quite what a natural  
british english interpretation would suggest, because meaning ideally  
needs to be similar across the globe so we need to find a local way in  
each area to define what a tag means so that meaning does not deviate  
too much across the globe.



Tom



--  
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http://compton.nu/



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Re: [Talk-GB] Somerset Levels Flooding

[David Earl]

I think it would be useful to have a means of indicating road closures etc 
which are different from simply pretending the road doesn't exist or doesn't 
allow certain users for a while. This would allow renderers to mark closures 
rather than just gaps or not visible at all, so people see there is a problem; 
so that user types can be indicated (sometimes bikes can get through a closure, 
but not cars, or cars but not trucks); and so that (perhaps estimated) end 
dates can be given so that the restriction can be ignored when the closure 
didn't get removed - they are easily forgotten. Routers too could say 'I would 
have taken you this way, but it is closed when you want to travel' I was 
surprised someone hasn't already removed a section of railway at Dawlish 
yesterday! But it would be much better IMO if the railway remained, but marked 
as closed so the map could show, eg, a big red X at that point to illustrate an 
anomaly, rather than a short gap not really visible at all but the largest 
scales,  David



Hi -



I do add temporary things such as road closures, construction sites.

Generally only if it will be there for a while, e.g. a month or

more. I agree with Brian's perspective.



Dan





2014-02-06 Brian Savidge a_sn...@hotmail.com:

 I thought temporary information like closures of paths and roads were good

 to put on the map, if nothing else to allow routing to avoid them.



 The water I agree is likely to be a bit inaccurate and isn't going to help

 with the routing, but like a road, those areas will be wet for quite some

 time (weeks to months), so as long as the person doing it keeps it

 relatively up to date, I guess there is no real problem.  The real problem

 comes when its not maintained.



 Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2014 00:24:31 +

 From: dave...@madasafish.com

 To: talk-GB@openstreetmap.org

 Subject: [Talk-GB] Somerset Levels Flooding





 Hi



 About a week ago user Jestr88 added large areas tagged natural=water;

 name=flooding. to indicate the flooded areas on the Somerset levels.



 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/258412163



 Apart from the inaccuracy of these (water levels vary hourly) I thought

 temporary information was frowned upon. I think they should be removed

 or am I missing something?



 Dave F.



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Re: [Talk-GB] Upcoming changes to OpenStreetMap.org website

[David Earl]

Excellent, the close has been added. Thank you to whoever did that - 
thanks for listening.


I also noticed on my rail journey yesterday that the GPS also tracks 
location on the main map, which I think is a really nice touch.


David

On 02/12/2013 13:17, Philip Barnes wrote:


Not sure if its been changed recently, but using IE on my corporate 
desktop, there is a close button.



Phil (trigpoint)

--

Sent from my Nokia N9


On 02/12/2013 13:04 Brian Prangle wrote:

Hi Tom

What would I have done differently? I wouldn't be composing emails 
complaining! ;-). The close issue is really not the issue - I don't 
like it but I can live with it. The main issue is I want to feel that 
I'm part of a community- unannounced changes make me feel that I'm 
just another user in corporate land.


Regards

Brian


On 1 December 2013 19:41, Tom Hughes t...@compton.nu 
mailto:t...@compton.nu wrote:


On 01/12/13 19:14, Brian Prangle wrote:

@Rob - I know you communicated this change and asked for
feedback  for
which I'm grateful- I'm just pissed  off that there was no obvious
communication  of the date of implementation - at best that's just
unprofessionally poor communication, at worst it's taking the
community
for granted.


Why does the date of implementation matter?

There was a long discussion with, thanks to Rob, much more
community involvement that any previous changes. Those comments
were discussed and many changes and improvements made and the
discussion had largely come to an end so I did a technical review
of the code and got a few more issues fixed and then merged it.

I would probably have left it longer after the merge before going
live except that yesterday was a a hack day when we had lots of
people in one place and ready to fix issues and such like so it
seemed like a sensible time to do it.

What difference would it have made to you to have been told a
specific date and time? That's not an attempt to be nasty or
anything, it's a genuine question so we can try and do things
better in the future.

If we have announced it would go live at 11am yesterday what
things would you have done differently as a result?


Tom

-- 
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Re: [Talk-GB] Upcoming changes to OpenStreetMap.org website

[David Earl]

Andy Robinson wrote:
But how do I get the box back now that I’ve closed it ;-) 


Both the links it provided are duplicated in the banner anyway (Learn 
More == About and Start Mapping == Sign Up), it was always only 
signposting these more prominently.


David


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Re: [Talk-GB] Upcoming changes to OpenStreetMap.org website

[David Earl]

It's also linked from the Community Driven section on the About page, 
something that seems like the obvious place to look.


David

On 02/12/2013 16:23, Andy Robinson wrote:


Brian,

“Blog” link in the wiki left menu includes on the linked page the 
community blogs link.


Or http://Blogs.OpenStreetMap.org gets you there too of course

Cheers

Andy

*From:*Brian Prangle [mailto:bpran...@gmail.com]
*Sent:* 02 December 2013 16:17
*To:* Talk GB
*Subject:* Re: [Talk-GB] Upcoming changes to OpenStreetMap.org website

Where do I find community blogs now?

On 2 December 2013 16:06, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com 
mailto:da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote:


Andy Robinson wrote:

But how do I get the box back now that I’ve closed it ;-)

Both the links it provided are duplicated in the banner anyway (Learn 
More == About and Start Mapping == Sign Up), it was always only 
signposting these more prominently.


David




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Re: [Talk-GB] Upcoming changes to OpenStreetMap.org website

[David Earl]

It's also linked from the Community Driven section on the About page, 
something that seems like the obvious place to look.


David

On 02/12/2013 16:23, Andy Robinson wrote:


Brian,

“Blog” link in the wiki left menu includes on the linked page the 
community blogs link.


Or http://Blogs.OpenStreetMap.org gets you there too of course

Cheers

Andy

*From:*Brian Prangle [mailto:bpran...@gmail.com]
*Sent:* 02 December 2013 16:17
*To:* Talk GB
*Subject:* Re: [Talk-GB] Upcoming changes to OpenStreetMap.org website

Where do I find community blogs now?

On 2 December 2013 16:06, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com 
mailto:da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote:


Andy Robinson wrote:

But how do I get the box back now that I’ve closed it ;-)

Both the links it provided are duplicated in the banner anyway (Learn 
More == About and Start Mapping == Sign Up), it was always only 
signposting these more prominently.


David




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Re: [Talk-GB] Upcoming changes to OpenStreetMap.org website

[David Earl]

On 15/11/2013 20:15, Rob Nickerson wrote:

(The aim of this email is to provide prior knowledge of an upcoming change to 
the
OSM website and to give you an opportunity to provide constructive feedback)


I very much like the fact it is responsive on small screens.

Would it be possible to have a dismiss button on the Welcome to 
OpenStreetMap box (including Learn More and Sign Up, but not including 
search)? Just like the x on the panels that replace it, e.g. when you 
search. Perhaps if you dismiss it it could join the green buttons as 
'Welcome' to get it back.


On iPad and netbooks, this box takes up a substantial part of the screen 
obscuring the map. Less of a problem on larger screens, but still 
intrusive if you want to see the whole map. Clearly it is a very 
important part of the page when the whole point is to promote OSM, but 
being able to make it go away would be helpful when you're just trying 
to make use of the map.


Why do some of the links in the header have boxes round them and others 
don't?


David



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Re: [Talk-GB] Upcoming changes to OpenStreetMap.org website

[David Earl]

On 15/11/2013 20:15, Rob Nickerson wrote:

(The aim of this email is to provide prior knowledge of an upcoming change to 
the
OSM website and to give you an opportunity to provide constructive feedback)


One other thing... notes are really helpful, and not immediately new 
though they were introduced on the way to these changes. I have a feed 
on the whole of my area, but in dealing with these I've seen two 
problems which I imagine others have too...


1. Some people think they are adding a personal note, not making 
feedback. (this is kind of analogous to the pervasive problem with 
Potlatch earlier on where people didn't realise they were live editing 
the database).


I think this would largely go away if the button (on hover, layer toggle 
caption, and the headline in the new panel) were labelled 'Feedback' or 
'Report a problem'


2. Many reports are of 'missing' things, which are already on the map. 
Many times they haven't zoomed in enough to see the feature (e.g. a 
'missing' pub); others it really is missing in the rendering, but not in 
the data because of the way the renderer randomly drops POIs and 
captions if they clash with others. Latter is beyond scope of this, but 
could the text in the salmon box ask them to please zoom in to maximum 
to make sure it isn't already there?


David




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Re: [Talk-GB] Advice needed for maxweight turning restriction

[David Earl]

On 12/10/2013 21:00, Philip Barnes wrote:

I came across an odd situation where a road is on way, except for cycles
and vehicles over 13'3 high. Its a residential area of Shrewsbury which
would be a useful rat run, hence the oneway. But to make it complicated,
there is are industrial units, and a low bridge.

Not sure of a better way, but have added a note.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/39348226

Phil (trigpoint)



Another similar one:

http://bit.ly/GNGlOb

where the exception is length (presumably because the one way in 
involves two right angle turns in narrow streets, though why vehicles 
over 25' are allowed at all in those circumstances seems odd).


But I obviously misinterpreted the sign originally, as I put 
maxlength=25ft, which is wrong, and someone else has removed the oneway 
since.


Perhaps the way to tag this is not as one-way, but as two way with a 
minlength of 25ft in one direction. Though that will not be rendered 
helpfully.


