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Diary Entries in English

Recent diary entries

Posted by YerevanTreeMap on 9 January 2025 in English.

Hey hey. We at the Yerevan Tree Map project were pulling to our database new nodes tagged as natural=tree for a while now, without actually pushing changes back. Now we are starting to do so. The OSM API is not quite straightforward, so we’re learning on the go. We have some 4k plus trees to push, we’ll be adding them in small batches. Later we’ll start pushing updates to existing tree nodes (e.g. when someone measures the tree or updates its state).

Location: Kentron, Yerevan, Armenia

(English below, thanks to Deepl.com)

Ce post a été initialement publié ici.

Des données OSM en anglais, mais aussi en français, accessibles dans l’IFL pour les pays francophones du Sud

Des données OSM téléchargeables avec des attributs dans une langue autre que l’anglais, non pas avec un service web, mais une plateforme dédiée au partage de données et métadonnées géographiques, où l’on peut comprendre, voir, interroger, filtrer avant de télécharger : c’est ce que permet cette approche ETL (pour Extract, Transform, Load, soit en français « Extraction, Transformation et Chargement ») dans l’Infrastructure de Données Spatiales des Libres Géographes. Dans ce billet, je reviens sur le contexte et l’historique de ce projet personnel mené sur mon temps libre, avant d’expliquer l’approche technique mise en œuvre et, évidemment, comment accéder à ces données.

Le contexte : sortir du « english fits for all »

Si l’anglais domine l’écosystème OSM et reste la langue de référence du projet, plusieurs initiatives permettent aux non-anglophones de participer au projet et d’en bénéficier : un forum multilingue, la traduction du wiki et de certaines plateformes d’auto-apprentissage, des interfaces utilisateur traduites pour les applications et les éditeurs, y compris les préréglages d’étiquettes OSM.

Mais quelle que soit la technologie ou le service utilisé, les données OSM brutes, une fois téléchargées, restent exclusivement en anglais, et toute recherche ou filtrage des données OSM dans un logiciel SIG ne peut se faire que dans cette langue.

Ayant beaucoup formé à l’utilisation des données OSM en géomatique (notamment QGIS) depuis 2011, j’ai été vite confronté aux difficultés qu’ont pas mal de francophones non anglophones à exploiter les attributs des données OSM. Difficultés d’autant plus frustrantes, dans le cas des pays du Sud, qu’il s’agissait souvent des premières données détaillées disponibles sur leur territoire. Une barrière se levait, mais une autre lui succédait.

See full entry

I just discovered https://github.com/openstreetmap/tile-attribution And it seems like a great way to get involved with openstreetmap via GitHub - It doesn’t require any coding ability, one would need an active GitHub acount to add an issue to the issue tracker but basically find a site using your favourite search engines (lets say https//ddg.gg as an example).

Check any sites who are not providing attribution to openstreetmap when using openstreetmap and report the full hostname of website to the issue tracker :-)

What can we all share to people on social media we use to promote friends & family to support OpenStreetMap’s work?

Have a great day! Josh G of Australia.

https://hardened.computer/@xuid0/113795267986230039

Starting the new year with milestone achievements! In this 22nd development update, we’re excited to present comprehensive mobile support improvements across OpenStreetMap-NG. We’ve also reached critical development milestones that put us on the final stretch toward public beta testing.

🔖 You can read other development diaries here:
osm.org/user/NorthCrab/diary/

⭐ This project is open-source — join us today:
https://github.com/openstreetmap-ng/openstreetmap-ng

GitHub Stars

🛈 This initiative is not affiliated with the OpenStreetMap Foundation.


Video Summary

This week’s video demonstration focuses primarily on our mobile interface improvements. Through practical examples and side-by-side comparisons, I showcase how OpenStreetMap-NG elevates the mobile experience.

⬇ Click the image below to play

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Posted by SekeRob on 4 January 2025 in English. Last updated on 2 April 2025.

