And in the 10th example your “improvement” is both

• not really correct
• ironically likely to produce bad instructions in voice navigation

if you don’t have a survey-grade GPS, don’t try to tell me your mapping is accurate

I don’t use survey-grade GPS for mapping and my mapping is accurate.

Note that grant is contructed in following way

• time based for things like UX testing and research of technology
• fixed amount for doing things like implementing specific features

That means that if as part of an implementation I will get distracted and start discussion on mailing list or spend time on related mapping - I am not going to be paid more.

In other words I am not getting paid at all for OSM mapping, OSM Wiki editing or tagging mailing list posting.

For example in case of osm.wiki/Talk:Proposed_features/Advanced_cycle_barrier_tagging#single_vs_squeeze I would receive the same funding if I would ignore poor tag name and implement it with cycle_barrier=squeeze

Feel free to ask! Do not be afraid about it, it is normal to be a bit confused.

I know a lot and still continue to ask :)

BTW, something from osm.wiki/Contact_channels has chance to be better than posting diary entries

Have you tried switching aerial imagery layer?

In in-browser-editor you can go to background settings (layer icon, looks like a cake, 5th from top, 5th from bottom)

osm.org/edit?editor=id#map=17/-9.38600/147.05447 has more buildings in Esri layer.

How do you know there are more blocking me than blocking you?

There are many indicators of that, for example one person is blocked so significantly that they are posting complaints about how blocking function works.

Also, many people mentioned how they are blocking your GitHub account or its notifications.

so that makes it morally OK?

Yes, it is 100% moral to use ignore lists.

Please, stop bothering tomhughes.

If you would post things like https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/3333#issuecomment-934987836 on my issue trackers I would warn and later block you. Given subsequent offtopic and bothering I am surprised that you are not blocked on that issue tracker.

You are not entitled to forcing notifications on people. And if you want to change how GitHub works - contact GitHub.

That is some seriously bigoted and racist nonsense

I tried to read it now and I admit that I get lost at the wall of text (again). It is likely that the same happened with other people reading it.

In addition you have not quoted part that is actually at least partially matches your description

They get it but are too cowardly or set in their ways to think about certain things so they repress it. You can see that in their faces.

redsteakraw, it is really easy to insult people living under oppressive regime that they do not sacrifice their lives to change it. I am not sure that I would actually be really brave in their place. And some in China tried, sadly for little effect.

And if you meant something else in the last sentence - I would encourage to not insult people based on how they look like.

And if interpretation by Adamant1 was correct - please, see at history where such thinking goes. (spoiler: nothing good, in the worst cases you get piles of skulls).

What about the German government requesting the deletion of paths in a bird sanctuary? To quote Woodpeck from the OSM forum discussion “the office would prefer if we delete the beaches.” In the meantime it’s a pretty balanced discussion about the pros and cons of the various options. There’s no fist waving about the evil “Authoritarian German capitalist government” or whatever from Woodpeck or anyone else. So are you seriously going to tell me there isn’t a double standard when it comes to China

If they would be fine with deletion of paths in a bird sanctuary on request by government - both in China and Germany, then there would not be double standard.

(There is an extra problem of China being more likely to lie, but lets assume that we can verify it)

American government requesting paths in national parks be deleted from OSM. Which is just as much restricting freedom of expression as China

eee, no?

USA has its own share of rampant abuse, but far, far below China levels.

So dear OSMF - give us a clear mapping scheme

Note that tagging schemes are created and designed by mappers - not by OSMF.

If you want tagging scheme that fits your needs: feel free to design it!

(are you aware of some attempts to handle disputed boundaries?)

The illegality has NOTING to do with freedom of expression, it’s all about national security

If you restrict freedom of expressions for reasons of national security (either sincerely or as a pretext) then it definitely is related to freedom of expression.

and

One thing to keep in mind is that China is not a country with freedom of expression. If China officially claims to control a certain territory, then a Chinese citizen who knows that this claim is wrong would risk getting into serious trouble for saying so - they endanger national security, they’re terrorists, and so on, just look at Hong Kong.

is true.

According to China PRC law, mapping whatever content on openstreetmap would be illegal (…) And as I have just stated before, mapping at OSM has nothing to do with freedom of expression.

Mapping at OSM in China is illegal, which is quite significant restricting freedom of expressions.

Even if enforcement is not typical (and likely reserved to people who really irritated ruling regime).

Zdecydowanie, niestety sporo osób się łapie na takie podwójne mapowanie które nic nie wnosi.

Implications to “correct tagging” of driveway (using SHC/UK definitions), and proper use of classifier service=driveway

Legal definition in California is not sole or primary or only correct driveway definition, OSM tagging is not defined by California law.