David


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Re: [Talk-gb-midanglia] Guided Busway Cycleway

[David Earl]

On 16/09/2013 10:08, Oliver Jowett wrote:

On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 11:58 PM, David Earl da...@frankieandshadow.com
mailto:da...@frankieandshadow.com wrote:

It's signposted as a bridleway (only the northern section), so it is
technically correct. On the basis of map whatbyou see on the ground,
thats a valid change. So long as it have bicycle=yes, and retains
the NCN information, I don't think it matters that much. Oliver is
right though, use by horses is essentially non existent. In visual
terms, one might call it a track, which happens to be designated a
bridleway.


It does render differently (I know, don't tag for the renderer, but it
seems reasonable for a renderer to infer the primary use from the
highway tag)
If you're on a road bike you'd usually want to avoid anything that shows
up as a brideway .. Taking a bike down
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/52724259 was interesting :)


Indeed, but it's a rather subjective approach. The usual rule is map 
what you see, not what you think, and in this case it is signed as a 
bridleway (and is also designated as such). A good rendering would take 
note of the surface tag when displaying cycle specific information.


David




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Re: [Talk-gb-midanglia] Guided Busway Cycleway

[David Earl]

On 16/09/2013 12:52, Oliver Jowett wrote:

I'll try to ride the length of the path some time checking what exactly
is signposted.


http://www.cyclestreets.net/location/32577/


I wonder if cyclestreets assigns different costs to highway=bridleway vs
highway=cycleway? It does show them differently in the resulting
directions, at least.


I'll ask Simon.

David




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Re: [Talk-GB] Using store locator as source

[David Earl]

On 16/09/2013 17:35, Adam Hoyle wrote:

On 16 Sep 2013, at 16:14, Andy Allan gravityst...@gmail.com wrote:

Err, no. That's not how the law works - either on copyright or on
database rights.


Lol, good point - perhaps I should ask if any of them can attribute a
license to the locations on their sites - what would be the best
license for them to use? Creative Commons, or something else? Any
good URLs to share would be handy to make a stronger case - if they
don't just look at me blankly that is.


Almost all retail sites will claim blanket copyright in every page of 
their websites. Just to take one at random, I went to 
http://www.boots.com/ . See the bottom of the page, and you'll see the 
copyright statement.


Furthermore, any maps or use of postcode location they use may also be 
copyright to someone else, like Royal Mail.


But just because something is copyright doesn't mean they can't give you 
permission to use it for certain purposes. They don't need to change 
their copyright to do that, as long as they understand the implications, 
that the specific information referred would be released under the ODbL. 
I'd have thought most stores would be only too glad for their locations 
to be published, but because of the blanket copyright claimed, they'd 
each need to be asked.


The caveat is that they may not be in a position to give you permission 
if the data is itself tied up in copyright to someone else - for example 
if it is derived using the Royal Mail postcode to location database. 
Depending who you ask, they may not realise this is the case. But if you 
read off the location of a store from their branch finder from a map, 
you can be sure that's not allowed and they can't themselves give you 
permission because it doesn't belong to them. And if it's not a map, but 
say the postal address, how are you then going to obtain the location to 
mark it on a map?


The kind of stores we're talking about are in sizeable places, and the 
numbers aren't huge, so doing it on foot is surely perfectly do-able and 
quicker and easier than approaching every chain for a complicated 
permission which they may themselves get wrong. Doing it on the ground 
means you get them all, systematically, in one place too irrespective of 
size or whether they have an online branch finder.


David


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Re: [Talk-gb-midanglia] Guided Busway Cycleway

[David Earl]

It's signposted as a bridleway (only the northern section), so it is
technically correct. On the basis of map whatbyou see on the ground, thats
a valid change. So long as it have bicycle=yes, and retains the NCN
information, I don't think it matters that much. Oliver is right though,
use by horses is essentially non existent. In visual terms, one might call
it a track, which happens to be designated a bridleway.

The southern section is specifically designated as a cycleway.

David

On Sunday, September 15, 2013, Oliver Jowett wrote:

 I guess the argument is about what the primary use is - and in practice I
 see a lot more cyclists than horses on it.

 I don't recall noticing that the {cycle,bridle}way is actually named on
 the ground, so I'm not sure if name= should even be present. Everyone seems
 to call it something slightly different anyway, but I don't think I've ever
 heard guided busway brideway.

 Oliver

 On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 5:40 PM, richard moss 
 richardm...@yahoo.co.ukjavascript:_e({}, 'cvml', 
 'richardm...@yahoo.co.uk');
  wrote:

 I notice that a relatively new contributor has, in his only day of edits
 last month, changed the highway tag from cycleway to bridleway, and the
 name from Guided Busway Cycleway to Guided Busway Bridleway for the whole
 length of the path from Milton Road to St Ives.

 Any thoughts?  (see http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/JamieAbbott )

 He has actually made an error, in that the last bit of the path through
 the St Ives PR is not designated bridleway, it is designated cycleway (the
 bridleway goes off north to Meadow Lane).

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Re: [Talk-GB] Phone numbers in little England

[David Earl]

Bournemouth (01202)[1] and before long Brighton and Hove (01273), 
Aberdeen (01224), Milton Keynes (01908), Bradford (01274) and Cambridge 
(01223) which are all running short of numbers[2], require or will 
require the 'area code' to be dialled as part of the number, even if you 
are inside the area (so that they can use numbers within the area 
starting zero so giving another 100,000 numbers).


So the area code is becoming meaningless as a separate thing anyway in 
the UK.


(I don't know why they couldn't just have more than one area code serve 
the same place for new numbers, e.g. have 02223 as well as 01223 for 
Cambridge which would be upward compatible, but presumably there's some 
technical difficulty doing that).


David

[1] http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/dial-the-code/
[2] 
http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/2011/09/plans-to-safeguard-the-supply-of-uk-telephone-numbers/


On 22/08/2013 11:42, Nick Whitelegg wrote:


So to dial Portsmouth from Southampton you need only do 92xx ? Not
tried it.

Really, to make 023 a Solent area code though in any meaningful sense,
you need Fareham, Gosport, Hedge End, Whiteley etc to all be in the 023
area.

Nick

-Andy Street m...@andystreet.me.uk wrote: -
To: talk-gb@openstreetmap.org
From: Andy Street m...@andystreet.me.uk
Date: 22/08/2013 11:10AM
Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Phone numbers in little England

On Thu, 22 Aug 2013 09:31:49 +0100
Tom Hughes t...@compton.nu wrote:

  On 22/08/13 09:01, Lester Caine wrote:
 
   Personally I still think of 0207 as Inner London and 0208 as Outer
   London, but moving the 7/8 as part of the exchange sort of makes
   sense these days.
 
  Well you think incorrectly then, as that has not been the case for
  some time, either in theory or in practice. On top of which 0203 is
  now in use as well...


I don't think the UK population has really cottoned on to the idea of
three digit area codes. We have a similar situation here on the South
Coast where some people think the area code is 02380 for Southampton and
02392 for Portsmouth when it is actually 023 for the whole area. I do
sometimes wonder whether it is a simple misunderstanding or the old
local rivalry and not wanting to get lumped in with that lot at the
other end of the M27! ;)

--
Regards,

Andy Street

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[OSM-talk] Evernote Atlas for Windows using OSM

[David Earl]

Thought you might like to know: the beta version of the new Evernote 
client for Windows which came out this week appears to use OpenStreetMap 
maps for its geolocation of notes (the Atlas section, where it pins 
notes to the locations where they were created). I don't recognise the 
tiles (maybe they made their own, but I doubt it).


For those that aren't familiar with it, Evernote is a very prominent 
cloud service for storing and indexing notes and attachments. Curiously 
they use a whole range of maps - the iOS client uses Apple maps, the web 
client uses Google. I don't know whether they are planning on moving all 
their clients to OSM.


(The Beta doesn't acknowledge OSM, but I pointed this out to them and 
they have said they will add attribution properly; I don't know when 
they plan to make this the supported release, but anyone can install it 
currently).


David


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Re: [Talk-GB] Usage of lanes / turn restrictions versus multiple ways when road is not divided

[David Earl]

On 09/05/2013 12:56, Jason Cunningham wrote:

UK legislation is fairly clear that Traffic Islands (with or without
hatched markings before are after) are not considered to create two
carriagways. We're not mapping legislation, but nethertheless I wouldnt
create two carriageways for a traffic island in a stretch of road...


What do people think of this:

http://osm.org/go/0EQSJEoZT-- (aerial: http://binged.it/10kuDNm )

and this:

http://osm.org/go/eu6_VCkLp-- (aerial: http://binged.it/16js1Ye )

I was dubious when I first saw what someone (not me) had done in these 
two locations. On the other hand, it is hard to represent properly how 
pedestrians are intended navigate a junction if you don't represent the 
islands, so I have warmed to it a bit. It does make rendering a street 
map a mess, often with lots of apparently superfluous one way arrows and 
a bulge, except at a very large scale.


David



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Re: [Talk-GB] Usage of lanes / turn restrictions versus multiple ways when road is not divided

[David Earl]

On 09/05/2013 13:30, Oliver Jowett wrote:

If there's a better way to represent this while keeping enough
information to be able to route sensibly, how should it be done?


You can set up turn restrictions with relations where necessary. But as 
John said, it doesn't do much for pedestrians (or cyclists in some 
cases). On the other hand, it can make routers give shaky information 
where they see the split as a separate junction. I note Bing models the 
first example I gave in much the same was as whoever did it on OSM did.


As I said, I'm in two minds about this, especially because of the clumsy 
rendering it gives rise to when you can't see the detail.


David




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Re: [Talk-GB] Complaining about refs on roads again!

[David Earl]

On 01/05/2013 09:15, Robert Whittaker (OSM lists) wrote:

if someone comes with an
alternative proposal for tagging those reference numbers on more minor
roads (i.e. a specific key to use), which gains widespread support in
the UK, I'd be happy to go along with that.