4th Jan 2025 and 10 Million, nodes that is, I’ve set, dragged, deleted as at yesterday and the 2 days downtime broke the 1500+ days series of uninterrupted mapping. Here’s to the next.

April 1, 25 , really, and we’re on 11 Million, 3 months near exactly or 11,111 nodes a day, keeping me from the streets away.

Posted by DeBigC on 4 January 2025 in English.

As time passes I am delving further into the discovery that I outlined here, and contextualised a little more here and all relating to the Fingal task set up by myself and the osm community three years ago.

In quantum of the problem there are new data available from the Heigit counting service. This shows that as the validation continued up to the 18th December 2024 when the task was a year old an additional 14 thousand missing buildings were added.

heigit3

Looking further into this missing building set it is distributed as follows by building tags:

*building=shed up 3700

*building=garage up 1800

*building=farm_auxiliary up 200

*building=service up 58

*building=ruins up 56

There is also some re-tagging of building objects from the building=yes tag, which mappers were requested to attempt to do.

See full entry

Alt text

On the 22nd and 23rd of November 2024, I visited the Ho Technical University (HTU) YouthMappers chapter for an exciting two-day program sponsored by OSM Ghana. These two days were not just about mapping but about igniting passion, fostering collaboration, and sharing stories that inspire.

Day One: Presentations and Knowledge Sharing

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Location: SSNIT Flats, Kabore, Ho, Ho Municipal District, Volta Region, VH-0010-3089, Ghana
Posted by netjeff on 2 January 2025 in English. Last updated on 19 April 2025.

I’ve deleted OSM node 151352138 which was place=hamlet name=Dominion within the city of Longmont, CO.

It looks like this node was (automatically?) added to OSM based on USGS GNIS feature id 178314. This GNIS feature 178314 includes the following, my emphasis

  • Class: Populated Place
  • Feature code: Unincorporated Place
  • Description: railroad siding
  • Entry Date: October 13, 1978

I’ve lived in Longmont since 2008, and I’ve never seen or heard anyone refer to this location or area as “Dominion”. This GNIS “railroad siding” feature should never have been added to OSM as a place=hamlet. I checked current aerial imagery, and while there is a BNSF railway line nearby, there is definitely (no longer?) a siding near this location.

So in changeset 160974302 I’ve deleted OSM node 151352138 which was place=hamlet name=Dominion

Location: Longmont, Boulder County, Colorado, United States
Posted by M!dgard on 1 January 2025 in English. Last updated on 2 January 2025.

Earlier today I OSM-stumbled upon a stele marking the western front line of the First World War in Belgium and France. In Dutch we apparently call them demarcatiepalen, a term which I find amusingly technical sounding. In French they’re often called les bornes Vauthier, named after the veteran who took the initiative of erecting them. Carved from pink granite, they stand about a metre tall. There’s a whole line of them, but I noticed that they could use a lot of work, so that became my project for this evening.

A roadside memorial, a somewhat conal block carved from pink granite and about a metre high. The top of the memorial is shaped like a helmet. The engraving reads "Here the invader was brought to a standstill" but in Dutch. The memorial is set in green grass at a roadside, between a small brick wall and a hedge.

After a few hours’ work (including some distraction due to nearby unmapped stables), the 19 extant Belgian steles have all been found, added and homogenised in OSM and referenced to the database of Onroerend Erfgoed, the heritage agency of the Flemish government.

Tada: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1Wtx

See full entry

Location: Zwarte Leen, Zillebeke, Ypres, Ieper, West Flanders, 8902, Belgium
Posted by ANOKEY on 1 January 2025 in English.

This last 5 years I have been faced with a terrifyingly real and all consuming gang stalking problem (concept which I didn’t even fully believe in until at the grips of it myself), bringing with it cognitive dissonance, dissociation and confusion through gas-lighting, bullying, financial and emotional abuse by those who are supposed to be closest to me.

it feels like I have lost all sense of footing; like solid ground could very well turn out to have been ocean this whole time and it would not be all that shocking.

