A different angle is: Look at how much time this is taking. Assuming 5 mins work per block that’s 150 hours of work per year, and increasing. I’d guess that the real number is much higher.

Can we look at some other solutions that would prevent blocks ever having to be implemented. Preferably without simply shifting the time from DWG to a group of people. Perhaps being more supportive of people who want to make edits that are more controversial (e.g. helping people get good quality imports with simple documentation and useful tools). Perhaps automated changeset comments when no text added by the user. Perhaps a simpler wiki. Perhaps…

What are the main reasons for blocks this year?

Sounds good. I know a few local authorities that provide WFS [1] links to their data. Have wished that the OSM editors could display these so getting MVT vector tiles is a great step forward for ID.

I assume MVT vector tiles are a more logical approach than WFS, so I may have to try and persuade these data providers to switch to MVT tiles.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Feature_Service

Hi Ikiya,

I am sorry that we were unable to provide a scholarship this year. It makes me feel very sad each time I send an email to those who have not been awarded a scholarship.

This year we had 202 entries. This included 12 duplicate entries, so the real number was 190. Some 36% of applicants were women.

We accepted 17, and recommended an extra 3 (local to Milan) attend as volunteers. Of those selected 47% are women.

Where possible we would like applicants to seek support from other organisations as well. We will never be able to support all 190 people so applying for other grants if possible increases the chance of being able to attend.

Wow big change! Please pass on my thanks to all those involved with this. It looks really exciting with lots of new features added based on feedback. Can’t wait to give the virtual challenges a go at our next mapping party.

Hi alan_gr:

Do you think that might be an example of the kind of accidental forms of exclusion we are (at least partly) talking about here?

OSM communication is fragmented. At some point you will have to join something whether an email mailing list (not my preference), IRC (too technical for me) or something else. GitHub is where the developers are because that is the tool they need to get their job done effectively so that’s the best place to go.

Note: this is the same in the real world too. If you want to get your voice heard you have to go find the people to speak too. There are occasional consultations (as there are in OSM too - albeit on the mailing list and the blog) but the easiest way to be heard is to go direct.

But yes, the fewer barriers the better and that is why I pushed for months for the visual editor plugin to be added to the wiki. This was done when the plug-in hit stable release :-)

P.S. Non-developers like myself can engage with GitHub just as a web based platform with chat features similar to this / similar to social media.

P.P.S I’d love for OSM communication to be less fragmented. I’d love for the osm.org site to become more of a social platform. hence my original plea here to use the diary section more and in your mother tongue.

To nominate somebody - http://awards.osmz.ru/ To get involved in selection committee - message Ilya (osm.wiki/User:Zverik)

No - cray33’s was. Should be blocked. Sorry for the confusion :-)

Here is an existing request for one-click embedded translations: https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/1441

A few extra +1’s on the top post in the thread to show support would be good.

That response was exceptionally poor but I totally agree that the environment is not great. One of the pieces of research highlighted this and it is in my view the root cause of our diversity challenge. By the way it puts men off too - this is a universal problem that should be tackled to improve our entire community.

Regarding language. I see no reason to assume that the diary feature is an English portal. I encourage you to post in whatever language you feel happiest with. I read (via Google translate) many posts written in Russian, Japanese, German, Spanish, French and thoroughly enjoy it. Some social media tools now have a quick button to translate a post. The more non-English posts we get here the more likely that feature will be added to OSM.

So yeah, please keep posting here - make sure your voice is heard :-)

Thanks Selene,

I’d go a step further and say that the global comms channels (such as this diary system) are a thermometer on diversity.

A few reflections:

• The awards are intended as a way to celebrate success and promote more people to share their stories. It should be seen as something fun rather than scientific.
• There are huge numbers of amazing people (both women and men) who’s voices are never heard. I’m lucky to find out about these by reading the SotM scholarship applications.
• A great step would be to encourage more people to share their stories more widely. The diary feature is a great place to do this and more people should use it.

So my question is, why are people happy to share their experience to a (private) google form and on platforms such as WhatsApp, but not here? Is it a UI issue - e.g. lack of app / hard to upload photos? Are there other issues?