The most correct way to resolve this problem is to tweak the Wiki to… (…) Introduce service=residential_driveway for the purpose of private access and destination driveway to residential properties

Redefining heavily used tag would require a very clear consensus, it is NOT an OSM Wiki tweak.

Why is there a need to mention “one mapper that mapped 3000 ways” on the Wiki page

It is normal to do this when tag is used just by a few people. I did it with say osm.wiki/Tag:dual_carriageway%3Dyes when I wrote

Majority of uses are currently by one user in Krakow, Poland, as of late 2020[1]. A typical dual carriageway is not using this tag.

Note that I mapper using this tag and OSM Wiki editor are the same person, me.

In both cases it is not a personal attack.

It really takes a lot of time to pre-record a video. But I think it totally pays off! Pre-recorded videos

And I am glad that this option was existing! I would definitely not take part with live video. Possibility of pronunciation mistake turning out to have some political implications is scary.

And recording allowed me to redo until some version was acceptable.

And big thanks for organizing it!

For me as a speaker making prerecorded video (hopefully it qualifies as “if you were a volunteer during the event”)…

I was doing something like that for the first time, and I was surprised how time consuming was to produce prerecorded video that was not of a terrible quality.

So big thanks for early deadline for making test video and relatively early deadline for a final video. This way, despite multiple unexpected issues I still managed to produce something before conference.

In unlikely case that you watched my talk, had questions, still remember them - feel free to ask now.

Developers of open source software, people who maintain crowdsourced projects and other volunteer entities have to constantly beg for donations and seek sponsors, regardless of the fact that these projects often produce real and significant economic value.

I agree that it is unsolved problem and it would be nice to solve it somehow.

I consider it suboptimal that CEO of $EVIL_CORPORATION is earning massive amount of money while making situation worse in general, while actually useful projects struggle for funding.

But…

In light of this, I believe the license governing use of the OSM data is wrong. I think the license was formulated and adapted for use in the OSM project by people who already addressed their existential needs and get their reward for their volunteer work in terms of high-level psychological signals.

would require complete restructuring of project, it would be basically community owned company selling data in an unusual commercial way. I have doubts whether it would actually work well.

Another aspect visible in the OSM project context is, that most volunteer mapping is done in rich countries, while the underdeveloped and developing ones are much less mapped. The money we leave on the table could be used to support mapping efforts in these places where we have “white spots” on the map.

Note that without focus on “is someone is going to paid for it” OSM menages much better quality in typically ignored regions.

Due to the way NEO is designed, such funds will benefit the least wealthy volunteers most, which should increase mapping effort in the most needed locations

Note that we already have some disruptive accounts making fake edits (thousands of edits repeatedly moving nodes around etc) just to maybe get pitiful rewards from Osmand fund (recently renamed to OSM BTC fund).

So it will have not only positive effects, including making some pathologies more popular. Especially

The second aspect of having volunteers use NEO is that they earn community currency, equivalent to the number of hours they worked. That money can be used to reward other users in the system, buy merit shares in other users’ projects, or access the products and services created in NEO.

is prone to creating new set of problems that were so far mostly absent. Though for example I have seen case of person obsessed with not deleting nodes while mapping because in past it was ranked negatively on some user-comparison tool=.

If this was the case, then on what basis would (especially rich) consumers of volunteer work be willing to make donations to the organizations running such volunteer projects? I believe it is due to the feeling we all share, that a person should be rewarded for value they provide, even if they explicitly state that no payback is necessary.

Large entities are not doing this due to such feeling. They are doing this because it is in their interests. And system setup by OpenStreetMap worked nice in this case. In the best interest of large entities was to do something actually useful and make their precious dataset a tiny bit more open.

For example Microsoft is making Bing aerial available for mapping not from some goodness or gratitude. They are doing this because Google Maps is a great success while Bing maps are basically a miserable failure.

So in their interest is to make Google Maps worth less, so strong OpenStreetMap is in their interests.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ is a great explanation of that strategy. See https://www.gwern.net/Complement for a bit of further discussion.

Such actions should not be mistaken for acting based on some feeling or moral values.

From linked article following fits well:

Headline: IBM Spends Millions to Develop Open Source Software.

Myth: They’re doing this because Lou Gerstner read the GNU Manifesto and decided he doesn’t actually like capitalism.

Reality: They’re doing this because IBM is becoming an IT consulting company. IT consulting is a complement of enterprise software. Thus IBM needs to commoditize enterprise software, and the best way to do this is by supporting open source. Lo and behold, their consulting division is winning big with this strategy.

Note: some small exceptions may apply with action happening due to moral issues/feelings. But “company paying people they are not obligated to pay” is quite unlikely, many companies refuse to pay what they are legally obligated to pay!