My participation in this project is an attempt to help me reconnect with myself and my surroundings

By deliberately noticing everything it encompasses, and by thoroughly researching each of it’s composing elements to be able to represent them with as much fidelity as possible, I hope to regain some sense of direction and purpose and find refuge from stagnancy, isolation and depression.

Hi, my name is Joh, 
and I will stand strong and make best of this, and every situation. 
I shall bend not break,
I shall be, 
Because I have as much right to do so as everyone else.
Location: Yaletown, Downtown, Vancouver, Metro Vancouver Regional District, British Columbia, V6B, Canada
Posted by qeef on 1 January 2025 in English. Last updated on 20 July 2025.

This is the developer’s diary concerning the fifth year of the damn project – the project that helps mappers by dividing a big area into smaller planar shapes that people can map together.

The damn project is currently used by few mappers as a tool for tracking personal mapping. (Does it make it a competitor to the SimpleTaskManager?)

In 2024, we had some problems:

  • We had performance issues when working with more than 300 000 squares in a single area; we solved these issues by pagination and forbidding creation of areas with more than 10 000 squares.

  • The damn JavaScript clients confuse mappers and we need to be serious about it; we will address this issue in 2025, but it’s not yet decided how. We are open to ideas!

2024 did not bring much to the damn project, though there are some highlights:

  • Probably no suprise that we moved to OAuth2. The amount of work is -21 lines of code. We welcome such changes.

  • I wrote Unofficial design documents for HOT Tasking Manager.

    The original intent of the damn project was to show that HOT Tasking Manager (HOT TM) can be done better. To help HOT TM developers, last year I wrote Unofficial design documents for HOT Tasking Manager. There is (obviously) more reasoning and comparison than in the damn server dev doc, but I don’t think it will help anyway. There is too much work and I saw the HOT TM source code. It’s unmaintainable, in my opinion.

  • We implemented enforce divide to squares function when creating new area.

    If the (area’s GeoJSON)’s FeatureCollection has member 'name' then divide to squares function is NOT used. In such a case it’s expected you already divided the area – this is for compatibility reasons with MapSwipe. enforce divide to squares overrides this behavior, enforcing the division of the area to squares even if the 'name' member is present in the GeoJSON’s FeatureCollection of the area.

And finally, the plan for 2025 – there are two main things:

See full entry

Posted by ChofOjeda on 31 December 2024 in English. Last updated on 18 January 2025.

2024…I’ve learned a lot of things…

  • I mapped some trees at my university.
  • I love nature! So I helped @Ludway map his school with some kids. There, I practiced my knowledge of trees and species. I learned how to measure a tree! Also, I learned about some botanical things.
  • I mapped my neighborhood and learned how to map buildings, shops, paths, etc.
  • Now I’m envolved in YouthMappers, and I’m very proud of that.
  • I met amazing people like @AngocA, @JuanMelo and @se_bras , who have taught me many things about the GIS and how develop proyects.

This was a great year, I hope next year will be better!! :)

Location: Prado Veraniego, UPZ El Prado, Localidad Suba, Bogota, Bogota, Capital District, RAP (Especial) Central, 111111, Colombia

It has been a productive year for me on osm yet I am still reaching for a more comprehensive map of both Anchorage and greater Alaska.

Mapping Natural Features

This year I continued to map large swathes of natural features in Alaska. It is still very much an open canvas to add features and without even a goal in mind it has been easy and quick to add large areas in small osm breaks throughout the day in 2024. Corollary studies published this year on the prevalence of Alzheimer’s based on occupation points to reduces occurrences with jobs requiring constant active direction finding (ambulance drivers and taxi drivers in particular). It’s been hypothesized this is from activation or stimulation of the hippocampus. That’s something I imagine I can trigger to some degree with mapping that I wouldn’t get from my typical computer work. I feel as though osm is keeping my brain sharp at least.

My First 2025 Goal

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Location: Anchorage, Alaska, United States