It’s very easy to give examples that demonstrate either side. What you’re missing is therefore the consistency and “bitrot” debate (to use a term from coding). How we solve these is up for debate but simply pretending all is well is misleading. Similarly suggestions that “we’re doomed” are also wrong. We have some super talented people and can easily solve them - as soon as we agree how…!

“We” is Mapbox right? Anyway good stuff. Anything planned for outside of the US?

I love the OSMfocus app. Did you get anywhere with the open source release?

Hi Zayra. You are very welcome. I am glad you enjoyed yourself at State of the Map and in Japan :-)

@Warin61: I think your posts here are very good. I agree, it’s not a speed problem - a ‘fast map’ is better than no map at all (in my view). I think it comes down to who is able to provide the most detailed mapping.

My local community has done an amazing amount of work to take the map from a blank canvas to what it is now. But we know that we are at our limits of detail - we struggle to map buildings as there are just too many of them (i.e. progress is slow) and we struggle to keep up with changes. Big items like road changes are easy, but keeping up to date with changes to shops, bus stops and parking restrictions (3 things all changing quickly where we live) is hard. In places our data had become stale.

To fix this we either need 100x as many mappers or we work with non-craft mappers as they can support the detail that we are unable to (i.e they are best able to provide some of the detail we struggle with). In reality we are trying both approaches - more Craft mappers and more non-Craft mappers is better than just more of one group! I’m delighted to say that the results are looking good - we have reduced the level of stale data via some semi-mechanical edits :-) and there seems to have been a notable increase in new mappers round here recently too (we just need to convert them from occasional mappers to regular mappers).

I’m a proud owner of a Craft Mapper tshirt and it is the group I associate myself with. Have been and always will be due to my lack of technical know-how and love of outdoor mapping :-)

I don’t believe the mailing list is representative in membership (posting or non-posting). I’d go further and say that the visible bit of the mailing list (the posts we read) is less representative than the international SotMs in aggregate (i.e. SotM 2013, 2016 and 2017 combined - those being the 3 I have been to). There are many reasons but this is off-topic here.

As you say, I was lucky to be able to travel to a few events, and I also engage via my support of the scholarship program. From my conversations, I believe that most people are in the category “We need all forms of mapping / they are all equally important” and this post is designed to remind others that may only see a very one-sided argument in some forums.

If you disagree, feel free to offer up some proof. I suspect you don’t disagree, which is why you are twisting the debate into a different topic… :-)

@imagico: You are right: SotM was made up of people from Japan, 15 scholars from all other the world, some people from the business world and some mappers from further afield who made it part of their holiday this year.

But the people who continue to shout the loudest on the Mailing Lists are fewer in number so even less representative.

I encourage you to set your own survey up and get that seen by a wide audience. Perhaps you are worried that it will show a similar result :-)

TL;DR: I don’t understand why Bryan didn’t just go with crossing=yes for the generic tag? Or his 2016 suggestion of:

“My personal preference would be crossing= to support marked / unmarked, and crossing_ref= would be a dropdown of the common types of markings. But I don’t think I would win that argument either.”

An uncontrolled crossing and a (UK) zebra crossing are two different things in my opinion. The UK zebra crossing has black and white stripes on the road and often includes an orange flashing beacon. If a pedestrian is stood on the pavement beside the crossing then vehicles are required to stop and let them pass. Black and white stripes are not used on crossing that are are controlled by traffic lights (as they are in some countries outside of the UK) but I deem the UK zebra crossing to be a controlled (rather than uncontrolled) crossing due to the requirement on vehicles to stop when this particular road marking is used.

To me an uncontrolled crossing has no significant road marking and no traffic lights. It may have a dropped curb but of follow the end of a path leading to the road, but would otherwise be hard to recognise as a crossing at all.

Nice image. Do you have the source file as I would like to make an English version for my local group?

Nice. Although I have never used the ability to automatically georeference scanned-in walking papers for my own mapping, I have seen the scans used at Missing Maps events.