On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 12:46 PM, stevea <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks to the talk-us community for entertaining my grumpiness about this, > but I truly believe there is a direct connection between asking OSMers to > "map well" and the visual feedback (rewards? yes, I think so) we get by > doing so. Sure, it's great that beaches (and many other mapped objects, > usually named polygons that describe an area, like a beach, shopping center > or many other "things") can be easily found from OSM's main map via a > simply-type-it-in Nominatim search: that IS good. But when we see rendered > labels disappearing, even when this is explained by the reason given, it > can be disheartening. I DID "miss that" news/memo about this "since months" > effort. Where might I have learned this? > > I am (slowly, even after being an OSM volunteer for over five years) > discovering there are ways to effect how our map looks (carto-issues bug > reporting, the potential to enter a mapnik feature request -- where?). But > I do think it would be helpful if these "assumed to be known by everybody" > facts (they aren't!) were better promulgated. Either in our wiki somewhere, > or with a link from the main page, or some other relatively easily findable > method. I conscientiously read (and contribute to) our wiki pages, I > follow talk-us, I explore code in github, I play around with rendering > tools...yet about the machinations that make our map look and behave the > way it does, on a day-to-day basis -- AND the changes that happen to it -- > I seem to learn absolutely nothing. Until after the fact. > > Let's say I were to carefully consider that I DO think beaches (a polygon > with tags natural=beach and name=*) should render in mapnik. What else? > Polygons tagged landuse=commercial that also have a name=Shopping Center > tag? (Maybe). And a hundred other potential things that used to > (accidentally) render, but are now not being rendered in the interests of > not rendering "catch alls." Do I enter a feature request for each and > every one of them? Maybe, as that means I considered each and every one of > them. But how do WE consider each and every one of them? Do we even do > that? I ask sincerely. It seems many mapnik render decisions on an > ongoing basis are made in a vacuum. That doesn't feel very OSM to me. > > In short: how might intermediate mappers like me better learn how our map > is built and the processes which influence and effect changes within it? > We should all have a stake in participating in these processes, should we > wish to do so. That starts with better learning about them in the first > place. I don't mean for it to seem like I think OSM's inner machinations > are some big secret, I'm just asking for a bit of light to be shined along > a path I can find this stuff out largely by myself. > > I'm pretty smart and resourceful, and can easily be pointed to the right > places and told "Go." But I don't know a whole heck of a lot of what and > where are these resources. Thanks in advance for a wide swath of pointers > to get me (us) started. > +1 -- @osm_seattle osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
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