According to http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:ref there is 
official_ref


David




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Re: [Talk-GB] Missing place=city nodes: Manchester, Leeds

[David Earl]

On 28/04/2013 09:49, Nick Whitelegg wrote:

Hi,

I've noticed (through doing nominatim searches) that a small number of
UK cities (i.e. Manchester and Leeds) do not appear to have a place=city
node, only an administrative boundary.

Is this deliberate? I've tried other large UK cities and all of those
have a place=city node.

If it's a genuine error I'll add Manchester back (assuming Piccadilly
Gardens is the centre, unless anyone has any better suggestions) but
don't know Leeds well enough to know what might be thought of as the centre.



In general, it shouldn't be necessary to have a node and an area which 
represent the same thing.


Nodes were historically used for things like car parks before we had 
satellite imagery and everything had to be estimated from GPS, but now 
we have those, areas have largely taken over.


Asking the question 'where should I put it' just illustrates why a node 
is a problem, an approximation.


Larger and especially irregularly shaped areas may tend to get their 
labels placed in less than obvious places on renderings, which I guess 
is why so few of the place nodes have been removed when the areas were 
introduced, unlike the almost religious fervour to abolish nodes for car 
parks, schools and churches when areas were made for them.


David



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Re: [Talk-GB] Missing place=city nodes: Manchester, Leeds

[David Earl]

On 28/04/2013 13:57, Dave F. wrote:

General point: Please don't attach place tags onto other way/polygon
objects. They often get deleted when the ways are unpicked then re-added.


Indeed. And I would say don't try to use nodes or ways for multiple 
purposes at all. So putting a node at the tiown hall is not the same 
thing as tagging the town hall as 'place' as I have seen happen before. 
We even had one instance of a post box also being tagged place=... 
because it happened to be convenient.


David



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Re: [Talk-GB] Missing place=city nodes: Manchester, Leeds

[David Earl]

On 28/04/2013 15:21, Andrew wrote:

David Earl david@... writes:



In general, it shouldn't be necessary to

have a node and an area which

represent the same thing.


In this case the nodes and areas do not
represent the same thing. The areas are
the local government districts called
Leeds and Manchester but the nodes are
the settlements of Leeds excluding for
instance Morley and Manchester
including for instance Salford.


OK, City of Manchester and Greater Manchester aren't the same thing. But
there will usually be an administration that _is_ the place (i.e. the
boundary of the place follows the boundary of the adminstrative area),
even when there is a larger unitary authority encompassing more than one
such place. Place has little meaning otherwise - a town or civil parish
or whatever _is_ the place.

There is an argument that says 'place' is an informal concept that
should only be represented as a node, different from administrative
boundaries. This gets perilously close to mapping for the renderer
though (I want a label HERE).

There's also a useful concept of the urban envelope where you want to
draw a grey splodge on a map to represent a built-up area. The various
urban landuses almost get this, but for a clean map you don't really
always want the small outliers or rural dwellings that might be marked
landuse=residential. Once could argue that place areas serve that need.

Whatever, I suspect it has been done in any and all combinations,
because informal place predates the more formal (or formerly
inaccessible to us) admin boundaries.

David







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Re: [Talk-GB] NCN 28?

[David Earl]

On 20/04/2013 13:58, Kevin Peat wrote:

I am not that familiar with NCN signage. Why are the route numbers
sometimes shown in brackets and sometimes not?


Just as with ordinary road signs in the UK, the number in brackets means 
this is the way to route N rather than being route N itself.


David



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Re: [Talk-GB] Ambiguous restrictions sign

[David Earl]

On 20/03/2013 09:25, Brad Rogers wrote:

Both those links are the same, and both seem to point (for me anyway)
to the original except buses junction.


It's not just you, Andy.  I got the same result and thought it must be
me.


Sigh. I corrected them immediately afterwards.





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Re: [Talk-GB] Ambiguous restrictions sign

[David Earl]

On 19/03/2013 14:04, David Fisher wrote:

Hi Shaun,
I take it you're referring to Ipswich?  In which case, I can sort of see
the logic.  It's not one-way, it's no entry, so when the excepting
conditions are satisfied it becomes two-way.  In Croydon's case there's
that no motor vehicles sign at one end, with a no entry sign at the
other with no excepting conditions -- so presumably the intention is for
the street to be one-way even for cyclists.  (which is odd, given that
there's nowhere else obvious to go coming southbound on a cycle.)
I'm now in contact with the local cycling advocacy group, so will see if
I can get a (more) official position on Croydon in the same way as you
have for Ipswich.


No entry signs don't (necessarily) mean a street is one way: they mean 
you cannot drive/cycle between the pair of No Entry signs (unless you 
are one of the stated exceptions, in this case an overnight cyclist). 
A street is one-way if it has the white-on-blue One Way sign (including 
cyclists, unless there is an contraflow lane explicitly painted on the 
road).


The reason they use No Entry sings in this slightly ambiguous way is 
because motorists don't or won't respect No Motor Vehicles signs. The 
rules used to disallow except cyclists under No Entry signs, which 
meant they had to have a cycle bypass with an island to carry the 
left-hand No Entry sign, for which there often wasn't space, an endless 
source of frustration for cyclists. But the rules were relaxed a couple 
of years ago.


David



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Re: [Talk-GB] Ambiguous restrictions sign

[David Earl]

On 19/03/2013 20:10, Simon Blake wrote:

Could I ask the panel about http://goo.gl/maps/y9Zj3 ? If you look
towards the road to the right (Parliament St, Gloucester), there are No
Entry signs with no exceptions signed, but on the road it says Buses
and taxis only. Equally, the sign under the green filter arrow on the
right-hand traffic lights says Except buses - surely that should say
Buses only.


This is just incompetent. Yes, the No Entry sign on the left should have 
an exception (interestingly the road is only wide enough for one bus and 
if you go further down the street we find it is traffic light 
controlled, so the right filter light must be linked to the one a 
hundred metres away - clever). Except that No Entry is unenforceable 
because they must always come in pairs and the one on the island belongs 
with the other one on the exit. I think the road marking is OK, but the 
one on the lights is definitely wrong - it should have a mini No Right 
Turn sign with that exception plate, built into the lights, like this 
(which is no left turn except cycles, but same principle 
http://bit.ly/ZbOhtZ ), along with the filter light.


The no entry sign on the road to the left (St Michaels Square) is also 
illegal, there being only one sign.


I guess pragmatically it works, but the engineers weren't sticklers for 
doing it by the book.


David



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Re: [Talk-GB] Ambiguous restrictions sign

[David Earl]

On 19/03/2013 20:34, David Earl wrote:

On 19/03/2013 20:10, Simon Blake wrote:

Could I ask the panel about http://goo.gl/maps/y9Zj3 ? If you look
towards the road to the right (Parliament St, Gloucester), there are No
Entry signs with no exceptions signed, but on the road it says Buses
and taxis only. Equally, the sign under the green filter arrow on the
right-hand traffic lights says Except buses - surely that should say
Buses only.


This is just incompetent. Yes, the No Entry sign on the left should have
an exception (interestingly the road is only wide enough for one bus and
if you go further down the street we find it is traffic light
controlled, so the right filter light must be linked to the one a
hundred metres away - clever). Except that No Entry is unenforceable
because they must always come in pairs and the one on the island belongs
with the other one on the exit. I think the road marking is OK, but the
one on the lights is definitely wrong - it should have a mini No Right
Turn sign with that exception plate, built into the lights, like this
(which is no left turn except cycles, but same principle
http://bit.ly/ZbOhtZ ), along with the filter light.


Here's a more comparable example, done properly: http://bit.ly/ZbOhtZ .





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Re: [Talk-GB] Using UK postcode data to generate a heat map

[David Earl]

Do you know about openheatmap (http://www.openheatmap.com )? Basically 
you can supply spreadsheets of locations vs data and it will do the 
graphics for you. It doesn't know about postcodes, but if you have the 
means to get locations for postcodes you don't have to do any of the rest.


David

On 30/01/2013 12:44, David Fisher wrote:

Hi all,
A friend has come to me with an interesting-sounding request, and I just
wondered how feasible it might be.
He has a database of UK postcodes and some measurement or other (not
sure what yet) and would like to create a heat map.
Neither of us are techies, but I've been contributing to OSM for a year
now and am familiar with JOSM and (to a lesser extent) QGIS.
How difficult a project is likely to be?  (bearing in mind I'd be doing
it in my spare time as a favour and for my personal interest)
I assume you'd first have to convert the postcodes to lat/lon?  Then I'd
need a rendering tool for the heat colours, and then a simple base map
on which to overlay it (just thinking out loud now).
It sounds like the sort of thing it'd be useful to have a tutorial for.
If one exists, great!  If not, and if I'm successful, I might have a go
at writing one.
Thanks in advance,
David.  (user Pgd81)


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Re: [Talk-GB] Anyone famiiar with Hay-on-Wye?

[David Earl]

On 06/01/2013 14:02, SomeoneElse wrote:

I recently deleted a doodle in Hay-on-Wye, but after doing so noticed
that to there northwest there seem to be a cycle path and a footpath
_very_ close together:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=52.073537lon=-3.130221zoom=18layers=M

I guess that this could be correct, but presumably it's also possible
that they're really the same thing.


I did the original ground survey for Hay in 2007. I still have the 
files, but unfortunately they are so old JOSM won't open them any more, 
so I can't see exactly what I did originally. My original work has long 
since been superseded here.


But I don't remember there being two parallel paths east of the steps, 
and I only have one GPS trace.


So I think you're right, they are the same thing. It's part of the NCN, 
so it should be a cycleway, not a footpath.


And yes, it is an old railway.

