Andy, I know you’ve done and you do a great job withing OWG and on the website. I believe every single contributor for OSM is awesome and does the maximum of what they are capble for. Otherwise I wouldn’t make the Awards. I know about the policies and have read them — I even tried to contribute the other day. I would so much like to have many people on OWG with different areas of responsibility, making the OWG look as the first and foremost group to help the project.

What I see instead are few burn-out people. Who do their best and resolve every critical situation that comes our way. But being at their limits, they forget or actively prevent anything that’s not essential (gpx dump, popup menu) or can increase their workload (providers, endpoints). With that they sometimes inadvertently drive people out of the core services, since these people see their contributions are not needed or are actively opposed. Which you’ve experienced, but with you being of the same culture and the same group of people, you’ve overcome, unlike many others. Hence there is no “helping resolve issues” and “demonstrating broad knowledge”, and no new members of OWG. The same people keep being over-burdened.

This circle cannot be broken from inside — I know that because I’ve been in that situation a few times. It only breaks with a bang, or with a careful outside direction, e.g. from the Board. Waiting for it just to fix itself does not work: tasks and discontent just pile up.

Andy, thanks for replying. There have been many posts like this over the past six years, only a bit more polite, so the message wasn’t clear enough. I agree I’m being a bit over the top — I’ve rewritten the most offending section. And I have to clarify this could be not about people, if the OWG had any transparency or rotation or policies.

You are talking about just one side of OWG: hardware. As I’ve mentioned, they are doing great job at that (not sure if you’re in or out). They help OSMF spending their budget on legitimate tasks. They have produced the awesome chef recipe directory, which helps understand how our servers are run, and simplify the operations work. The downtime has been kept to a minimum, which is an amazing achievement, given the size of the group. I have been following them, as every other working group, since I’ve been in OSM, and I know how hard is their work and how well they are doing it.

You are worried texts like this would drive the members out of OWG and drive other people away from joining OWG. But. Haven’t you noticed nobody active has joined the OWG since at least 2011, paid or unpaid? That the website we have hasn’t changed since 2013? That the only new active contributor to the Rails Port is you, a person active since 2006 from England, like the other members of OWG? Try to imagine what being on the receiving end of Tom’s PR comments would be. I have seen members of OWG drive so many people away from helping with code and with infrastructure, I have completely lost faith in seeing OSM improve besides the data.

I want the Board to reimagine OWG structure. Which I mentioned to them in their survey, but they decided that it’s no priority. That having million-user project that many companies and individuals depend on run by two unpaid volunteers is okay. I attack not the people, but the structure: we have the same team responsible not only for the server uptime, but also for maintaining the code, working with the data, and many other things I mentioned in the post. I would burn out from that and close myself to any innovation, switching into power saving mode, keeping servers up but preventing any innovation that would make my work harder.

How can we stop losing new developers and infrastructure opportunities, if not by restructuring that part of our organization? Does it really feel okay to you? How many years more can we give it, keep OSM with no structural changes because everything has been working so great? Wikipedia is older than OSM, but it managed to change its way several times, while we still cling to having unpaid workforce doing crucial tasks.

I would start with paying Grant and Tom directly, having them as employees with responsibilities and defined area of expertise. And then by filling in the blank spots and fixing issues caused by that change.

I tried.

Thank you Christoph! I’m staying for now: Lyft got itself an office in a new country with this acquisition :)

Тебе нужны нейросеточки для такого, я думаю.

int_ua, why?

Владимир, приезжай в Минск 30 октября на встречу byGIS!

Thanks a lot for this report Monica, I had much fun reading it! Pista ng Mapa looks like a great conference I’ve totally missed. Guess you’re looking forward to giving more presentations now :)

Настя, сочувствую! Сейчас тоже такое настроение, что строить ничего не получается. Это нормально — видимо, нужно отдохнуть, отвлечься на сериал или прогулку. Надеюсь, тебя никто не заставляет строить сверхурочно :)

В мультиполигонах и границах порядок не регламентирован — но должны быть роли inner и outer.

Hi, and thank you for mapping!

Please add your imagery offsets to the database, so that other mappers could use them.

Да, точно. Но тогда хорошо бы amenity=place_of_worship с остальными релевантными тегами вообще снести со здания и повесить на территорию.

Видимо, на нём должно быть type=multipolygon. Type=building обозначает нечто совсем другое.

Thanks for the update, Kevin! In some cities currently DG Premium has more recent imagery than any of the Maxar layers. I hope the latter will be updated soon :)

Cool project, really looking forward to this one! Are you using RoboSat or creating a ML engine from scratch?

You did a great job, and I’m sure you’ll do awesome on the next one. Thank you!

Oops, forgot one important app for reference: osm.wiki/OSMfocus. If your focus is on updating data, then you need to show it. Like, not require clicking around to see the details. And fit more information on the screen: ideally so that a surveyor in a city won’t need to touch anything except the “turn on” button of the phone.

So… Had a quick test, and to be honest, the editor doesn’t look like it has couple of years of planning. The core might be good (less hassle in downloading stuff than in Vespucci), but interface-wise and OSM-wise the editor has a very long road ahead of it.

• Presets do not work. Searched for “bench”, searched for “shoes” — no results except for a few branded presets.
• Workflow in iD: create a point → choose a preset. Here it’s reversed: you click on “Point” and then have no idea where to go next.
• Adding a building adds a building node. Why? Why is it a separate item in the list?
• It doesn’t care if I’m on data or on wifi. There’s a big difference: in the former case, I pay money for traffic.
• Entering a changeset comment for every changeset, one for every feature? How many users would do that, what’s your estimation?
• Absolutely no way to use the editor with one hand. How many people hold a phone with both hands?
• Using a mapbox library means there’s no attribution, and after clicking on (i) you suddenly find out there’s telemetry being sent to mapbox servers.
• After switching a layer, map pans to the user’s location. Quite a surprise, if you were editing in a different region.
• Turn phone off then on: a blue point of the current location shifts to a road, but clicking the crosshairs button positions the screen to your exact location. Weird.
• Markers behave erratically: appear and disappear, show as white pins on farther zooms.
• “Zoom in to edit” message is misleading: it does nothing to the UI, you can still edit and add new points.
• When logging in, the app requires every permission available, including “create diary entries” and “modify your user preferences”. Are you sure it needs all these?
• Log in, then edit some, then press “back” — and suddenly you’re on the OSM website, logging in again.
• Notifications do not disappear unless you explicitly close them. Even after you close and open the app again.
• The UI does nothing to simplify entering data or collecting extra data for later processing. Like, for a field surveying, it might suggest taking photos or recording an audio message.

I’ve tested the android version. It crashes occasionally, but technical issues are easy to fix, unlike conceptual flaws. Looks like the developers did next to no prior research before developing another POI editor. I suggest you look at:

• osm.wiki/OSM_Contributor
• osm.wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/2013/OpenSurveyor

And all the other mobile editors, including Vespucci, Go Map, MAPS.ME, and OsmAnd.

One changeset per feature is worrying: I collect 100+ pois per field trip, and if this results in 100 changesets, I doubt people using osmcha would be happy.

From this post I’ve learnt about flask-restful and sourcehut, thanks :)

Are you moving all your future work to sr.ht? Are there downsides?