My mine must be muddled. Can you give more info on adding to JOSM?

Congratulations! I like how you gave time to so many tools.

Clifford Seattle, WA - Chinooks at Fisherman’s Terminal

@forever2darkness - In the US we need more mappers in rural areas. Mostly we attract people in large cities, many with an active community. Our OSM meetup group has over 700 members. I’m real excited when I find an active mapper in rural Washington State.

One nice thing about mapping in rural America - you don’t have fights over how something is mapped. You are the expert. So go fix any bad mapping you did early and go improve your town. Join us on talk-us mailing list or join the our Slack channel.

If you need help finding your old edits just let us know.

Clifford

I send out welcome messages to new users in Washington State. Even ones that added crap. I encourage them to add only what can be verified on the ground. Most of the edits are good faith attempts to add data. I’ve spent hours verifying parks against local database. It turns out that most are accurate. Maybe they don’t match shapefiles from cities or county shapefiles but they do add in parks. I’ve also seen a surprising number of edits from these Pokemon users. Typical new users do one changeset. I’ve seen a number with over 10 edits. It turns out that most of the vandalism is easy to spot. Parks polygons over residential neighbors is real common. Trails that couldn’t possibly be correct.

Do they have quality problems - yes. But mostly because they are not familiar with OSM. Abbreviated street name, paths/footways not connect to adj. streets, and untagged ways.

The last new person changed a street into a waterway. But interestingly he also correct the street name. Local knowledge is useful. I removed the waterway and removed the bogus footways he added. End result, we have better data.

I’m as frustrated as you with vandalism. But I think potentially we can gain some active contributors if we help them.

I’m well aware of the post on Reddit. See my comments on the OSMUS Slack Channel. I also know that the number of new users has increased significantly. In one day, I contacted as many new users as I used to in a month.

I’ve scheduled a meetup for our area for next weekend. One of the topics is editing for Pokemon.

Rather than fight Pokemon, we need to welcome them with encouragement to become active community participants.

Clifford

Have you tried other aerial imagery such as Mapbox? Both are slow to load initially, but fast once the cache is built up.

You should be able to change your location under your account in “My Settings.” be sure to save the change after you move your marker.

Best, Clifford

Harry I trust you are refering to the post from make great hat.

Rick, Lots to do. Arizona roads need lots of care. When I’m visiting my Dad in Tucson, I spend most of my time getting roads fixed. The problem was the initial TIGER import. The TIGER quality in Arizona was really bad. The good news is - it’s easy to fix.

Have some fun. Join us on Slack. Post on Facebook

And just get out and map.

Best, Clifford

Your style sheet is returning an invalid token.

Joost, I just added my scripts to github to capture new users using the IRC #osm-bot channel. You can find the scripts as well as my welcome message, which came from your community.

Clifford

I applaud you for adding addresses to buildings. Hopefully someday soon, every address will be in OSM.

My solution to apartment numbers is using a node with the address, including the unit number (addr:unit) inside of the building outline. The individual units will render - but only with the housenumber. Tag the building outline with the main address. Check out Parkpoint Condominiums that was done a while back.

[1] osm.org/#map=18/47.67659/-122.26428&layers=N

We look forward to seeing your contributions to OSM. Feel free to join us on the Slack or on IRC #osm-us on oftc.net

Clifford

We had a similar discussion last night. Roads connected to landuse. I usually un-glue roads connected to landuse or admin boundaries. It would be great if editors complained when landuse, landcover or boundaries are connected to roads.

Welcome to OSM. I hope you get as much satisfaction from contributing as I do.

Clifford

Mikel, Terminology is getting rather confusing. We have Local Chapters and then we have local groups. The two are worlds apart. Local groups organize to improve their community. I can’t speak for all the local groups, but I suspect very few have any sort of non-profit status. Local Chapters on the other hand would have a non-profit status, by-laws, members, etc. Local Chapters are organized to put on local State of the Map conferences?

The thing is, we really don’t need Local Chapters. We need local groups. Everywhere. Before everyone jumps on me for that statement, consider what we need most. More contributors. Most of those will be the result of local groups.

Let’s start by asking “what do we need to do to promote more local groups.” Hopefully Local Chapters will step up to play strong role in helping answer that question. But Local Chapters are just part of the answer and maybe not even a critical part.

When we talk local, let’s talk local, at the community organizing level.

Like you I really look forward to hearing the outcome of the discussion. Unfortunately, I am unable to attend or would otherwise be happy to participate.

I’ll add a third vote for GoMap!! - The developer is always looking to make the app better. On top of that he is an active mapper as well. GoMap!! works for the entire iOS line - iPhone, iPad mini, iPad and iPad Professional.

What do you plan to do with all of these admin areas?

Way to go. With your list of todo’s, signage, buildings, addresses, don’t forget sidewalks.

Looks like it could use some refinement, but glad you added the lake.

I’ve been sending welcome messages for sometime. Late last year I modified it after the Belgium communities welcome message and included all new mappers in Washington State. Prior to that it was focused on the Seattle area and the message was to invite them to join our Meetup group.

The response rate is around 7%. I haven’t looked to see how many continue to map. My guess is that number is very low.

Your assessment of Maps.me is right on target. I usually don’t bother even sending them a message nor a changeset comment for the less than stellar edits. I’m not blaming the person, but maps.me in the hands of a newbie is dangerous. I only hope as the app matures, it also improves. Check out Millions that Don’t Care presented by Ilya Zverev, Mpas.me, at the 2016 SOTM-US conference. While I attended the conference, I didn’t get to his talk.

I think a better approach than for each of us to send out welcome messages, would be to have a script that automatically sends a message to new uses based on their language and the location of their first edit.

Clifford

Jon,

Only having the ability to contact one person at a time is very frustrating. We used a room full of volunteers to send message to target mappers to invite them to SOTM-US. We did get results, but it was way to time consuming.

We need the ability to: 1. Allow people to opt-in and out to receiving bulk messages. 2. Let people select interests that would allow bulk messages from others with similar interests 3. Be able to send to geographical areas 4. Send bulk message to people with similar interests. 5. Build in controls to prevent/limit spam messages like are seen on diary pages.

Keep up the great import work.

Clifford