David



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Re: [Talk-GB] Ambiguous restrictions sign

[David Earl]

On 31/10/2012 15:29, Andy Robinson wrote:

Shaun McDonald [mailto:sh...@shaunmcdonald.me.uk] wrote:

Sent: 31 October 2012 15:21
To: Matt Williams
Cc: Talk-GB@openstreetmap.org
Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Ambiguous restrictions sign


On 31 Oct 2012, at 14:49, Matt Williams li...@milliams.com wrote:


On 31 October 2012 14:37, David Fisher djfishe...@gmail.com wrote:

Hi all,

The pedestrianised main shopping street in Croydon has a sign with
the following wording: Pedestrian Zone.  No vehicles except cycles
and for loading 6pm-10am.
How would you interpret that?  I see at least 3 possibilities:

(a) Cycles permitted at any time; loading only permitted 6pm-10am
(this is what I guess is the correct one)
(b) Cycles and loading only permitted 6pm-10am (this would also make
sense; i.e. cycling only outside shopping hours)
(c) Restrictions apply 6pm-10am (clearly ludicrous!)
(d) Something else?

I'm guessing it's meant to be (a), but just thought I'd canvas
opinion before tagging.


I think I agree with (a). I would find it a little strange to disallow
cycling just during the day (why not just ban it entirely?).


The centre pedestrianised bit of Ipswich has cycling banned from 10:30am -
4:30pm. It does get pretty busy during that time.
http://goo.gl/maps/ouha1



I'm not sure that's correct? Is it not just banning cyclists from cycling
against the traffic flow during this period? The sign at the other end
suggests its open to cyclists at all times in the direction of normal flow.


(from your corrected link http://goo.gl/maps/SM2y9 )

The key thing here is the sign it is underneath. The reference to 
cyclists in the text is superfluous (and presumably not authorised by 
the DfT) because the 'low flying motorbike' sign means no MOTOR 
vehicles, and a bike isn't a motor vehicle. That's not just pedantry: 
there is a separate sign for banning ALL vehicles, a simple red roundel 
with nothing inside it. There is no restriction on bikes at any time 
according to that sign.


Their traffic engineer needs sending back to sign school.

David



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Re: [OSM-talk] POI collection methods

[David Earl]

On 31/07/2012 00:23, Svavar Kjarrval wrote:

What methods do you use? Are there any programs for Android which could
fit my needs?


JOSM is capable of synchronising any continuously recorded audio to a 
GPS track with waypoints. So if you can create a waypoint with a single 
click and then dictate the information, this shows up in JOSM as a 
button which when you press it jumps to that part of the audio.


I don't kbnow what Android apps do that, but the point is JOSM is quite 
flexible at the desktop end. If you end up with a MP3, you can convert 
to WAV using Audacity or similar.


I use a stand alone Olympus digital voice recorder - the audio doesn't 
have to be recorded on the same device as the GPS.


http://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Help/AudioMapping

David



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Re: [Talk-GB] Building Numbers

[David Earl]

On Wednesday, July 25, 2012, Chris Hill wrote:

 On 25/07/12 22:16, Chris Baines wrote:

 I have been playing around with OSM on my university's campus [1], I
 have most of the buildings and their names on OSM, but not the
 numbers. My university are quite good with data, you can see the
 building numbers (they are not really numbers, but alphanumeric
 identifiers) that I refer to here [2]. I am unsure though how to
 include this data in OSM, is there a tag I have missed?


  Have you thought about using ref=* tag?


That's what I've done with the university of Cambridge, which has allowed
me to link the data to their database of institutions to drive search, as
at http://map.cam.ac.uk (which is in beta at the moment). The refs have
come from the University's own numbering scheme, which I extended to the
colleges.

There's a tagging schema on the wiki
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cambridge/University_of_Cambridge

And background to the project
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/davidearl/diary/

There's also API details via the map.

David
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Re: [OSM-talk] aerialway=station + railway=station?

[David Earl]

Unlikely as it may seem, I also know of such a combination, in Japan, 
here http://osm.org/go/7Qymqlx7--  You get out of the train and 
more-or-less cross the platform to get into the cable car.


(the railway is actually a rack railway - follow the railway back down 
towards Odawara and see the cusps on it - the train comes in one way, 
they switch the points and it goes out the other, because there's no 
room to turn a corner on the steep mountainside. The cable car goes over 
the mountaintop across sulphur-spewing hot springs and comes down to 
Lake Hakone in the shadow of the Mt Fuji volcano. There's also an 
excellent sculpture park by Chokoku-no-Mori Station. Odawara at the end 
of the rack railway is on a main line to Tokyo).


David

On 19/07/2012 18:49, Arlindo Pereira wrote:

Hi there,

here in Rio we have a station that is, at the same time, a railway
station and a aerialway station. [1] Check a photo on [2]. Nowadays it's
mapped as railway=station, because if I tag it as railway=station +
aerialway=station, it's rendered on Mapnik as an aerialway=station,
which makes it being hidden in lower zoom levels.

I'm aware of the don't tag for the renderer mantra. That being said,
the question is: is this a Mapnik flaw and I should fill a bug or should
I be using another set of tags different of aerialway=station +
railway=station? Or should I keep using only railway=station and have
the aerialway way ending on this node and that's it?

Cheers,
Arlindo Nighto Pereira

1: http://osm.org/go/OVcf5pKA4--
2:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_SnWNBff-Tuo/TG_g9aHxnuI/BzI/h40tHrhhnoU/s1600/21_vista575.jpg


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[OSM-talk] Cookies on OSM

[David Earl]

In very simplistic terms, the EU cookie directive requires a web site to 
prominently disclose the fact that it uses cookies and what for (and in 
the case of tracking cookies to explicitly obtain the user's consent 
before doing so).


I notice the OSM site doesn't yet do this, even though it uses cookies, 
but this mail is more about third party users who need to make their own 
statements about cookies they use when they embed OSM maps.


If a OSM map is embedded in another site as an IFRAME as from the Export 
tab or similar, then it appears to plant two sets of cookies, ones 
starting _osm_... whose function seems pretty obvious, and ones starting 
_pk_... which are more mysterious.


Please could someone who knows put up a brief page on the wiki which 
explains what these are for, for the purpose of helping sites make their 
cookie usage clear, as required by law (or at least for them to conduct 
the cookie audit needed in good faith).


I am (I hope not naively!) assuming that OSM wouldn't indulge in any 
intrusive cookie tracking which would require explicit consent.


Is anyone addressing this for the OSM site itself? I see there is a 
privacy policy, but that doesn't mention cookies and it isn't 
prominent on the home page as the directive requires.


Thanks,
David


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Re: [OSM-talk] Cookies on OSM

[David Earl]

On 11/07/2012 13:36, Frederik Ramm wrote:

Hi,

On 07/11/12 14:03, David Earl wrote:

I am (I hope not naively!) assuming that OSM wouldn't indulge in any
intrusive cookie tracking which would require explicit consent.


I believe OSM uses Piwik which is something like Google Analytics but
without giving the data to a third party. That's probably the reason you
are seeing this pk cookie.


Thanks.


I don't know if that requires explicit consent. It's not much more than
looking at log files really but I'm not up to date on legislation.


The general view seems to be that Google Analytics doesn't require 
explicit consent, merely disclosure, so I can't see that something even 
less intrusive could require explicit consent.




(TBH I've seen a lot of is it ok if we set a cookie popups on UK web
sites recently but none on German sites so I'm not sure if this is
really an EU thing or just UK? Or UK being first in adopting some EU law
into national law maybe, improbable as it sounds?)


The directive was actually enacted in May 2011, but the UK Information 
Commissioner's office gave people until May this year to implement it. A 
few have, as you say (notably the BBC), but the ones that really go to 
town on the issues the directive is supposed to protect against - e.g. 
Amazon - have completely ignored it. There will have to be a test case 
before long if it is supposed to be taken seriously. (It is a daft law 
IMO, exactly the kind of 'red tape' the Government says it is committed 
to abolishing).


David




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Re: [OSM-talk] Cookies on OSM

[David Earl]

On 11/07/2012 13:55, Tom Hughes wrote:

On 11/07/12 13:03, David Earl wrote:


In very simplistic terms, the EU cookie directive requires a web site to
prominently disclose the fact that it uses cookies and what for (and in
the case of tracking cookies to explicitly obtain the user's consent
before doing so).


So, how is http://www.frankieandshadow.com/gallery/ using PHPSESSID then
;-)


You can remove the ';-)' - my email wasn't a criticism, but is made in 
all seriousness to try to bring other web sites I have involvement in 
within the law. That includes my own site too (and I don't actually know 
the answer except that it is, of course, a PHP session cookie - that's 
the point of doing a cookie audit as required by the ICO).


David



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Re: [OSM-talk] Cookies on OSM

[David Earl]

On 11/07/2012 13:53, Lester Caine wrote:

Piwik requires explicit consent as it's not an 'essential' cookie


No, the requirement is for informed consent. The ICO is clear that 
Implied consent is a valid form of consent and can be used in the 
context of compliance with the revised rules on cookies. Explicit 
consent (asking an explicit question in which the user can decline to 
have cookies set) is about whether a cookie is intrusive or not - 
aimed mainly at third-party tracking cookies.


David


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Re: [Talk-GB] Stations and platforms=*

[David Earl]

Might this be of help, if the info were included with the station. It 
seems to be official:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_railway_station_categories

David

On 28/06/2012 11:15, Jonathan Bennett wrote:

tl;dr: Please tag your local station(s) with platforms=n where n2

I had a conversation with Andy Allan, ooh, ages ago (it was probably at
WhereCampGB in Notts) about his lovely transport layer
(http://osm.org/go/euup98?layers=T) and mentioned it would be great to
see station names at lower zooms than it currently renders.

