On Wed, 18 Nov 2015 19:52:40 -0500, john whelan wrote: > HOT and OSM are slightly different, HOT maps on OSM but uses a > simpler more standardized approach.
fwiw: HOT means Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team. For me this sounds a lot like "very close to OSM". > Many of their volunteers ofte do not know enough English to write a > meaningful change set comment. So let them do it in their native language. Ideally, in the future there will be more local mappers which should speak the same language > HOT tends to map in areas that do not have a great deal of OSM mapping > already in place so I don't see that it really matters if they use > preset comments from the tile system. What does it matter if there is already a lot or little of data to changeset comments? As I said above: individual comments should help individual mappers later on. > Or are we now asking that all mappers on OSM have to be able to read > and write in English since that is the normal language for > communication in OSM or is one of the local African languages > sufficient. Any language is sufficient, preferredly one spoken in the region where the mapping occurs. > If it is then I assure you I won't be able to understand > what it says. As it was pointed out: there are online translating tools. Additionally: do you need to understand all changeset comments in OSM? In China, Japan and Russia, too? :) > I think one thing I like about HOT is the validation process, an > experienced mapper goes over the mapping and tries to eliminate as > many errors or mis-tags as possible and ensure that everything > visible in the image is mapped, Well, when I think of the HOT data I often look at it seems mostly I am the (only) one doing the bug fixing and validating if I have some time I can spend on it. An example: Lately in Afghanistan HOT didn't ask for waterways being mapped which resulted in various issues: Bridges weren't mapped because they are hard to distinguish in that region when you don't look for waterways too – and bridges are prone to collapse during earth quakes. Fords aren't mapped for the same reason. Quite some of the intermittent waterways get incorrectly mapped as highways. Sure, there /are/ waterways being used as highways, but not the ones I reviewed. Because of this and some more issues (tons of highway=road, highways connected to residential areas, a bad import from ~2010) I decided to skip assigning to tasks but instead first map complete waterways and afterwards all waterway/highway intersections. I also fixed the other issues mentioned. Well, I got a bit offtopic. Two of the problems are that there is a) a lack of enough manpower to map (e.g. there is still a lot missing in HOT's Afghanistan Tasks) b) a lack of enough manpower to review An other example was a training of mappers in Albania. The result was partly quite messy: a bunch of ways being not rectangular nor having tags on them (well, some with area=yes). There was no cleanup several weeks after editing stopped. I wonder what the training effect is when the data gets left in this state I had problems finding the person responsible for this task. Regarding his OSM edits history he seemed not more experienced in mapping than his pupils. > and yes I understand armchair mappers are looked down on by many > mappers Is that so? I do map both ways a lot and being a good "armchair mapper" needs skills which need to be trained, too. By the way, 99% my mapping (!= collecting data/surveying) is done in an armchair. :) > but the work they do is valuable in many areas. Of course. Regards, Thomas _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk