Wasn’t it you that suggested blocking indexing of the diary pages as a temporary measure?

No TomH, that was you. My suggestion was to place all new users into moderation (be hidden & unable to post) until they had made some edits to the map. That was a non-destructive measure that would instantly stop spam. I think that the Diary pages are useful, you see.

the load hundreds of searching engines crawling billions of objects puts on our servers

I’m a former 15-year professional webmaster that paid his own hosting costs and, therefore, I’m well aware of that fact. At this moment HSM has 90 servers that are handling upto 250 connections per second. SFS has one server that is handling ~177 API queries/second + additional forum visits with ease. HSM is also missing proper Content Negotiation on Diary pages, which increases load and bandwidth considerably. If those pages are any indication, then the whole site load could be reduced without sacrificing access.

You see, I am not only capable of independent thought, but also indulge in that activity. I am inviting others to try a little as well.

Is that what everybody wants, and does it have to be that way?

For me, the answer is “No” and “No”. If everybody else decides differently, then I think that we should change the name from “OpenStreetMap”. to “HiddenStreetMap”.

Hi imagico

Well yes, it took me a ridiculous amount of time to discover how to laboriously find a valid date, plus the correct format. Here is an example, and also the minimum height for a reasonable picture. This is simply unusable:

https://geoservice.code-de.org/Sentinel2/wms?
SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetMap&FORMAT=image/jpeg&
TRANSPARENT=true&STYLES=raster&
LAYERS=Sentinel2:S2_MSI_L1C&
TIME=2019-04-20T11:21:19Z&
SRS=EPSG:3857&
WIDTH=512&HEIGHT=512&
BBOX=-136976.0099892,6966165.5715892,-117408.1315892,6985733.4499892

Hi imagico

I was excited at your code-de.org URL as all existing JOSM imagery in the Nottingham area that I normally map is woefully out-of-date. All I got was an all-white tile. Oh dear.

Is there any obvious error here?

URL: https://geoservice.code-de.org/Sentinel2/wms?
SERVICE=WMS&
VERSION=1.1.1&
REQUEST=GetMap&
FORMAT=image/jpeg&
TRANSPARENT=true&
STYLES=raster&
LAYERS=Sentinel2:S2_MSI_L1C&
TIME=2019-05-18T15:07:21.024Z&
SRS=EPSG:3857&
WIDTH=512&
HEIGHT=512&
BBOX=-117408.1315892,6975949.5107892,-112516.1619892,6980841.4803892

Are the tiles that you download compatible with MAPS.ME (‘MapsWithMe’)? I’ve already got a few Gigabit of files downloaded with their app and do not want to duplicate the same files.

Damn interesting! Both for you & the students, I would think.

Marcos, if you use a public share site to store your photos on that is your responsibility to know how to use it, not mine. Now sort your own mess out; that’s how you transition from a child to a man.

Your image (http://img.fenixzone.net/i/iFC7Emk.jpeg) requires completing a CAPTCHA for new users and is therefore broken. You need to replace it with the public URL.

@Richard:
Well, since I’m half-Austrian & thus immune to English sarcasm I shall implement that suggestion immediately (just activated the Tardis & accomplished). Thank you!

An alternative:

Add the following to f12 | WMS-TMS:

Postcode (from raggedred.net)	=tms:http://www.raggedred.net/tiles/codepoint/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png

That then is available as imagery within JOSM

Simon Poole:

you are required to provide a valid working e-mail address as part of the sign up process and need to keep it current, we do not allow anonymous editing (since over a decade now)

Thanks for confirming that, Simon; that is exactly what I thought to be the case.

English irony is not very understandable by other countries, is it? I will try to drop it for the rest of this comment.

Viewed from a distance it seems that PeanutButterRemedy believes that the DWG are not doing their job, and that therefore he needs to step in as some sort of vigilante to fill in the cracks of DWG’s poor job. The fact that he does this by deleting edits that contain “Rd” instead of “Road” or “St” instead of “Street” is what has caused my response. Such an action is beyond irony.

Mateusz Konieczny:

VPN IP addresses (it is not possible to ‘spoof’ an IP address)

Using VPN address (or Tor) are common methods of spoofing IP address to avoid IP bans.

That is a method of hiding the originating address, it does not spoof it. Any webmaster can discover current sources of VPN, or Tor, so they can know when an access IP is being cloaked.

As I understand it, using VPN or Tor to access OSM is NOT a reason for banning users.

So, we are back to PeanutButterRemedy becoming a freelance grammar vigilante, viciously removing edits for bad etiquette, and using every method used by malicious actors to achieve their ends (hiding their name & methods, using a search-bot, unaccountable to anyone…). I bet their costume has a skull & crossbones on it.

The problem, PeanutButterRemedy, is that you do not offer any firm evidence that these map additions are abusive.

