Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
8 Jan 2020, 17:33 by ma...@anche.no: > more constructively: > On 08/01/2020 02:54, Mateusz Konieczny wrote: > >> Is a new photo differing in content (confusing for Europeans in the similar >> way as original >> was confusing for people from Panama)? Then both should be present, one in >> the infobox, >> one in the article text. >> > > I like this one. :-) > https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Picture_of_the_day has sometimes nice images. I was not looking far but I found some fitting for OSM documentation. And I replaced some really low quality ones with ones that I found. And on topic of "all images are of Europe" I upgraded image on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:lit with one from Paraguay. Of still low quality but significantly better and more fitting the page. After more that 15 minutes still noone reverted it :) https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:surface%3Dpaving_stones is my other edit where I added additional images as just one from infobox was not enough to cover the topic. > we could invite people from different areas to contribute relevant pictures. > > I can do Panama, and look up in my archives for other regions I visited. I > can't obviously cover the rest of the world, but we as OSM editors surely can. > +1 https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Feature_pages_with_missing_images has some false positive but is likely to be a good start After going through this - making a script that finds all images with extremely small resolution for replacement would be likely a good next step (ask here or on dev mailing list for help if that would be necessary) > On 08/01/2020 04:29, Marc Gemis wrote: > >> What I meant with "write the wiki page you want to see" is: create a >> new wiki page "Highways in Panama" or "Highways in South America", >> preferable in Spanish and Portuguese and link to that page from one of >> the existing pages. >> > > Panama is such a small country! and South America is much larger than my > personal experience. The only correct title for a page I can author would be > "Highways in developing countries I know", but most of it would be similar or > equal to the Highway_Tag_Africa. > I think it would be fine to start Highway_Tag_South_America and note that it is a start/proposal, based on experience in Panama, ABC and XYZ and welcome others to expand and verify it. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
Hi Maarten, Mateusz, Marc, Pierre, everybody: On 08/01/2020 01:32, Maarten Deen wrote: If they don't use the wiki, then who complains about missing local information in the wiki? these are chained questions: who complains? who complains about missing local information (in the wiki)? I'm not sure it is of any relevance, so I don't expect followup on this, but it will help you understand my experience: --- speaking about Panama: apart from me trying to correct bad practices, establishing a Telegram group, inviting people to it, trying to engage editors in discussions, contacting organizations sponsoring massive edits, commenting on changesets, writing personal messages to the author's OSM account, looking them up on Facebook, documenting or proposing in the Wiki, requesting a block for people who keep adding information that always needs the same kind of correction…, there has been so little response that I can't generalize, I can briefly mention the few major incidents: - on the Telegram group (https://t.me/Comunidad_OSM_Panama) we had a representative of a GIS-group in the second largest town in the country, periodically doing massive exports to the database, sponsored by Unachi (Universidad de Chiriquí), organizing GIS courses ending with these collectively signed exports, using accounts that are only active in these occasions. He announced one activity they would organize. two of us (both Europeans) tried to make two points clear: no data from Google, and please consider the organized edits directives. the guy left the group because of our bureaucratic/dictatorial attitude. I don't know how their activity developed, it did not (yet) reflect on the OSM database. - I recently removed some fifty thousand relations "no-u-turn", added by people working for MiBus (Panama City), needed for their navigation software, but not corresponding to anything on the ground. I had tried to reach for the authors, but only after removing the objects they reacted. the reaction was in private email exchange, not on my changesets, until I invited one of the guys to do so (https://openstreetmap.org/changeset/77387510). according to me, there never was any discussion. one of the guys joined the Panama Telegram group, but never reacted to the invitations to discuss the issue. - occasionally, people write funny changesets comments, like here: https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/77592575; https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/68335335 - some time ago the Telegram group received an invitation to an ESRI meeting. I participated, and volunteered my summary of the meeting, and the story ended there, I have no idea what happened next. I met personally three of the editors, but that did not establish a communication line with any of them. my very personal impression: I think there is a cultural difficulty here, preventing people from expressing one's opinions in public, offering it for criticism. I do not know how they do, to reach a consensus, and again my personal impression is that they don't even try, each does their stuff, try not to stand in the way of others, expect others to do the same. my (again very personal) conclusion is to drop trying myself (I even left the Telegram group I had founded, for I thinks it serves no purpose) and to keep documenting things publicly, either in Spanish or in English, in the wiki, but again without expecting feedback from local mappers. --- more constructively: On 08/01/2020 02:54, Mateusz Konieczny wrote: Is a new