While not disagreeing, Andy pointed out that this was currently very
difficult to get right, because station density varies so greatly across
the country. In London, they're barely a mile apart, whereas in the
sticks you get one every 50 miles. There was no obvious way of ensuring
that the right stations get rendered in high-density areas while
showing all stations in rural areas.

At some point post-conversation that one way of filtering the stations
would be based on the number of platforms, since this roughly
corresponds to importance (yuck) in London, at least. It's not
perfect, but it's better than nothing.

Andy hasn't *promised* to do anything with this information, but put it
this way: If it's there, he might. If it's not, he can't.

I've already added platforms=* to the preset for a station in Potlatch
2, so it's not even that tricky. Go on. Please.

J.

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Re: [Talk-GB] England Cycling Data project: DfT cycling data now available for merging

[David Earl]

On 20/06/2012 14:57, Graham Stewart (GrahamS) wrote:

Merging this data I see that some ways that just lead to an NCN route (but
are not actually part of the continuous route) are still marked with the
ncn=yes;ncn_ref=xx tags for the route the lead to.

What's the feeling on this? I'm a bit torn:

- On the one hand they are not the route, as in the signed route that goes
from A to B. They are simply access ways leading to the route. Including
them in the route could be misleading.

- But on the other hand, the on the ground situation is that roads/paths
near NCN routes often have signs pointing towards the route and these seem
(to me) to be indistinguishable from the signs along the route.


I don't know about elsewhere in the country, but in Cambridgeshire the 
council has used the parenthesis convention on such signs: the ncn ref 
in the red block with brackets round it:

  http://www.cyclestreets.net/location/29870/cyclestreets29870.jpg

I think we could do well to do the same in the ncn_ref tag.

David



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Re: [OSM-talk] Import of buildings in Chicago

[David Earl]

On 27/05/2012 17:11, Colin Smale wrote:

On 27/05/2012 17:54, Worst Fixer wrote:

I want know why importer uses following tags:

* chicago:building_id (314 330 objects, used by 2 users).

I sent letter to importer, and he said he will not import this tag any
more. But, he continues to. No justification of need for tag was given.


Who has the right to ban a tag? Where does it say that a tag has to be
justified?

I understand your concerns about the import process, but not your
allergy to tags which don't fit your idea of what's valid.


Indeed, users need such tags. If you have a database that it is not 
appropriate to include in OSM, it is important to have a means of 
linking the items in each, and using OSM IDs is not usually viable 
because they change at the drop of a hat. Using a reference scheme to 
link the two database is a widely used technique. Most of the bus stops 
in the UK are done like this because they are linked to a third party 
database of bus stops from which they were derived.


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] Contact And Remap Campaign

[David Earl]

On 09/02/2012 10:23, Chris Hill wrote:

I find this lack of respect for people's work, and for copyright law
rather surprising and out-of-keeping with an Open project. Of course we
cannot just take people's work just because they have not replied to an
email or two.


Hear hear. People change email addresses and lose touch with things all 
the time - I run a mailing list of around a thousand people, and I get 
maybe a dozen change requests a month and maybe four who bounce. When I 
write to them (I have snail mail addresses too) I usually find they 
forgot to tell us. Where the onus is on someone to change it themselves, 
especially if they've moved on to other things, it doesn't happen.


 I can't see any reason that all OSM contributors are not
 madly remapping right now, whether from an armchair of foot/bike/car.

Many of us are. EOE we've dealt with most of Cambridgeshire now, for 
example, with the exception of a few Cambridge colleges which are in 
hand, and a few things which need ground verification.


But it is a deeply dispiriting business, to have to re-do work you 
already did long ago, only for it to have been replace wholesale by 
someone who then hasn't ticked the box.


David




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Re: [OSM-talk] Contact And Remap Campaign

[David Earl]

On 04/02/2012 18:45, Michael Collinson wrote:

... try and contact anyone who has not decided about re-licensing


While several of us in Cambridgeshire have tried this, we've had very 
limited success. It's hard to tell, but the problem seems to that the 
vast majority of the problem people aren't receiving the emails. We have 
no way to contact them.


(It's especially frustrating when people deleted my original painstaking 
mapping and replaced it, only for that now to need to be replaced.)


It would help to know that email is bouncing. Tom, is it possible to 
change the mail system to get bounces to go back to the sender, or if 
that is considered too revealing of personal info, then at least a 
message that a bounce was received, rather than just black-holing it? 
Then we know for sure this mapper's contributions have to be replaced, 
rather than hanging on in the hope they may reply (those who have 
replied have not done so quickly, I;'ve largely given up waiting).


Secondly, we have odbl=clean; Frederik, could you also recognise 
odbl=other*, in a different colour in OSM Inspector and JOSM plugin 
(and shown in a different tree in the panel)? My reasoning is that we 
are trying to systematically clean an area, and while most roads can be 
done from home with local knowledge and satellite, there are some I know 
I can't do in good faith. It would help to be able to mark these so I 
know I've looked at them and come to a conclusion rather than checking 
over again whenever I look at an area.


David



* actually, how about using the tag value to put it in a category in the 
JOSM tree, e.g. if I mark it odbl=ground_survey_needed it's a signal to 
remind me and others, or odbl=university_resurvey_in_progress then I can 
tell people, there's no point in armchair re-mapping this bit as I'm 
working through a more detailed ground survey (particularly relevant as 
I'm doing all the Cambridge colleges and University estate at the 
moment, but it is systematic and will take time - 
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/davidearl/diary/15398 )


So for example in the JOSM plugin

  + data loss
  + possible data loss
  + harmless data loss
  - other [list of things marked odbl=... except clean]
- university_resurvey_in_progress [value of odbl tag]
   Trinity College (Whewells Court) (28 nodes) [id: ...]
  ...

I suppose I could implement this myself if the source for the plugin is 
accessible, but it would be nice to have some buy in.



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Re: [Talk-GB] HS2 route is open data!

[David Earl]

On 23/01/2012 20:21, Jason Cunningham wrote:

Good to see the data being released,
But I don't believe this proposed route should yet be added to OSM.
You'll regularly here the phrase map what's on the ground, but we
all(?) accept upcoming changes to what's on the ground can be mapped,
and these upcoming changes to the land are mapped using the proposed tag
(then construction tag).


By that reasoning we wouldn't map boundaries, as these don't appear on 
the ground, they are entirely abstract concepts.


The point here is that this is *helpful geographical information*. If 
the proposal goes away or changes, remove the data. Let's be pragmatic here.


We also seem to mark routes of old railways for which there is no 
evidence on the ground. (Quite why, I don't know, and this raises the 
question again of representing any historical data, but that was 
discussed at length recently).


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] Spam in user diaries

[David Earl]

On 20/01/2012 00:30, Tom Hughes wrote:

On 19/01/12 19:08, Matthias Meißer wrote:


Hi, as our spam protection by trigger on people that mark a entry with
the words spam seem to work,


Not sure what you're saying here, but if you think writing spam as a
comment has some effect then you are very mistaken.


we get currently a lot of spam, that
seems to be send out via our twitter account anyway:
https://twitter.com/#!/osmblogs


That twitter account is completely unofficial as far as I know. I have
no idea who even runs it. The openstreetmap account is the official one.


I set up @osmblogs (long before @openstreetmap) as a simple 
transcription of the RSS feed. It's not an account I or anyone else is 
actively tweeting from, merely acting as a bridge between RSS and Twitter.


I guess you see the spam on it because it is actively transferring the 
feed fairly quickly. Similarly, you'll see most of the spam if you read 
the RSS feed directly. But if you read it on the web site, the spam will 
have been removed through Tom's diligence, except for the odd one he 
hasn't got to yet.


BTW, the response to 'why don't you do this' is so often 'why don't you 
do it yourself'. We're supposedly a 'do-ocracy', so since when was 
anything official. That's a slap in the face for doing, isn't it?


David



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Re: [Talk-GB] Misguided user kane123

[David Earl]

I bet you this is liam123 in a different guise. He's editing in the same 
area doing quite similar things.


David

On 13/01/2012 13:41, Andy Allan wrote:

Anyone fancy dealing with http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/kane123 ?
All of their changesets so far are bogus, and need reverting.

Cheers,
Andy

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Re: [Talk-GB] License change anonymous edits

[David Earl]

On 10/01/2012 11:44, Peter Miller wrote:

Is there no way in this case to formally 'claim' the IPR for this
features on the basis that we have moved them and edited all the
surrounding features?


Exactly the question I raised on talk on Monday. I don't think you even 
need to have moved anything, merely to have checked against a valid 
source other than the non-accepting contributor (e.g. Bing for location, 
local knowledge or OSSV etc for names) in order to claim the IPR. I 
really don't see what mechanically then reproducing what is already 
there actually adds to the process other than wasted time.


David


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Re: [Talk-GB] License change anonymous edits

[David Earl]

On 10/01/2012 13:46, Richard Fairhurst wrote:

Michael Collinson wrote:

+1 to Richard's suggestion odbl=clean


Just a tiny little clarification - this isn't something I've dreamed up,
it's a real live tag with 9,000 occurrences in the database already, and
which is being used by status visualisations such as OSM Inspector. :)


Yes, the trouble is when Frederik pointed this out and referred to the 
page, it says it is for cases where the suspect edit has been wiped out, 
not simply verified from other sources. How can you change the name from 
itself to itself and actually have changed anything?


If odbl=clean is OK for this then that's great, but I am troubled that I 
may go to a lot of trouble to deal with these and then find they get 
removed anyway. The lack of clear direction is very frustrating (as is 
the apparent need to do more work than necessary). It would be so much 
easier if we knew for sure what the rules actually are.


