There are lots of places where you might downlaod things containing OpenStreetMap data. What are you downloading, and from where?

Incidentally, I’ve just commented on an “#AtlasChecks” changeset at osm.org/changeset/107663718 . It looks there as if a fake name added by a former contributor has accidentally been reapplied by Facebook, perhaps because the comparison data set wasn’t up to date?

DWG can’t (or doesn’t want to) provide a reasonable explanation

To be clear - that’s not actually true. A number of Ukrainian mappers wrote to the DWG last night, and on behalf of the DWG I replied to them all (since I’ve not been involved in this particular dispute until now). It wasn’t what I had planned for a Friday evening, but there you go. Some pertinent points of those replies are paraphrased below, and my comments for the benefit of people not familiar with the issue are in square brackets:

For the avoidance of doubt - and I’m quoting from the block message here - a DWG member wrote “I will block your account until you remove it from your profile”. That makes it very clear that this isn’t a “block for 10 years” - it is a “block until the text is removed from the user profile”.

[Subsequent to me writing that message, user profiles were changed and blocks were removed].

[the next part refers to the user profile message itself, which was threatening to burn people of a different political persuasion to the writers]

Moving on to the text itself, it can be difficult to decide where to draw the line between what is satirical and what is offensive. However, wanting to burn anyone or anything is clearly not OK, even when the thing you want to burn is a cartoonish representation of someone with a particular political point of view.

https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Etiquette was adopted some time ago by the board as the way that people within OpenStreetMap should try to interact with one another, even when they hold conflicting views (political and otherwise). In the DWG we understand that, especially in the case of political disputes, this can be difficult, but as members of the OSM community we all owe everyone else within the community a fair hearing.

[extracts end]

To summarise, hate speech in OSM is never OK. It isn’t excused by the fact that the people writing it are from a country that has been partly annexed by another; OSM is one worldwide project. Everyone understands that it is difficult, but we have to try and find a way to work together.

If you think that there’s something that the DWG should do that it isn’t doing then please let us know (either to data@osmfoundation.org or directly to me if you prefer).

Best Regards,

Andy Townsend, on behalf of OSM’s Data Working Group.

Would it be appropriate to keep it name=pikachu pass if there are signs indicating this?

Yes. Also, if a road is “colloquially known as Pikachu Pass” then “loc_name=Pikachu Pass” is entirely appropriate too.

Some real-world names and tag combinations do appear unlikely at first glance - http://osm.mapki.com/history/way.php?id=128265146 is or was apparently a nice steak house in Burkina Faso (see osm.org/changeset/16601166), but has been “corrected” to be a burger joint on a couple of occasions. People making corrections like this aren’t helping to improve the quality of the data in OSM.

It’s also true that “new mapper errors” aren’t in any sense vandalism. The appropriate course of action there is to educate new mappers about how names are used in OSM, and what they can do to see the data that they are interested in (perhaps use a different map or app if the one that they are using does not show what they have just added).

All that said, it should be relatively easy for everyone to follow this activity - as required by the OEG osm.wiki/Organised_Editing/Activities/Facebook#Atlas_Checks says that “ Atlas Checks detections are given the following hashtag: #AtlasChecks”.

What actually determines “profanity” here? Would e.g. the loc_name on https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/854436697 be a problem? That loc_name is easily verified. What steps are taken to ensure that valid names considered “profane” in some dialects of English aren’t removed?

In OpenStreetMap terms, it absolutely is. See https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/d/d8/DisputedTerritoriesInformation.pdf for how disputed territories are mapped within OpenStreetMap.

用OpenStreetMap术语来说，绝对是。 请参阅https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/d/d8/DisputedTerritoriesInformation.pdf，了解如何在OpenStreetMap中映射有争议的领土。

You’ve commented a couple of times (here), they haven’t replied.

If you’d like the DWG to send them a message that they have to read before continuing to edit, let us know.

Also, it might be worth explaining what OSM actually is. They’re using MAPS.ME and may think that they are adding personal bookmarks in there.

Cheers,

Andy (from the DWG)

As I mentioned elsewhere, this accusation reads very much like a conspiracy theory (and a poorly-written one at that).

