‘easy to ignite’ … not so easy within an air balloon.

That is fair comment. They needed incendiary (or tracer) bullets to ignite the hydrogen. Nevertheless, Zeppelins turned out to be a dead-end and easy to bring down. I also have the picture of the Hindenburg burning in the ’30s etched into my eyeballs & ears. Possibly static-electric discharges within the structure was one vulnerability for both the Hindenburg & the Zeppelins.

@TheSwavu:
Thanks TheSwavu but gosh, it’s more than a touch boring!

One thing that that version of OSM exemplifies, perhaps, is the necessary pairing between science & art. The video produced by Telenav is art with a scientific core or, to put it another way, science graced by art. The later video may well be scientifically accurate but has little grace, which is a shame.

Please remove this spam. It’s embarrassing.

@Alan: I’ll try to post more often, but no promises.

Reflecting on the state of the OSM community, participants cited a sick culture, hostile, not welcoming for women and other genders.

You do realise that the phrase “women and other genders” explicitly includes both sexes, and therefore causes the sentence meaning to not be clear? In addition, at no point have you specified your own sex nor gender, and it is therefore difficult to pick out your point of view in your post with any certainty. That leads each reader to make assumptions which may well be erroneous.

code of conduct

Having read posts by Nakaner and Severin & others it seems that one of your constant refrains is the desire, encouragement or actual action to enforce restraint or punishment upon other people for breaking codes of conduct that you perceive to be reasonable. That is an unfortunate characteristic in any person, and dangerously so in anyone — such as yourself — that has gained power over others.

You obviously do not like mapping (337 changesets to map 409 buildings across 7 years? Are you trying to have a laugh?). That, together with the above, suggests that your sole interest in HOT or OSMF or OSM may be as a power-trip, using OSM as a stepping stone to future successes. Let’s hope that you do not leave HOT, OSM or OSMF as grave-stones in your wake.

25 April 2017 at 06:54: > There are 276 spammers reported on that wiki page. The top one is Café Verde Web, and has been in place for > 2 years. Do you really consider that there is any point in adding a new spammer at the bottom of that list? What would be the point?

Looking at it just now there are 334 spammers listed, many with extra comments to try to get Admin attention to the problem. The top entry is still Café Verde Web. So, 3 months later and an additional 58 reports are being ignored.

The Spam page (thanks @Matija Nalis) was originally started for the purpose that the Report-User page is now used for. So, the stats go like this:-

1. Spam page 31 October 2008‎: 1 user reported (page started)
2. Spam page 21 November 2008‎: 11 users reported, 2 active
3. Spam page 31 May 2014: 312 users reported
4. Spam page 28 August 2014: 379 users reported
5. Spam page 31 August 2015: 93 users reported, inc Café Verde Web
6. Spam page 30 August 2016: 206 users reported
7. Spam page 23:28, 27 February 2017: 273 users reported
8. Spam page 00:04, 28 February 2017: page cleared of reported users, transferred to Report_user
9. Report-user page 23:41 27 February 2017‎: page started with 2 users from Spam page
10. Report-user page 23:58 27 February 2017‎: 253 users transferred from Spam page
11. Report-user page 25 April 2017: 276 users reported
12. Report-user page 2 August 2017: 334 users reported

From the above it is clear that many OSM users are desperate to keep the site clear of spammers. Sadly, I think that many Admin react to spam reports as a personal affront†. Whatever the reason, in the 9 years since 2008 it has NOT been successfully pro-actively dealt with.

† To be clear, the problem would be that they are NOT affronted by spammers, but rather that they are upset by the report of spam. This is similar to the issue highlighted by Shakespeare in the story of Cleopatra attacking the messenger that informs her of the death of Julius Caesar. The reaction is reasonable, but the attribution prevents effective action.

Urbán Máté: > It seems that weather was perfect

Indeed, even though my smartphone camera circuitry seems to have problems with a blue sky & often shows it white instead. I have white hair and, even 2 days later, the sunburn on my scalp really hurts.

@n76:
> I wonder if the multi-language system setting ability is a generic Nougat feature or specific to crDroid and/or other Lineage based ROMs

I did not spend ages searching, but it does appear to be a stock feature of Nougat. eg http://www.androidcentral.com/android-70-your-language-your-way However, such feature changes normally takes ages & ages to trickle down & be supported by non-Google apps.

Gosh, but I was eager to try this out but, in the end, have very mixed feelings. Most of my time is spent adding houses (currently in Mapperley, Nottinghamshire). Whilst I’m grateful to have something to use to draw house outlines from, I’ve kept having satellite envy at how much sharper Google imagery is than Bing. No longer!

In my neck of the woods:–

• Google is far sharper than Bing
• Bing is sharper than DG
• DG is sharper than Mapbox

But then…

• Google is usually newer than Bing
• Bing is sometimes newer than Google
• DG is newer than Bing
• Mapbox is newer than Bing

So, my search for sharper, newer satellite imagery continues (yet DG is providing much-needed, if blurry, imagery right now, for which many thanks).

@James Derrick:–
I’m not so sure of the “calm” there, James, but thank you for your feedback.

@michalfabik:–
Hi Michal

Whoa. It took some time (the computer that contained the relevant email had previously crashed; fortunately my updates proved to be successful & eventually I was able to find the email that contained the link).

Flyer links:–

• Wiki (also the place for your translation link)
• flyer design source SVG

A big shout-out to Andy Allan who designed the current flyers, and is so cool that he is named twice.

My sole suggestion in the text is to use the short URL (‘osm.org’) rather than the full URL (‘osm.org/’), as it is easier to remember.