David


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Re: [Talk-GB] License change anonymous edits

[David Earl]

On 10/01/2012 14:53, Frederik Ramm wrote:

Hi,

On 01/10/12 15:37, Frederik Ramm wrote:

Yes, the trouble is when Frederik pointed this out and referred to the
page, it says it is for cases where the suspect edit has been wiped out,
not simply verified from other sources. How can you change the name from
itself to itself and actually have changed anything?


Just delete the name tag and re-add it. It's not your fault if the
editor doesn't upload that to the API then ;)


More seriously: There is *no* way you can acquire intellectual property
of something by saying that I have looked it up and it is correct.

You either have to remove it and re-create it, even if the result looks
the same - even if, and hence my snarky remark in the previous email,
the API doesn't actually see your actions -, or you have to dispute that
there was any intellectual property in the first place.

But doing neither - i.e., saying yes, 80n did have intellectual
property on this one, and no, I didn't change it, but yes, it is now
ODbL clean is, in my eyes, a legal impossibility.


I don't see what the physical act of pressing the keys on the keyboard 
to retype the name achieves. It's the source of the newly uploaded data 
(which would contain odbl clean) that matters, not the characters it is 
composed of. If I retype the name and then mark it odbl clean, what ends 
up in the database is ABSOLUTELY IDENTICAL with what was there before 
other than the odbl clean assertion. Why does pressing the keys make any 
difference whatsoever? The original contributor doesn't own the 
copyright in the name, only their contribution, and by marking it odbl 
clean I'm making an alternative contribution which asserts the source is 
now legitimate.


This is an issue for everyone, not just me. If lawyers are involved it 
should be legal advice to all of us organised centrally.


David


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Re: [Talk-GB] License change anonymous edits

[David Earl]

On 10/01/2012 16:05, Richard Fairhurst wrote:

David Earl wrote:

Why does pressing the keys make any
difference whatsoever? The original contributor doesn't own the
copyright in the name, only their contribution, and by marking it
odbl clean I'm making an alternative contribution which asserts
the source is now legitimate.


I think you're both right. This is sweat of the brow in a nutshell. The
act of making the contribution is protected, not just the contribution. It's
an utterly braindead law, yes, and for once the UK would be much better off
if it followed the practice of our cousins across the pond... but it is,
nonetheless, the law.

So:

If you spend time reviewing a fact expressed in the database; confirm that
the fact is correct and not original; and therefore tag it odbl=clean; I
think that is sufficient sweat-of-the-brow for the IP to reside with you.
Keyboard-mashing per se is not a distinct concept in the law,
sweat-of-the-brow is, and if the sweat is expended on reviewing and
retaining the data (and, as an inevitably corollary, deleting data for which
you can find no corroborating evidence)... then that works.



Precisely, thank you Richard.

However in order to make use of this, it needs to be sanctioned (i.e. we 
need to know for sure that doing this won't still end up with such 
contributions removed, or we're all wasting our time).


As it seems from an earlier message that there isn't a definitive 
process to decide, it seems just like tags, that all the power will 
reside with those who write the code. Who is writing the code to do the 
cleaning?


David


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[OSM-talk] Making dealing with license problem objects easier

[David Earl]

Now that we have Frederik's very helpful license vulnerability tool, 
I've been doing some pre-emptive work in my area. Without re-opening old 
wounds about the merit or otherwise of the forthcoming data loss, I'd 
like to make some suggestions arising out of the patterns I've noticed 
that mean we don't shoot ourselves in the foot quite so much.


It's really time consuming making these changes and there are a lot of 
them. There is a fairly small number of people (about 20) in my area who 
have not accepted (and two who have explicitly declined). I imagine most 
of the non-accepters are just no longer receiving email - I have had 
only one reply to my messages.


While there are a few places I can't deal with, e.g. because I can't see 
from Bing what's going on, or I don't personally know the name of 
something, in the majority of cases I can verify something from 
satellite, OSSV, local knowledge or my own previous surveys.


However, to fix these I have to not only remove e.g. the offending way 
but also carefully check or replace all the nodes for connecting 
features because those are often independently contaminated. This 
process also loses the continuous history of the feature. It's 
particularly fiddly (and easy to miss) when objects are part of a number 
of relations.


Suggestion 1

I'd like to suggest we invent a tag which says I have checked this 
object for changes by non-accepters and personally verified it against 
sources independent of the changes of those non-accepters who made 
changes, so that when that tag is added, the changes the non-accepter 
made become my responsibility.


e.g. verifylicense=bing (I checked it against bing) or
verifylicense=bing;local_knowledge (I checked the route on Bing and I 
personally know the name)


This way we don't have to do lots of unnecessary deleting and replacing, 
and we keep the history.


Frederik's tool could take account of this tag in what it displays as 
vulnerable.


Suggestion 2

A very common pattern is
* non-accepter adds a feature F which is joined to one or more ways W at 
node new N; this contaminates the whole of W even though all they've 
done is inserted a node into it.
* lots of other people make changes to W in other respects, whose edits 
would be lost


In this case, I think it would be reasonable to say that if N is 
inserted between two other nodes such that the three form a straight 
line (to within some fairly generous tolerance) that the way is not 
affected and the node can be removed from it along with the genuinely 
offending way without affecting the one involved as a side effect, and 
needn't be marked as such in the inspector.


Suggestion 3

There is a particularly pernicious pattern where user 'ulfl' (others 
too, but by far the most prolific) went round some years ago changing 
lots of tag names without changing anything else, and he has now 
explicitly declined the CT, so there are now lots of real changes on top 
which will be lost because of these purely mechanical changes.


I think we should not count these as significant edits for the purposes 
of the license change. If someone changes shop=barbers to 
shop=hairdressers etc, these are admin changes not geographical ones. If 
ulfl is still on this list, would you agree or object?


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] Making dealing with license problem objects easier

[David Earl]

On 04/01/2012 16:09, Toby Murray wrote:

This already exists in the form of the odbl=clean tag. Anything tagged
this way will show up green in Frederik's map. It is documented here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Remapping/License_Change_View_on_OSM_Inspector


Thanks, I hadn't seen that.

Having read it, it is clearly similar but it doesn't go quite as far in 
that it claims the previous edit has been superseded or amended out of 
existence.


What I'm saying is: the previous edit is still there but I have 
independently verified it and therefore the intellectual property of it 
is superseded without actually altering the object.


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] Making dealing with license problem objects easier

[David Earl]

On 04/01/2012 16:34, Frederik Ramm wrote:

odbl=clean is that tag, and already used by OSMI and editors. It is a
bit questionable to use it on stuff that I could have mapped myself.
I suggest that odbl=clean only be added if you have indeed modified the
object in a way that you believe obliterates any previously held
copyright by a non-agreer.


The problem then is you have to completely remove a way, and recreate 
it, and usually recreate all nodes from objects connecting to it when 
you are often just mechanically repeating what the original creator did 
in first place. This doesn't seem to me to add any further validity to 
the process, just expends labour.


I'm not saying I could have mapped it, but I have checked what 
changed and explicitly verified it against independent sources.


David


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Re: [Talk-gb-midanglia] Licence Change

[David Earl]

I did the same around Teversham/Cherry Hinton last week, and also looked 
at what I'd need to do to replace unlicensed contributions. I've written 
personally to the following:


smncrsk
Martin Green
user_4538
Roman
Robert Duncan
Dave Tracey
NickF
HendrikG
Simon Proven

of which only the last has replied (he's accepted now). A 10% success 
rate isn't terribly encouraging! I imagine this is mainly die to changed 
email addresses - some of them haven't done anything in ages. OTOH, the 
Cambridge area is generally in pretty good shape, with fairly isolated 
non-accepting users.


Martin Green has done a lot of University stuff and buildings in 
Cambridge. I will be replacing all of these anyway in the next few 
months for Project Drake, so while they look quite extensive, I'm not 
overly worried about these.


Note that user CrispinF has explicitly declined the license so if you 
find any contributions by him, they definitely need to be removed/replaced.


David

On 21/12/2011 14:14, Richard Moss wrote:

I've just started browsing the new OSM Inspector site for data that
might be lost around here http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/?view=wtfe . At
randon, I've picked some red items near St Ives, and note they were
produced by user:Jez. I've sent the following to Jez via the OSM
messaging system:

Your OSM contributions around St Ives

Hi Jez

I don't know if you're aware, but OSM is changing the license that the
data is produced under. See
http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/We_Are_Changing_The_License .

People like you am me, who joined OSM before a certain date, have to
accept the terms of the new licence, otherwise their contributions will
be lost. They've now set a date of 1 April 2012 for the chageover.

In searching round my patch of Cambridgeshire, I've noticed that some of
the data around St Ives is yours, and that so far, you are 'undecided'
about the new licence. If you don't agree to the new terms before 1
April, your stuff will be lost, which would be a pity.

Are you aware of all this, and will you be accepting or declining the
terms? If you can't be bothered with any of this and have given up with
OSM, an alternative would be for you to give me your account. I don't
particularly want to do that, but it's an option.

Anyway, if you get this, please let me know what you think about it all.

Best wishes

Richard Moss

[end]

I don't know if it will bear fruit - suggestions for improvements on the
text please. Is anybody else around here looking at this? Would it be
worth a coordinated effort?

Richard



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Re: [OSM-talk] Editing of content that will be deleted on April 1st

[David Earl]

On 13/12/2011 21:38, 80n wrote:

You've known for quite some time that non-CT content will ultimately get
deleted.


The original promise was that it requires a critical mass to proceed. 
According to the OSMF wiki there are fewer than three quarters agreeing, 
and some of the major countries will lose nearly half their ways 
according to http://odbl.de/ . Frederick's map (THANK YOU!) is really 
the first indication I've seen of what the consequences are likely to 
be, yet what seems to be being said is that it will go ahead in April 
come what may.


