What @davespod said is absolutely spot-on. For example, it’s completely out of order to “Welcome” new editors with changeset discussion comments like on this one:

osm.org/changeset/31967943

(which in case it gets hidden, says just “WTF is this?”). The new user’s “crime” in this case was to add a name (and address information!) but to omit a tag such as “amenity=school” or whatever else would have been relevant. They’ve made exactly three edits to OpenStreetMap.

Imagine if you walked into a new town and within three minutes of arriving someone pointed at you and said “WTF is this.”. Not nice.

Re “detecting when someone deletes a city”, it’s not quite as straightforward as just reading the minutely updates or looking at changesets within a bounding box, because the XML itself doesn’t contain details of a node being deleted - just the fact that a node was. It might be the corner of a bulldozed building, or it might be a city of 7 million people.

Querying every deleted node for every changeset (even from something like Overpass) is unlikely to be practical. More of an option might be some kind of database trigger http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/trigger-definition.html - even a rendering database should have enough information in it to tell when a city’s been deleted.

Was the previous one perhaps osm.org/node/245640543/history ? It was at least a previous one, I presume. The changeset that deleted it just looked like normal mapping, so it might just have been an accidental deletion. However this was 2 years ago, so maybe there’s been a more recent one since? City nodes accidentally disappearing isn’t that unusual; it has happened to the nearest city to me (Sheffield) a couple of times recently.

It might be worth mentioning it in the “users: India” section of the OSM Forum, or perhaps the talk-in list (both relatively low volume, but active) to see if anyone knows more of the story (or I can, if you’d prefer). Thanks too to Alex for the notification.

• Andy Townsend (SomeoneElse) on behalf of the DWG

PS: In case you’re wondering how I found that old node it was finding a local suburb node and then finding a changeset that modified lots of place names, and looking for the name “Hyderabad”.

As you’ve said, except in very special cases, there shouldn’t be two things in OSM for one thing in the real world (you’ve already linked to osm.wiki/One_feature,_one_OSM_element on the changeset discussion).

It sounds like they’re trying to use some database representation of OSM data (“ the problem with that approach is if you need to use a derivative of the polygon dataset for other purposes”) but it’s not clear which one, or for what. If they’re assuming that all objects in OSM have a duplicate node representing them then they are (thankfully) sadly mistaken.

That said, there’s nothing wrong with having “shop” node POIs within a non-shop “building” way. As Stalfur said, it does have some advantages - although a downside can be when you want to show the relationship of different shops to each other.

As someone who occasionally contacts mappers new to an area, I find JOSM’s language tags on the changeset really useful (e.g. when deciding what language to use when contacting them). Having the same information logged by iD will be similarly useful.

What you do on the Internet is essentially public (especially when you’re updating a public map!). Lots of browser information is logged by every other internet site out there, and glossing over that fact doesn’t “help privacy” in any way at all. According to https://panopticlick.eff.org the browser that I’m typing this into right now is unique among those that site has tested - there are real privacy concerns about what we do on the Internet, but storing the browser and language against iD edits in OSM isn’t one of them.

It’s not the first and it won’t be the last “comedy misspelling” (1) in the OS’s data (which, let’s not forget, came originally from some rather lowly local council employee). Rather than a deliberate “Copyright Easter Egg” I suspect they’ve just made a mistake. As Bernard Ingham said in another context, it’s much more likely to be a cock-up than a conspiracy.

(1) https://twitter.com/sk53onosm/status/323712730248933376

Given the plate tectonics that’s active in the area

http://www.nhm.org/site/sites/default/files/mineral/san_andreas_fault-480px.jpg

I just hope that he’s going to keep it up to date in the future :)

Let me guess - Slartibartfast wanted to go somewhere wamer where he could get a nice South African Red?

Yay!

Now, about those hedges… and litter bins… and bus routes… and addresses…

:)

Re 2012 - perhaps lots of press coverage about the licence change? Maybe we ought to do that more often :)

It’s also worth mentioning which Garmin device - some can display images, some only vector maps (see for example https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/27269/is-there-a-simple-way-to-create-a-garmin-custom-map-kmz-type-from-osm-data and the links from it for info about non-vector data).

The help site has lots of Garmin questions - it’s worth searching there with one of:

https://help.openstreetmap.org/search/?q=garmin+image&Submit=search&t=question

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=garmin+site%3Ahelp.openstreetmap.org&tbs=li:1

So did you do that last changeset hopping on one leg?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_%28cricket%29

:-)

Interesting - do you have any plans to look at what impact sending a message (or not sending a message) might have?

Last year I had a look at the effect on mapper retention of the new mapper messages sent in Poland:

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/welcomewg/2013-March/000022.html

(and see links from there for two other months’ analysis). Essentially, it didn’t find a measurable difference in retention - but didn’t look at edit quality or any other possible effects.

Also you might find this previous study interesting:

http://icaci.org/files/documents/ICC_proceedings/ICC2013/_extendedAbstract/401_proceeding.pdf

Cheers,

Andy

I wonder if that photograph would make a suitable “Image of the Week”?

osm.wiki/Featured_image_proposals

(it would need to be released under an open licence though as per that link)

Have you contacted the mapper concerned?

In cases such as this I’d normally suggest the dev API to them (if they’re testing stuff) or opengeofiction.net (if they’re just creating a fantasy map, which looks to be the case here).

Note that they’ve also modified the border of Egypt to exclude this as an enclave:

osm.org/way/308413685

It seems odd to thank someone for running an organisation that I’ve never actually joined, but - thank you!

Whilst OSMF might be “a tiny speck somewhere off centre” it’s often the public face of OSM. Like a drunken uncle at a family party, when they start behaving oddly, it gets noticed. Your OSMF chairmanship brought a dose of much-needed sanity to the board and the organisation; it’ll be sorely missed.

@Yorvik Prestigitator yes, it was a new user the last twice it happened, but on the most recent occasion it was found and fixed within ~6 hours so I don’t think that was more than a temporary annoyance.

You said above “Since few weeks, flood waters have subsided and the media frenzy have moved somewhere else.”. The second of those statements is true to an extent, but the first isn’t necessarily so.

According to a BBC TV news report yesterday, flooding in the levels has dropped around 0.5m, and the reporter was still able to do the usual piece to camera with acres of water in the background.

So yes, there is a discussion to be had about when and how transient events are mapped, and how long an event has to be to be considered “not transient”, but don’t assume that because the media have moved on that the events over. People in the Philippines are still getting back on their feet after last November, there’s still a civil war in Syria, etc.

So (assuming that Donington doesn't run out of cash before next year) does someone need to book a track day to get a GPS trace of the new layout?

Thanks - I've been meaning to sort out the 5 Pits Trail for ages!