Simon,

The board were not blind to the financials for SotM 2013. As Brian has pointed out there was 5 sources of information sent to the board including one (and arguably the most important) direct to you. I seem to recall that Brian even took you personally through this.

Furthermore all our planning with the exception of a couple of f2f meetings where we worked on the programme were in the open. Any board member could have joined any one of our teleconferences, requested to see any of our minutes or asked to be added to the team@stateofthemap.org email address. Only Henk did this. Yes I am disappointed that Henk did not communicate back to you during your board meetings (or did he??) but you were equally passive with regard to SotM 2013. Even more worryingly is that no lessons seem to have been learnt.

Rob

This is a very neat little solution to a problem. Thanks to all those involved with the fix :-)

Hi Michael,

It’s great that you want to get involved, your help would be hugely appreciated. In addition to the link Richard provided you may also want to check out the wiki: osm.wiki/Develop osm.wiki/Bugs

Also if you’re short on ideas I’m sure we can come up with lots :-)

Best, Rob

If following escada’s suggestion you may also want to check out the follow up post which deals with converting closed ways (polygons) to points so that you can then produce a simple map with consistent data. All very easy - I know because I wrote the blog post and my computer skills are limited to basic use (no programming):

http://www.mappa-mercia.org/2014/09/extracting-centroids-from-openstreetmap.html

Sounds great. Is it possible to download data prior to going out surveying (that is, an offline data mode)? I’ve tweeted this at https://twitter.com/mappamercia/status/518770161021886464

Hi,

These sort of ideas come up every now and then. It’s worth remembering that there is no OpenStreetMap Headquarters. The whole project is volunteer run with no paid employees (this is quite different to wikipedia for example).

It also worth considering the statement on the wiki:

Welcome to OpenStreetMap, the project that creates and distributes free geographic data for the world. We started it because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways.

We want to create and distribute free data so that others can use it in creative ways. There is therefore a balance that needs to be struck between providing enough features on openstreetmap.org to encourage more people to edit data, and providing too much that we stifle innovation and use of OpenStreetMap data on third party websites.

Regards, Rob

p.s. A lot of work has gone in to the default renderer these last few months. Colours are now more subtle and the style is generally more “consistent”. You can make more suggestions at https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto

@osmthis is just another way off creating a note. It could represent a mappable fact.

I think one issue with notes is that people don’t realise they can move the marker to a specific location. The interface could be improved to allow people to draw lines/shapes. Something similar to http://geojson.io would be good.

Good idea. My gut instinct is that it’s perhaps a bit long (especially as it breaks down in to a whole load of links). Might end up putting some folks off!!

@mvexel: Thanks. That’s what I had initially assumed but then I was confused as to why some roads go so far and then have gaps (especially true of the image of Mountain View). I wasn’t contributing to OSM in 2007 so hadn’t realised it started like this. I guess that was the best you could do without satellite imagery until someone actually got there on the ground to check that the roads did link up.

Nice! Is the 2007 data complete or does it exclude the ODBL non-comliant data?

Click on “Make yourself an atlas” and then search for a starting area. You will then probably want to shrink the print area by dragging the triangle/arrow in the bottom right corner. You can then zoom in the map using the + symbol in the top left of the map. Keep adjusting the map zoom and the page print area until you are happy - you should be able to zoom in all the way.

Rob

Welcome. There are lots of tools to help you find local mappers (based on where they edit). My favourite is http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/oooc

You can then follow this up by entering a user name you find in to http://hdyc.neis-one.org/

Interesting. I wish people would put up house numbers around here. It’s amazing how many houses are missing a house number or name.

Us Brits don’t really see the English language as a fixed language and as such we have a strong element of creeping Americanisms. I expect most people will not spot them - just a small proportion of people will. This is evident in the fact that the official English in the European Union is British English and even they get it wrong all too often.

My other concern is that OSM has traditionally been against automated edits of tags. As such, I feel that I should not change tags even when they only occur a few times in our data.

Finally it is often easier to accept these tags without challenging them at the risk of making OSM appear to be a “British only project”.

Good luck though :-D

Directions are coming. See the demo site at http://jsrouting.apis.dev.openstreetmap.org/

Gradually other things may get added, but as noted the OSM Foundation don’t want to put off third parties from doing this. I find that OpenStreetMap is becoming better known now through our data users (e.g. the many iOS and Android apps that use OSM data).

Ulamm,

No worries. I’m happy to help :-) Tagging is quite a complex thing to get right when you start to look at all the different things OpenStreetMap contributors want to add. The “restrictions” tags now follow a standard format:

1. Basic restrictions
These are the ones most people are used to. For example:

access = no
maxspeed = 60
oneway = yes

2. Intermediate restrictions
These are of the format <restriction>:<transport mode>:<direction>=<restriction value> with the tag including either <transport mode>, or <direction>, or both. For example:

maxspeed:hgv = 40
oneway:bicycle = no
maxspeed:forward = 50 (in the case of different maxspeeds for each direction of travel - forward meaning in the same direction that the way is drawn on OSM)

Note that this means that when someone tags bicycle=no they actually mean access:bicyle=no. However due to the long-standing use of <transport mode>=* these shorter versions are more common (new tagging schemas aim to be backward compatible).

3. Advanced conditional restrictions
These are used when there are conditions set on the restriction (e.g. the restriction only applies during certain hours / when the road is wet / etc).

They build upon the format in 2 above. You can read more at: osm.wiki/Key:conditional

Hmm, what’s going on with my formatting. Lets try again:

If it’s not clear, how to tag a oneway street that is bidirectional for cyclists, let me just recap:

• You draw a way (line) representing the street.
• To this line you add both tags “oneway=yes” and “oneway:bicycle=no” (plus the highway=* tag to identify what type of road it is.

Hi Ulamm,

It’s it’s not clear, how to tag a oneway street that is bidirectional for cyclists, let me just recap: * You draw a way (line) representing the street. * To this line you add both tags “oneway=yes” and “oneway:bicycle=no” (plus the highway=* tag to identify what type of road it is.

The way it works is that there is a transport hierarchy [1]. The first tag (oneway=yes) marks the road as oneway for all traffic, and the second tag (oneway:bicylce=no) in effect removes the oneway obligation for bicycles.

I hope that helps.

Oh and just to clarify, OpenStreetMap is not a Californian project. Legally it is registered in the UK, but it has no office, no paid employees. It’s a community project run by ordinary folks. The tags we use have been decided through open community involvement. Using something other than these tags makes it harder for our data consumers to use. For example, Richard who first replied to you has built a cycle website that uses OpenStreetMap data to build a cycle routing map [2]. Richard would not have been able to do this if everyone used different tags.

[1] See the diagram for the transport hierarchy - osm.wiki/DE:Key:access [2] http://cycle.travel/map

I get the impression that Google only map the bus stops and not the full route (that’s why the public transport routing shows straight lines between places rather than following the route of the road). On the other had where we have a mapper who is able and willing to keep route data up to date, then I see no reason not to include it in OSM.

Anyway, thanks for your thoughts - in OSM it can be quite tricky to get an experts opinion at short notice when tagging schemes are being developed.

Ah that’s how you do it. With the old ?lat… style rather than the # style.

Thanks Simon.

Will aim to add it to the Mappa Mercia site.