photo differing in content (confusing for Europeans in the similar way as original was confusing for people from Panama)? Then both should be present, one in the infobox, one in the article text. I like this one. :-) we could invite people from different areas to contribute relevant pictures. I can do Panama, and look up in my archives for other regions I visited. I can't obviously cover the rest of the world, but we as OSM editors surely can. On 08/01/2020 04:29, Marc Gemis wrote: What I meant with "write the wiki page you want to see" is: create a new wiki page "Highways in Panama" or "Highways in South America", preferable in Spanish and Portuguese and link to that page from one of the existing pages. Panama is such a small country! and South America is much larger than my personal experience. The only correct title for a page I can author would be "Highways in developing countries I know", but most of it would be similar or equal to the Highway_Tag_Africa. point is: would locals like being told "use the African guidelines"? please nobody from Africa takes offense, please, but telling Southern Americans that they should apply African logic for their situation is very likely to sound as an offense to them, however correct the case might be (and actually, things here can be quite worse than the pictures in the
Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
+1 to what Mateusz wrote. What I meant with "write the wiki page you want to see" is: create a new wiki page "Highways in Panama" or "Highways in South America", preferable in Spanish and Portuguese and link to that page from one of the existing pages. Similar to the Highways in Africa page that I showed you earlier on. That page did not replace the western-centric page neither. This is also similar to https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Access_provisions_in_the_United_Kingdom A page for the British community that explains how to map access for public footpaths. The content is not on the (general) highway, path, nor access pages. It is a dedicated page for a certain geographic region. So yes, the general page will remain Europe centric, but at least there will be dedicated pages for other geographic regions. Maybe one day, the general page will just list all regional variants, one of them being the European variant. But please note that the classification of highways is based on the UK-system and that even European countries had to adapt that to their local system. But of course, the images are similar for a British motorway and for a German one. This page https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highways has a number of links to pages with regional variations for the classification of highways under the "Classification" section. So start small, with dedicated pages and do not try to change existing pages too much. That will cause more resistance. regards m. On Wed, Jan 8, 2020 at 8:57 AM Mateusz Konieczny wrote: > > 7 Jan 2020, 20:53 by ma...@anche.no: > > On 07/01/2020 14:38, Marc Gemis wrote: > > Since OSM is a do-ocracy, do not complain, but write the wiki page you > want to see > > > that's fine, and I've been doing that for Panama, and for Morocco, but I do > not like mapping without having reached a consensus. > > for that, we need other mappers to contribute to the discussion, and I never > managed to get any far on this in the wiki (actually, not even in the > changeset comments). > > Is the community using some FB group, Telegram channel or Discord or some > even more unusual > discussion location? > > so you say: just revolutionize the overview for the highway tag, without > first reaching a consensus? > > Obviously no. > > replace the Eurocentric pictures with Panama and Morocco pics? > an edit like this will be reverted after 15 minutes! > > Is a new photo differing in content (confusing for Europeans in the similar > way as original > was confusing for people from Panama)? Then both should be present, one in > the infobox, > one in the article text. > > Is the new photo usable as illustration in both cases and differs by > decoration > (people are wearing different clothes etc)? Can you link an edit where it was > reverted > (except cases where new non-european image was of a lower quality)? > > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
7 Jan 2020, 20:53 by ma...@anche.no: > On 07/01/2020 14:38, Marc Gemis wrote: > >> Since OSM is a do-ocracy, do not complain, but write the wiki page you >> want to see >> > > that's fine, and I've been doing that for Panama, and for Morocco, but I do > not like mapping without having reached a consensus. > > for that, we need other mappers to contribute to the discussion, and I never > managed to get any far on this in the wiki (actually, not even in the > changeset comments). > Is the community using some FB group, Telegram channel or Discord or some even more unusual discussion location? > so you say: just revolutionize the overview for the highway tag, without > first reaching a consensus? > Obviously no. > replace the Eurocentric pictures with Panama and Morocco pics? > an edit like this will be reverted after 15 minutes! > Is a new photo differing in content (confusing for Europeans in the similar way as original was confusing for people from Panama)? Then both should be present, one in the infobox, one in the article text. Is the new photo usable as illustration in both cases and differs by decoration (people are wearing different clothes etc)? Can you link an edit where it was reverted (except cases where new non-european image was of a lower quality)? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
On 2020-01-07 20:53, Mario Frasca wrote: On 07/01/2020 14:38, Marc Gemis wrote: Since OSM is a do-ocracy, do not complain, but write the wiki page you want to see that's fine, and I've been doing that for Panama, and for Morocco, but I do not like mapping without having reached a consensus. for that, we need other mappers to contribute to the discussion, and I never managed to get any far on this in the wiki (actually, not even in the changeset comments). in particular Panama, none of the local mappers seem to use the wiki, If they don't use the wiki, then who complains about missing local information in the wiki? Regards, Maarten ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