What are the precise, numeric criteria for proceeding? At the moment 
even by a vague definition I don't see how one could describe it as a 
critical mass.


David


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[OSM-talk] Editing of content that will be deleted on April 1st

[David Earl]

On Tuesday, December 13, 2011, Jo winfi...@gmail.com wrote:
 Critical mass is there, at a ratio of more than a 100/1 and that is of
the people who had to speak out their opinion.

That's not the point. Since not making a decision is the same as declining
for the purposes of data survival, deleting a quarter to a third of the map
seems to me to be the project committing suicide. It will improve no doubt
as time goes on, but I was seriously expecting the threshold to be in the
90+% of data survival to proceed.

Yes, the 100/1 means that only a tiny fraction of the red and orange is
ideological, it's surely mostly about people who have moved on, in
interests, email addresses or mortality who we'll just never hear from. If
it were just their edits, I'd be much less concerned, but it's the way it
kills everyone else afterwards. It's even more galling when they deleted
the original data to make their edit, so they've effectively taken the
earlier work away too.

I'll certainly be contacting people now Frederick has provided an easy
means to evaluate the data, but I'm not overly optimistic about people
replying - I run a membership database and find maybe 10% of people change
their email addresses each year, and half of those don't tell me, and
that's when they've paid an annual sub to belong.

Is anyone going to answer the question about the threshold? I'm not being
rhetorical, I really would like to know.

David
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Re: [Talk-GB] Project Drake - mapping the University of Cambridge

[David Earl]

On 06/12/2011 12:54, Stephen Gower wrote:

On Mon, Dec 05, 2011 at 05:44:48PM +, David Earl wrote:


I was appointed to the project from that [...]


Congratulations!


Thank you!


and also published the tagging schema I'm working to (
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cambridge/University_of_Cambridge )


Can I pursuade you to remove the (University of Cambridge) string from the
name= keys?

1) It's incorrect, unless the parenthesis are genuinely in the name of the
College/Dept/etc.
2) It's duplicated by data in the operator= field
3) It makes for ugly maps


Thanks for the comment.

I'm not overly wedded to name=Clare College (University of Cambridge)
and the like. Indeed, for the University rendering I will be removing 
these suffixes automatically because the context and colours will make 
it completely obvious.


I'm largely following the existing convention for the CU institutions 
(which admittedly I probably started way, way back).


However, the reason is precisely to make non-specialised maps more 
helpful. If you don't know, there is no clue that New Museums Site as 
a caption on the map has any connection with the University (or indeed, 
as there are two universities in Cambridge, which), and arguably the 
University of Cambridge bit is the more important part.


You can argue, and I would probably agree, that this is to some extent 
tagging for the renderer, and now that I'm making the operator tags 
ubiquitous the otherwise missing information is now there. On the other 
hand, is ANY non-specialist renderer going to take any notice? I doubt 
it. You'd have to dig deep and quite technically to discover the info.


Regarding point 1, it's the colleges and sites that are the issue[1]. I 
think 'incorrect' is too strong. The naming is hierarchical in some 
sense. The New Museums Site is part of the wider University of 
Cambridge, and just as in some contexts you need to qualify Cambridge as 
Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England (so not Cambridge, MA, USA or 
Cambridge, Gloucestershire, England) to inform and to avoid ambiguity, 
so here also.


The colleges are slightly different in that they are independent, but 
but affiliated[2] to the University. But spelling that relationship out 
is overkill - many of the colleges describe themselves as this in the 
way I have done (usually without the parentheses) on their web sites 
and/or display the University's logo (though some just say X College, 
Cambridge - some are more independently minded than others).


So:
- it makes no difference to the University project either way
- I think it produces more helpful, useful maps
- but longer captions do have visual problems

Finally, a couple of related points:

* Many of the colleges have satellite sites. For example The Colony 
and Cripps Court. I and others have actually named these along the 
lines of The Colony (Clare College), Cripps Court (Magdalene 
College) which by the strict argument above shouldn't be. But I doubt 
even the majority of Cambridge people would have a clue what that was 
about without the qualifying information. Should that go too? If it 
stays, why not the others? Or conversely, should it actually be The 
Colony (Clare College, University of Cambridge) or some such.


* Cripps Court is an interesting example, because both Magdalene and 
Selwyn Colleges have satellite sites named Cripps Court. Qualification 
here resolves serious ambiguity in the absence of other information 
presented on typical maps.


* The same is true for many non University premises as well. Castle 
Court vs Castle Court (Cambridgeshire County Council), with 
completely analogous operator/occupier etc, and helpfulness considerations.


* Why are we naming shops according to their occupants? If we take this 
argument to its limits, no premises should be named like this. It's a 
pragmatism vs. pedantry argument.


What do other people think? If there's a strong view not to have these 
parenthesised bits there, I'll take them out of the name tags.


David

[1] departments aren't geographical features, and I am indeed replacing 
those with the names of the buildings which they occupy - though 
sometimes a building is christened according to the department occupying 
it and confusingly that sticks long after the department has moved! I 
have resisted the temptation to put name=Austin Building (University 
Computing Service)


[2] my word, not the formal description of the relationship


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[Talk-GB] Project Drake - mapping the University of Cambridge

[David Earl]

You may remember the announcement of the University of Cambridge's 
OpenStreetMap project back in July ( 
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-gb/2011-July/012067.html ).


I was appointed to the project from that and I have now written up a bit 
about what I'm doing on my OSM diary ( 
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/davidearl/diary/15398 ), and also 
published the tagging schema I'm working to ( 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Cambridge/University_of_Cambridge ) 
(which is, of course, a living document which we'll be updating as 
things progress), and which I hope may help others inclined to map parts 
of the University.


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] Map tiles in Chrome

[David Earl]

On 23/10/2011 20:03, Kai Krueger wrote:

David Earl wrote:

So what's going on? If the cache is empty, is the server really serving
an old tile? Is there some proxying going on somewhere (there's no
explicit proxies)? Why is it random which tiles update?


Yes, there is a server side proxy in-between the tileserver to reduce load
on the main timeserver ...


Ah, thanks for that explanation. That explains why pretty much nothing I 
do has any effect.


David


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[OSM-talk] Map tiles in Chrome

[David Earl]

I'm very puzzled by Chrome's behaviour with respect to the main Mapnik 
map tiles.


When I'm working on an area, it is very common for a tile not to visibly 
update after refreshing after uploading some changes. Some do, some 
don't, especially at high zoom levels


When I do a status on the tile, it is clear it has been re-rendered. 
It's not that it is stuck in a rendering queue - the renderer has finished.


If I clear the Chrome cache, it still doesn't drop the old rendering.

If I drop the Chrome cache and restart Chrome it still doesn't let go.

The only way I have found that is certain to display the new tile is:
1. Right Click on the tile in the home page and choose 'Show image in 
now tab'

2. Go to the new tab, and hard refresh (CTRL+F5)
3. Restart chrome

(a hard refresh or a click on Permalink after step 2 isn't sufficient).

So what's going on? If the cache is empty, is the server really serving 
an old tile? Is there some proxying going on somewhere (there's no 
explicit proxies)? Why is it random which tiles update?


More to the point, why should I need to do anything with the 
cache/refreshing etc. Why isn't the date handling from the server 
telling Chrome the tile is out of date? I see the headers have an expiry 
date with the tile, but the old tile seems to persist even beyond that.


David



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Re: [OSM-talk] Map tiles in Chrome

[David Earl]

On 21/10/2011 15:43, Frederik Ramm wrote:

This is unlikely to be the problem but just to be sure - you're not on
any kind of 3G network or so? Because some of the mobile providers do
all sorts of nasty things with images embedded in web sites and i
wouldn't be surprised if that breaks map updates.


No, it's on 50Mbit Virgin Media cable.

Incidentally, I also see the problem on Safari on iPad (also on the same 
network), though I don't have the same level of control on the cache so 
I cannot fix it at all there.


David



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Re: [OSM-talk] Roundabouts and routing

[David Earl]

On Friday, 9 September 2011, Nathan Edgars II nerou...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 9/8/2011 3:45 PM, David Earl wrote:

 The problem is exacerbated because many of these were done as a single
 one way which comes off the roundabout and then turns almost 180 deg.
 and rejoins roundabout.

 Example:
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/4565106 
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/4565106

 This is certainly no good, since it implies that making that U-turn is
staying on the same road.


i didnt start the idiom of this apparent U turn, merely the tagging to
indicate what it is to programs. But the idiom is very widespread AFAICS.
But Im not sure that breaking it in two says anything different.

David
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Re: [OSM-talk] Roundabouts and routing

[David Earl]

On 09/09/2011 11:00, Graham Stewart (GrahamS) wrote:


David Earl wrote:


In areas where it has been important for me (where I've been producing a
high quality paper map), I have tagged these as junction=approach.

The reason I needed such a tag was to avoid one way arrows cluttering up
the map on those little Y-shaped approaches to roundabouts


This seems like a bad approach to me. (pardon the pun)

If the road flares like that then those two road sections ARE one way. If
you do not tag them as such then you will confuse routing  software, which
will see two possible exits from the roundabout, rather than one on and one
off.


As I said, I didn't invent this, only added a tag to identify the kind 
of feature. But nearly all roundabouts in the UK are done like this or 
similar, by lots and lots of different people, because they are 
significant geographical features. On major roads they can be many tens 
of metres long and the gap between the ends can be 10 or 20 metres on 
some big roundabouts. It's almost a special case of dual carriageway.


If they are explicitly marked one-way then the problem is with routing 
algorithms if they could them as an exit when they aren't. If you didn't 
mark them as one-way then there would be some excuse for counting them 
all as exits (except that you could tell, if they are marked 
junction=approach, but that's not nearly so widely used).