You’ve made a number of hand-wavy claims here, and have used language designed to be inflammatory (“removed … by a server intervention”, “Tile manufacturers are probably responsible for this”, “fake”, “mapping for the renderer”).

What you’ve omitted to say is what you think is what you think is actually wrong. Also I don’t see how a map style could possibly be guilty of “mapping for the renderer” - a map style is the renderer.

You’ve had a number of disagreements with the Austrian community (see https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-at/2020-December/thread.html#10905 et al). This claim just looks to be a continuation of that dispute - a disagreement with what other people think OSM is about.

One thing that you can’t accuse OSM’s “standard” map style of is being hidden. For example, the main “meadow” rendering rules are here. What I see when I zoom in and out of a meadow area is entirely consistent with what the code looks like it’s trying to do. You may not be a fan of that “way_pixels determine polygon-gamma” effect (I’m not), but you can’t accuse the renderer (or the tile server) of doing something different to the code.

Can you link to an actual OSM object that is handled inconsistently?

I’m not so sure about that…

Are you perhaps trying to enter a competition for the Plain English Campaign’s “Golden Bull Award”? Come on - “solutioning” - really! Even better, the links are to Google Docs files so many of the people that it’d be great to get feedback from simply won’t be able to read them.

If I was to make one suggestion it would be this:

HOT as an organisation should take more responsibility for users of platforms such as https://tasks.hotosm.org , and especially for ensuring that people posting projects there are educated about what they need to do, and if people fail to do what they should HOT should take action to ensure that (a) existing tasks are taken down ad they don’t create new tasks and (b) any problems with existing data are sorted out. With a DWG hat on I’m currently tidying up some of the mess left around the world by the company that Pete Masters talked about here. Unfortunately, poor-quality contributions where there isn’t a significant local OSM community won’t often be seen - the DWG are still getting reports in dribs and drabs as locals try and communicate with the problem mappers, nothing happens, and they come to us instead. In his reply, Pierre Béland summed up the sitation very well - this is not an isolated problem.

We (the DWG) were requested by HOT to delete everything that these contributors had added (in practice we’re only doing that where the quality is so bad that starting from scratch is less work than amending what’s there; but unfortunately that’s true in most cases). At a rough guess** I’d say 10-15% of these problem edits had been detected by other OSM users in the 15-20 or so days since these edits were made, suggesting that 85-90% were not.

Best Regards,

Andy, from the DWG

** difficult, because changeset sizes vary

I stumbled across this comment at HN today, allegedly from someone who works on OpenJDK.

(re JOSM on flash) - when I saw that I thought someone had managed to create a JVM that just depends on Macromedia/Adobe Flash (now developed by Harman, part of Samsung)!

Have you seen osm.wiki/OpenLevelUp ? For an example, see here.

I clicked on their accounts and it said it didn’t exist which was very strange.

That probably means that someone has already reported them for sending spam messages and they have already been deleted.

Are these OSM messages sent from within openstreetmap.org? If so, I’d suggest reporting the user via the “report” button.

If not, let us know how these messages are being sent and people will be able to offer further advice.

@IpswichMapper If someone had left information such as the above in a note then yes, I’d probably hide it as it’s likely that they didn’t realise that the note was public. However this diary entry was clearly intended to communicate with other users (it requested an action).

@KENDRA PHILLIPS In case you’re not aware, you can remove the contents of this diary entry by editing it. If you would like it to be hidden completely then just comment here asking for someone to do that. This assumes that you want to do that of course - you may be happy for it to stay, and if you are, that’s fine too.

Regards, Andy, from OSM’s Data Working Group

Looks like you’ve fixed it now…

We need support to do that, can we ask you to do it for us ?

Absolutely - I’m sure anyone who’s commented here would be deleted to help.

For the avoidance of doubt:

Above you have said “All I can say is when I go to Google Earth, it is next to impossible to not see the figures”. It is NOT OK to use Google Earth as a source. Google’s licence does not allow it. For more details see osm.wiki/w/index.php?title=FAQ&oldid=2107930#Why_don.27t_you_just_use_Google_Maps.2Fwhoever_for_your_data.3F .

Best Regards,

Andy Townsend, on behalf of OSM’s Data Working Group.

@stephan75 More than happy to do so, no idea such a thing existed. Whatever will they think of next - self hosting?