Eh, I am quite please to realise that the page is now available in 6 languages. The first version of the page early 2013 was for the OpenStreetMap response North of Mali. But in later discussions, contributors did say that it did also represent reality of other African countries. We then collectively decided to rename it to highway_tag_africa. There are regular mentions on discussion lists about this classification but no success using search tools to find references. I will let local contributors from various countries respond to your questions about classification and name to use. In one country, the situation can vary a lot from more urban and industrialized regions to other regions. I can tell you that north of Quebec / Canada there are vast forestry areas with very low population. Road infrastructures in such forestry areas are quite different from the urban areas and I would not classify a few hundred km long unpaved and rough road interconnecting various other roads as track.See for example the transtaiga highway https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/6625883#map=7/54.104/-73.644 Pierre Le mardi 7 janvier 2020 16 h 38 min 39 s UTC−5, Mario Frasca a écrit : On 07/01/2020 15:46, Pierre Béland wrote: > I am the original author of the Highway Africa Tag wiki page. This > page is now widely used outside of Africa (Asia and Latin-America) in > areas where it better correspond to the reality of the roads > infrastructure. I see, and I like it. good job! but it still only mentions 'Africa'. How would you describe the application range, other than "outside high wages / developed countries"? my guess for the first sentence would be "Most regions in the world do not show the same road network quality as, say, Germany or Canada. Road conditions in such regions do not match the economic and social role of the road." then go on with the rest. which Latin American countries are using this page as a reference? as far as you and others here know? > And pictures have been used to better correspond to the ligther road > structures in these areas, which are often unpaved. nice pictures indeed. curious enough, they aren't (yet) linked in the Spanish version of the page. I might find time to do so. ciao, MF ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
On 07/01/2020 15:46, Pierre Béland wrote: I am the original author of the Highway Africa Tag wiki page. This page is now widely used outside of Africa (Asia and Latin-America) in areas where it better correspond to the reality of the roads infrastructure. I see, and I like it. good job! but it still only mentions 'Africa'. How would you describe the application range, other than "outside high wages / developed countries"? my guess for the first sentence would be "Most regions in the world do not show the same road network quality as, say, Germany or Canada. Road conditions in such regions do not match the economic and social role of the road." then go on with the rest. which Latin American countries are using this page as a reference? as far as you and others here know? And pictures have been used to better correspond to the ligther road structures in these areas, which are often unpaved. nice pictures indeed. curious enough, they aren't (yet) linked in the Spanish version of the page. I might find time to do so. ciao, MF ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
Hi Mario I am the original author of the Highway Africa Tag wiki page. This page is now widely used outside of Africa (Asia and Latin-America) in areas where it better correspond to the reality of the roads infrastructure. And pictures have been used to better correspond to the ligther road structures in these areas, which are often unpaved. This image near Butembo, North of Democratic Republic of Congo, cleary shows damages to road structures at rainy season. I have experienced the same in south-east of Haiti, and observed it often in other countries. https://twitter.com/pierzen/status/1163096946300653570 There is quite a difference between crowdmapping and community mapping. It is easy to bring in thousand of inexperienced contributors. But, if they are not trained and monitored, there will be significant damages to the map. regard Pierre Le mardi 7 janvier 2020 15 h 05 min 38 s UTC−5, Mario Frasca a écrit : On 07/01/2020 14:53, Mario Frasca wrote: > so you say: just revolutionize the overview for the highway tag, > without first reaching a consensus? or I understood you wrong? or > replace the Eurocentric pictures with Panama and Morocco pics? an edit > like this will be reverted after 15 minutes! ah, no, I see, you suggest to take inspiration from the https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Tag_Africa, or the German (very complete) overview How-to-map-a. both pages which I did not know. quite a bit of work, but who knows we manage to motivate the Latam group for this. will put it on my personal to-do list, but if others from Latam are reading here, they can add their comments and ideas. MF ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
On 07/01/2020 14:53, Mario Frasca wrote: so you say: just revolutionize the overview for the highway tag, without first reaching a consensus? or I understood you wrong? or replace the Eurocentric pictures with Panama and Morocco pics? an edit like this will be reverted after 15 minutes! ah, no, I see, you suggest to take inspiration from the https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Tag_Africa, or the German (very complete) overview How-to-map-a. both pages which I did not know. quite a bit of work, but who knows we manage to motivate the Latam group for this. will put it on my personal to-do list, but if others from Latam are reading here, they can add their comments and ideas. MF ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