If you follow the links within the first bullet point (either official info or unofficial compendium) you will find it stated that it is NOT an offence under section 43 of the Terrorism Act to take photographs, and nor is it a requirement for someone approached by Police to ID themselves. That all came to a head in 2009 because of appalling Police behaviour following stop-and-search powers introduced during the Blair years. Most of the documents linked above have that date, as most of the Force commanders got a hint of the future & quickly decided to change direction.

Policing in the UK depends upon public consent & support. The alternative to this is demonstrated daily within many other countries, most of which are rapidly falling to pieces. It is actually rather interesting:– the only people that are armed to the teeth in Britain are the Police, the Military & the Criminals. And yet, the success of at least two of those depends upon consent from the unarmed mass of the public.

So, the Heads of the Police got the point & in 2009 introduced sensible & sane advice for their front-line folks to follow. Job done.

Well, not quite. Here is a news report from yesterday’s papers:– https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/04/photographer-held-under-anti-terror-law-for-taking-hove-town-hall-pictures

As a postscript to this I will give a snippet from my time last year photographing the central Police Station in Carlton, Nottingham (opposite Carlton Cemetery). I popped in to the counter, presented one of my fast-disappearing leaflets explaining OSM & pointed out that I was about to take a photo of the building to add to the map, and not to worry. They were fine with that.

A couple of things to say about the second walk:–

1. Some of the frames are blurred - my apologies
   When set to ‘auto’ the camera takes far longer to focus than I expect, and in my impatience (when walking) I keep hitting the shutter too early. That fault is only slowly improving at my end.
2. The colour tint sometimes shifts from one frame to the next.
   My best assumption on this is that it is due to the (typically English) weather shifting suddenly above the tree cover from bright sunlight to threat-of-hailstones (a threat fulfilled on a couple of occasions), but I have no definite explanation for this so far.

Gosh, navigating through current Diary entries to get here showed umpteen spam posts. I’ve actually never seen it so bad within OSM.

@imagico: > (spam) you should not blame the admins for that

I do not blame Admin for the presence of spam posts! I’m profoundly grateful for those that spend their time trying to keep the place free of it. If I’m attacking anything, it is the complacent attitude shown by so many towards spam. If Admin are having problems keeping the place free of spam (and 276 spammers left untouched for >2 years speaks of problems) then they need to speak up, set out the issues & suggest directions for solutions. It is obviously far too difficult currently for folks to report spammers and, it seems, far too difficult for anyone to easily & quickly remove them.

@SrrReal: > could there be a way to prevent spamming in comments? And what would be the best way to handle this?

Yes there is. I am a Mod for many years on StopForumSpam (SFS). It is a crowd-sourced site that provides an API to auto-interrogate & discover if subscribers have spammed other sites and, if so, prevent them from registering (best) and/or posting (next best). Sites protected via SFS have seen falling levels of spam in recent years. OSM, however, seems to be experiencing increasing levels of spam. Make no mistake — spammers talk to each other, and once it gets around just how easy any website is to spam they focus on it (low hanging fruit).

I’ve contemplated writing the routines to keep OSM free and have then considered the opprobrium that faces anyone suggesting novel techniques here, and decided that I would rather carry on mapping.

Hi @jinalfoflia

I feel your pain. It is the lackadaisical attitude† from Admin that pains me more than anything.

Consider the wiki link provided by @imagico to report spammers. The top item is a Profile spammer; they register, make not a single edit nor trace, but place a link into their profile; they then make a single Diary post (or comment as you noted) as to obtain a backlink to the Profile. They are nothing but scum that waste server space & clutter up everything that OSM does. Admin cares little about any of this.

Consider the Profile Spammer at the top of the spam report wiki page:–

• Registered 10 February, 2015
• Posted 1 x Diary 10 February 2015
• 0 edits; 0 traces; 1 x Diary

There are 276 spammers reported on that wiki page. The top one is Café Verde Web, and has been in place for > 2 years. Do you really consider that there is any point in adding a new spammer at the bottom of that list? What would be the point?

† Re: lackadaisical attitude:–
Reading through the github links from imagico it struck me yet again that OSM folks seem to find it very easy to convince themselves not to change anything.

Hi @philippec
Well, I’m not going to fuss too much about it since the current rendering doesn’t bother to show it on the map at all.

Hi @Warin61

I’ve added intermittent=yes as that was my experience on the day.

As it happens the culvert as mapped does have layer=-1 just like a ‘normal’ culvert. In fact, in this case the overhead railway is layer=1 & the culvert as built is layer=0, but in the same way as OSM does not render that situation correctly for the meeting of road & rail, I’m quite sure that the culvert would appear wrong, and thus has been ‘wrongly’ mapped (in my experience road bridging over rail gets mapped accurately, but rail bridging over road does not).

With the size of many English roads — and the size of some of the SUVs using them — a school_sentinel positioned in the middle of the road would not last 24 hours. I like the sound of those “silent cops”, though.

boundary=protected_area
operator=Langridge Homes
protect_class=7
protection_title=Tree Preservation Order No. 107
start_date=2009-03-02

…hopefully that does it correct & OK.

Hi @pizzaiolo.

I had a look at boundary=protected_area and I saw protect_class=1 to 99. I mean, if I learn all this stuff will I get a certificate? Then, under United Kingdom it says “due to publishing restrictions, data not on the WDPA”. wtf?

So, I’ll try, but… jeez.

Hiya @Warin61

In fact the people that enjoy his work are his son + daughter-in-law. When I called, he was doing more work on his side & his son/daughter-i-l were both working on the other side (you can see the area that they have cleared if you look closely). Both houses on either bank are brand-new; his house is on the left (as we look at it) & his children’s house is on the right-bank. They are thus living (almost) cheek-by-jowl. That seems to be common in Nottingham; I bought my house from the daughter & son-in-law of the people that (at that time) lived next door.