@mmd - thanks for that. Is there any documentation on what that actually means? For example I can see references to “make stat” at osm.wiki/Overpass_API/Overpass_API_by_Example#Making_a_Table_of_Object_Versions but not much about why it’s needed.

For now, however, I don’t know how to delete this diary entry.

As a moderator I can hide it if you want, but it seems a bit drastic - why not just edit it so it’s got a caveat at the top saying “we can’t don’t do this until 2023”?

I’ve added a sentence along those lines at https://github.com/switch2osm/switch2osm.github.io/pull/145 . To be honest, there are lots of places where guides such as this just need “a few more words” to explain why you’d do something (and not just switch2osm - some of the OSM Carto notes would benefit from updates too). As you see more, I’d suggest making pull requests directly - I’m sure the effort would be appreciated.

Following a couple of comments and some corrections, I’ve now linked this into the menus.

Thanks - we (the DWG) occasionally get complaints about people trying to “game” editing statistics (by e.g. editing the same thing over and over again) but I don’t remember any about empty changesets.

How about posting the site at WeeklyOSM?

You can submit it - the link is http://weeklyosm.eu/this-news-should-be-in-weeklyosm.

changeset counts are simply not a good metric for anything. Well, they’re a good measure of how often click a particular “edit” button (unrelated to how much data was changed, of course).

It’d be interesting to link to the sites / editors behind these. I’m surprised to see a local site for one purpose “Refill Südtirol” so high up the list, for example.

Great!

I also want to upload how to build my instance detailed.

That’d definitely be useful for people who want to create their own (perhaps for a region that doesn’t have one already?).

One question though - the tag cloud at http://taginfo.openstreetmap.pe.kr/ looks very different to the one at https://taginfo.geofabrik.de/asia/south-korea - is updating that a separate step?

If there’s one change that you could make to improve the situation, what would it be?

I wonder if a way forward might be to invite the new contributors to chat with the local community more widely (OSM US’ Slack or elsewhere), to talk about things like “what imagery is good to use” etc.?

From a Data Working Group perspective it’d be good to know what the various communities think about this, especially which languages and which dialects are actually in use where. With a DWG hat on I’ve occasionally had to fix issues here (such as when someone has set all language values on something to one value).

Regards,

Andy (from the DWG)

I can understand how frustrating this must be.

I wonder if it might be possible to get in touch with the person telling these “#WARedCrossers” what and how to map? Maybe asking “take me to your leader” a few times in changeset discussion comments might get an answer to that? It’s difficult being too critical in changeset comments when these are people who are (a) new mappers (b) probably just doing what they’ve been told to and (c) are probably a bunch of college kids trying to do something positive for the rest of the world, but maybe we could find out who’s organising the work.

If you need to Data Working Group to get involved (by e.g. sending them messages that they have to read before continuing to edit) let us know.

Best Regards,

Andy, from the DWG.

A restriction at the API level, even if technically possible, would be a bit of a blunt instrument and can’t easily explain to a user what they need to do to resolve their problem.

As stragu mentioned above, you can identify problem changesets via OsmCha. I’ve not checked all possible values, but can’t see any obvious recent problems. If anyone finds a user still using an old version and creating problem data please create a ticket with the DWG (via email or the report button) so that we can explain the problem to them and help them to upgrade.

There certainly are problems in the data still, and some of them aren’t easily fixable (for example, the v1 of osm.org/node/7389230651/history was via the problem version so there’s no way of knowing where that well really is). Some of the node moves will be fixable though - if anyone needs any help identifying problems and undoing problem node moves please ask.

Best Regards,

Andy (from the DWG)

It still doesn’t work. You’ve linked to https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/kaxtillo/diary/youtu.be/MyNaiOE4M3k and I suspect you intended to link to youtube directly.

Excellent stuff - a proper challenge for anyone to walk!

where do you decide to draw the line on tag value usages (e.g. the 12 Temporarily closed and 10 Closed usages might also quality for this rendering),

It’s the usual “80/20 rule” - the first page of .uk values covers >1000 of the 1200 .uk usages, which is the vast majority of them. The 4 .uk “Closed” and 1 “CLOSED” are probably worth changing to “closed” (along with a polite comment on the previous changeset).

I haven’t yet looked at a .ie taginfo but I’d be surprised if I saw significant usage of a different spelling.

As to exactly what “closed; by appointment only” means I’ve no idea! Currently I ignore other values so they will default to appearing as “still open”, which is probably for the best. It’s also worth mentioning that I’d expect many of these values in OSM to be out of date already simply because many places are reopening if they can or closing because they have to. The example that I was going to pick for “definitely still closed because there’s no way they can reopen right now with that venue” was open (ish) on Saturday (warning - Facebook link) but alas it isn’t permanent.

Essentially, there needs to be some way to bring important infrastructure parts back into active maintenance.

In response to that I’d ask “What’s broken? What actually needs fixing?” In some cases it might be something external that’s changing (as is happening with Potlatch2) but in the case of mod_tile is that actually true?

My recollection of https://github.com/openstreetmap/mod_tile/pull/152 was that it was part of a discussion about whether what role OSMF and osm.org should play (should osm.org “compete with google” itself, or should it enable others to do so - my apologies in advance if I’m oversimplifying that; look at the board election manifestos from around that date for more background).

It’s true that the lack of an active maintainer means that things like https://github.com/openstreetmap/mod_tile/pull/168/files get ignored, which is a shame. Separately I’ve seen https://github.com/SomeoneElseOSM/mod_tile/pull/4 (which at some point will need looking at).

How do you handle the offsets between “detected features” and reality? When I last looked at RapiD the imagery used seemed to be the one with the worst offset of the ones available to OSM editors. Usually when adding anything to OSM I’ll align based on a mix of imagery, GPS traces (especially where there are lots of them) and other sources - OS OpenData StreetView can be good for this in the UK.

There’s also the problem of detecting “features that are not features” - my last quick test found lots of detected “service roads” in Mansfield that were either not really useful to map, weren’t really service roads (and were all offset from reality). This is a little unfair- in that area all the real roads have been added so anything “new” detected is obviously going to be rubbish; if used somewhere where there are real major roads to detect that wouldn’t be the case (although as various OSM communities have found to their cost human checking of each piece of data as it is added is still very much needed).

Are you perhaps trying to reply to osm.org/user_blocks/3794 ?

That’s just a message to let you know that lots of people have commented on your changesets. You can see these at http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=8689197 . To reply to each one, click in the comment box on the changeset, type in your reply, and click “comment”.

Best Regards,

Andy Townsend, from OSM’s Data Working Group.

PS: As the other message says, if you have any questions, you can email us at data@osmfoundation.org .

There’s now an entry on the OSMF blog with all the links here.