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] Roundabouts and routing

[David Earl]

On 09/09/2011 12:09, David Earl wrote:

algorithms if they could them as an exit when they aren't. If you didn't


err, count them as...



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Re: [OSM-talk] Roundabouts and routing

[David Earl]

On 08/09/2011 20:27, Tom Hughes wrote:

On 08/09/11 19:48, Thomas Davie wrote:


1) Don't tag sliproads onto roundabouts as junction=roundabout, instead
use some other tagging scheme. Not greatly desirable because it involves
a *whole* lot of retagging.


Well who on earth is doing that? and why?

I've certainly never tagged roads entering a roundabout in that way, nor
can I see any reason to do so.


In areas where it has been important for me (where I've been producing a 
high quality paper map), I have tagged these as junction=approach.


The reason I needed such a tag was to avoid one way arrows cluttering up 
the map on those little Y-shaped approaches to roundabouts; there isn't 
any easy way to tell the difference from a genuinely one way street 
otherwise, but one way markers on these short, often invisible roads 
(invisible because at map scale, they tend to merge together when widths 
are exaggerated).


The problem is exacerbated because many of these were done as a single 
one way which comes off the roundabout and then turns almost 180 deg. 
and rejoins roundabout.


Example:
  http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/way/4565106

BTW, I don't consider this is tagging for the renderer at all. It is 
identify a particular kind of feature that is not otherwise easy or 
possible to identify without specific tagging.


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] twitter handling

[David Earl]

On 08/09/2011 16:16, Matthias Meisser wrote:

The @OpenStreetMap account has over 6000 followers (although a good
number are certainly spam) and I would like to see a bit more posting
than when there is a blog posting and the occasional retweet. So
interesting press coverage or uses of OSM, etc.


Think this should be part of a reinitiate the complete news processing
of our community (news at twitter, blogs, diaries, wiki,
newsletters,...).


@osmblogs tweets all the postings made to 
http://blogs.openstreetmap.org/ if that's what you want.


David



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Re: [OSM-talk] [Osmf-talk] Membership applications from Skobbler employees

[David Earl]

On 26/08/2011 11:33, Barnett, Phillip wrote:

 From the legislation guidance notes
An individual is 'identified' if you have distinguished that individual
from other members of a group. In most cases an individual's name
together with some other information will be sufficient to identify them.
http://www.ico.gov.uk/upload/documents/determining_what_is_personal_data/whatispersonaldata2.htm

So if you had said that a large number of applications had been made
from Apple employees, then since we have no way of knowing whether every
single Apple employee, up to and including the janitor, had made an
application to join, we are not be able to reverse-engineer the
membership status of any individual employee, and so this is not
'personal' information but aggregate group information.

And therefore the Data Protection Act doesn't come into it.


Interestingly, when we converted an organisation recently to an official 
Charity under UK law, the Charity Commission wanted us to make it a 
requirement that the full membership list (names and home addresses) was 
available on demand to any member who requests it. That is the default 
position of their model constitution for charities. This seemed to us 
very odd indeed, quite contrary to Data Protection principles. The CC 
didn't actually insist on that as a requirement of our constitution, but 
we queried the point with them and they basically said the organisation 
is the membership and if you can't show to someone that the membership 
exists, then the organisation doesn't exist (I paraphrase).


See Part 2, sec 8.4 
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/library/guidance/gd3text.pdf


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] shortened names

[David Earl]

On 27/07/2011 10:23, Thomas Davie wrote:

I don't think how they're sorted has anything to do with it, if every
time the place name is written, it's written St Albans, even in
official documentation of what the town is called, it's name is St
Albans, simple as that.


+1.

And the same applies to street names with S(ain)t too. For example St 
Albans Road, Cambridge. Interestingly, nominatim comes up with two such 
roads, one in Cambridge, UK and one in Boston, MA (well done Nominatim 
for getting St vs Saint right btw), and the one in Boston is spelled out 
in full on OSM. However, if you look at Streetview, you can see the 
street sign is St Albans Rd and Google maps has it as St Albans Rd 
(but then they shorten everything on the maps), but their Gazetteer - 
what you see when you are located in Streetview as the location you're 
viewing has Saint in full.


I think there is a subtle difference between abbreviations (like Rd and 
St - for Street that is) and contractions, like St for Saint and Dr for 
Doctor (not Drive). Generally abbreviations are just saving space, while 
contractions have become like words in their own right.


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] shortened names

[David Earl]

In just doing some web searching, I came across this UK Government 
document...


http://www.pcgn.org.uk/UK%20Toponymic%20Guidelines.pdf

which has lots of references to OS lists of standards and conventions.

While St Albans isn't big enough to feature in the list in this 
document, it does have St. Helens (sic). Why the period? The district 
council's website http://www.sthelens.gov.uk/ also has it with a period 
(St Albans, http://www.stalbans.gov.uk/ , does not).


OSM has it as Saint Helens, which is arguably wrong.

We also have St Davids as St David's which I think is also probably 
wrong (certainly not how their gov.uk website has it) even before 
getting into the English/Welsh debate.


We all seem to agree on St Austell (Cornwall), Ottery St Mary, Chalfont 
St Peter.


Here is one of the more challenging areas in the UK in this respect: 
http://osm.org/go/0ERdlvp--


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] shortened names

[David Earl]

On 27/07/2011 11:58, John Smith wrote:

On 27 July 2011 20:50, David Earlda...@frankieandshadow.com  wrote:

While St Albans isn't big enough to feature in the list in this document, it
does have St. Helens (sic). Why the period? The district council's website


The period after St. is the correct way in English to abbreviate
Saint, where as the abbreviation of street doesn't have a period.


Hmm. OK, then reverse the question. Why do so many places including St 
Albans not use the a period? Could it be as Richard and I were saying 
that St is now an accepted spelling of the word which means a beatified 
person rather than being just an abbreviation. Like laser and arguably 
email are words now.


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] shortened names

[David Earl]

On 27/07/2011 12:21, Paul Jaggard wrote:

From: John Smithdeltafoxtrot...@gmail.com
The period after St. is the correct way in English to abbreviate
Saint, where as the abbreviation of street doesn't have a period.


Exactly the opposite according to my (Collins) dictionary:

st abbrev. for short ton.
St abbrev. for Saint.
st. abbrev. for stanza, statute, (cricket) stumped by
St. abbrev. for statute, Strait, Street
Sta abbrev. for Saint (female).


According to the full OED, John is right if you look under 'saint':

Commonly abbreviated S. or St. ... Abbreviations: S. and St., pl. SS. 
and Sts. Since the 18th c. ‘St.’ is the form usually employed; but since 
about 1830 ‘S.’ has been favoured by ecclesiologists. In place-names, 
and in family names derived from these, only ‘St.’ is used [clearly not 
true!].


But then if you look under 'st' (no period), it says (with cap.) for 
saint adj. and n. prefixed to a name.


The Guardian Style Guide (http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/s ), 
which tends to go for more modern usage in general, says: Saint - in 
running text should be spelt in full: Saint John, Saint Paul. For names 
of towns, churches, etc, abbreviate St (no point) eg St Mirren, St 
Stephen's church. In French placenames a hyphen is needed, eg 
St-Nazaire, Ste-Suzanne, Stes-Maries-de-la-Mer.


The Telegraph style guide 
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/1435325/Telegraph-style-book-Ss.html 
) agrees: Saint: Abbreviated to St (no point); plural is SS (SS Peter 
and Paul). (See Places and Peoples).


David


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Re: [OSM-talk] shortened names

[David Earl]

On 27/07/2011 14:38, John F. Eldredge wrote:

That is the reason I feel that it would be best to store the
fully-spelled-out name, and then apply localized rules to look up any
abbreviations needed at rendering time.   Using the full form to
determine the abbreviation is much less ambiguous than the other way
around.


But the point several of us have been making is that this has moved 
beyond being an abbreviation to being the proper spelling of the name.


Absolutely Example Road not Example Rd, but St Albans really is 
called that (now), not Saint Albans.


David


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Re: [Talk-GB] Copyright issues of checking details on other websites

[David Earl]

On 05/07/2011 11:26, Richard Fairhurst wrote:

David Earl wrote:

Even then, to infringe database copyright under UK law you would have to
copy a substantial part of the database. Checking or obtaining a few
names against such a list isn't database copyright infringement


Oh, absolutely. The thing I've always been anxious about, though, is that
J Random Mapper checking 5 addresses from tesco.com isn't substantial, and
K Random Mapper checking 5 random addresses isn't, and L Random Mapper...


Yes, that crossed my mind as well. But who would the copyright holder 
sue in those circumstances?


To take a different example, the Royal Mail (still) claims database 
copyright over the PAF (postcode address file) database. Would crowd 
sourcing the address vs postcode data by each individual putting in 
their own data constitute database copyright infringement and if so who 
is the infringer?


David


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Re: [Talk-GB] Copyright issues of checking details on other websites

[David Earl]

On 05/07/2011 12:28, Nick Austin wrote:

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 11:58 AM, David Earlda...@frankieandshadow.com  wrote:


To take a different example, the Royal Mail (still) claims database
copyright over the PAF (postcode address file) database. Would crowd
sourcing the address vs postcode data by each individual putting in their
own data constitute database copyright infringement and if so who is the
infringer?


There used to be a postcode crowsourcing project here:
http://www.freepostcodes.org.uk/

According to that site postcode data is available under an open licence.


Yes, I know. But that data doesn't include addresses, only geocodes for 
postcodes. The address vs postcode database is still jealously guarded 
by Royal Mail. But anyway, that wasn't the point, it's just an example.


David


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