On 07/01/2020 14:38, Marc Gemis wrote: Since OSM is a do-ocracy, do not complain, but write the wiki page you want to see that's fine, and I've been doing that for Panama, and for Morocco, but I do not like mapping without having reached a consensus. for that, we need other mappers to contribute to the discussion, and I never managed to get any far on this in the wiki (actually, not even in the changeset comments). in particular Panama, none of the local mappers seem to use the wiki, just check the authorship statistics. I'm not complaining, I'm stating an observed fact. there's cultures where reading is more common than in others. I'm generalizing, which will always have counterexamples, but if you ask children here (Latin America) about a fairy tale, if they know it, they will tell you if they have **seen** it, not read it. so you say: just revolutionize the overview for the highway tag, without first reaching a consensus? or I understood you wrong? or replace the Eurocentric pictures with Panama and Morocco pics? an edit like this will be reverted after 15 minutes! MF ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
> a more important issue (I would call it "mapping outside Europe", hence > the subject) is for me each and every (photo)graphic explanation of the > tagging values. take `highway` > (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:highway). text are fine, > really, but the associated pictures seem all taken in Europe, or North > America, they have more chances to confuse the mapper based in Africa or > South America, than helping them. Problems such as this are easily solved by creating wiki pages for certain areas, such as https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Highway_Tag_Africa The Flemish-speaking community created https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NL:How_to_map_a (inspired by the German https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:How_to_map_a). We also have dedicated pages such as https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/NL:Jaagpad to explain typical Belgian/Flemish situations. Since OSM is a do-ocracy, do not complain, but write the wiki page you want to see. As soon as you start a group of pages in a certain language, you might get more people on board. regards m. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
apart from the issue "international objects receive a tag 'name' with an English value", there are other ways in which you see how we're letting USA-UK patronize the rest. the latest example in my experience would be the 'sac_scale' tagging. it comes from the SAC-CAS classification, of the Schweizer Alpen-Club/Club Alpino Svizzero/Club Alpin Suisse/Club Alpin Svizzer, yet OSM held the discussion in English, and it not only chose `sac_scale` for the tag name, it also decided not to use the Swiss codes T1..T6 (language independent), but the English version of the human readable explanation for the codes: T1 (hiking/escursione/randonnée/Wandern) .. T6 (difficult alpine hiking/escursione alpina difficile/randonnée alpine difficile/schwieriges Alpinwandern). a more important issue (I would call it "mapping outside Europe", hence the subject) is for me each and every (photo)graphic explanation of the tagging values. take `highway` (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:highway). text are fine, really, but the associated pictures seem all taken in Europe, or North America, they have more chances to confuse the mapper based in Africa or South America, than helping them. in Panama many roads are classified as 'camino de verano', they look like highway:track, but are really highway:unclassified with an extra indication for the months where they are expected to be passable. maybe can be solved in the wiki by changing the link to the picture into a link to several pictures, but I'm afraid that we need to address this in the standard renderer as well: users also expect some of the information to be reflected in the rendering, explaining why so many mappers still use highway:track despite one repeating "don't map for the renderer". in Morocco (and I guess elsewhere too) we have small towns with undeveloped areas, crossed by paths with residential function, or large cities with extremely narrow alleys, again with residential function. these have been solved by different mappers in different ways, leading to very inconsistent mapping, in particular where there isn't a local, assertive, mappers' community. (Morocco and Panama are two such cases, Colombia is much better in this aspect.) Wow. That’s quite impressive examples. I fully agree that this Europe-centrism might lead to issues in the future. I remembered being quite confused when I first read the documentation for crossing ways, as they are all following UK’s naming system (which I’ve never heard before). They are well-documented, so I guess that it’s fine. But I understand what you mean: the “name” tag issue may not be the most relevant in this family of issues. This might indicate that the people discussing in this mailing list are from a very specific background, possibly caused by the language of the mailing list itself. At the same time, I have to admit that I don’t feel like there are that much pictures on the documentation. I was for instance surprised that there was no picture for the “minimap” tag in the wiki (I fixed this in the meantime ☺). So it might be something that we can easily improve step by step ☺ I’m not sure what to conclude here. I guess that being conscious of the Europe-centrism issue during discussions might help? Or that we may need to look for volunteers to complete the OSM wiki with additional pictures from non-Europe/North America? I will look at the pictures I took back to been I lived in Chile and Brazil… but as I wasn’t into OSM then, I won’t have much useful Regards, Martin. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