Bad Behaviour:

• throw-away OSM accounts for every single edit
• non-verified email addresses
• working email addresses unconnected to creation organisation
• VPN IP addresses (it is not possible to ‘spoof’ an IP address)

Either these need to be fixed at the operation or administrative end of OSM, or ignored. I have not yet heard that any of them are a reason for denying access (please give the link if procedures have changed). And do not misunderstand me - I would encourage OSM to make their inverse a requirement for signing up. Indeed, I thought that the first two were requirements, and cannot understand anyone being allowed to create disposable OSM accounts. However, if OSM allows it, then it is NOT bad behaviour.

Bad Data:

(a list of edits that 90% of all mappers create at one time or another)

Your list of ‘bad data’ is simply laughable. Tell us your real OSM name & I will find a ton of bad edits of this type from you. Your entire assertion falls flat on it’s face at this point.

Communication Failures:

This is your strongest assertion. However, without valid bad data it does not count. We are looking for folks that pollute the map with malicious edits, not folks that cannot spel.

Try to remember the lesson of the Witchfinder General; in the end he declared himself to be a witch. And you, sir, look very much to be causing malicious harm to OSM.

Hi. You write:

There is no reason that SEOs that are well behaved should not be able to contribute to OSM.

That is an oxymoron. There are NO well-behaved SEO companies.

I am a moderator at StopForumSpam and ran a website with a forum full-time for 15 years. SFS was the only reason I was able to continue, as my site was drowning in spam soon after starting.

There are three main sources of spam:

1. Bots such as xrumer
2. Cheap humans (from cheap-labour countries)
3. Owners/admin that do not care & let it all happen

The first has to be handled with automation, in which SFS can play a part.
The second can be stopped with SFS once they are in the database, although some will always get through.
You cannot fix stupid.

SFS uses a crowd-sourced database to store username/email-address/ip of spammers. Forum owners then use pre-written plugins that interrogate the SFS API to reject known spammers. To be effective the admin need to:–

1. Insist on email verification (and hopefully deny throwaway domains themselves)
2. Use firewall hygiene to deny bot scraping
   (in my day very difficult as Google was one of the top speed scapers)
3. Use IP to deny toxic ASN via RBL sites
4. Use email to deny via SFS

5. There are then a vast number of house-hygiene rules to follow:

   • no profile editing privilege until 10+ diary posts
   • no diary editing privilege until 10+ diary posts
   • no links allowed at all until 10+ diary posts
   • ‘hello, nice to be here’ posts ruthlessly deleted
   • and so on & on
6. Finally, and most important, spammers should be reported to SFS. They are then blocked worldwide by every forum that uses SFS. And you will never see them again.

This year was the first year that spammers did not deluge the SFS forum pages. Yes, it has taken 20 years for SFS to fight the spammers on it’s pages to a standstill.

Your map entry for your office is missing full address details. It has your web-address, of course, and I am worried that you may be contemplating spamming OSM. Place full contact details into the map entry, but do not spam these diary entries, nor comments, nor your profile, else they will all get deleted & your username removed.

I have a suggestion that will help yourselves as well as OSM if you accept it…

Why not add each new customer on to the map? It only takes a couple of minutes. You could then publish their map location together with their details & photo (no need to ask, this is open-source, just do it). Perhaps do the entire street! You can even add photos of the house or street so that folks that search can view it. Get ahead of your competitors.

No it doesn’t, Jerry. I want to be able to either see it at the centre of the shape or to be able to confirm the details in the key/value columns but there is, simply, nothing there. The SHP files are an improvement on the GPX because they can contain a phalanx of inter-locking shapes and each shape can be selected individually, whereas the GPX is just one huge line. However, neither has ever shown the attached text, even if it is in the file, which it is with the NCC datasets. The Polling Stations do have text attached to the nodes.

Thanks, Jerry. Before your comment I managed to convert the .shp to a .gpx but it was damn fiddly. I much preferred the plugin and how it looks. My one disappointment is that no text is carried across into JOSM although it is within the shapefile.

I’v used admin_level=11 within the current mapping but agree with you on changing to boundary=political. I also downloaded the polling station locations after reading your comment and have added two for the first ward. However, I have to add nodes as currently I have them as buildings.

Lord, but it is a slow business.

The idea is to map the land yourself. However, just because you do not like the language used does not mean to change it, else you may get banned from OSM. Localise the language, as suggested at wiki:names.

eg

name:en=Karabakh

Place within as many languages as you know are used locally. The map will then pick the language used by the person that is viewing it.

I’ve just added the losses for the last session - much lower than before, but any loss is unacceptable, and points to lousy programming.

Sounds excellent. All the best for your project, and keep us all in the loop, please.

Excellent!

Gosh, but those extents are much bigger than I expected. As it happens, a dividing line for two extents goes clean through the houses that I’m currently adding to the map (would never have guessed it otherwise).

Map date appears to be 2016-05-09. That date is much older than I expected, although young enough for the houses I’m currently working on (but not for the estate that is next to be mapped).

Although Esri is good, appears to be younger than Bing and far better than other Imagery, I still pine to have imagery as good as Google’s. Other people have car- or house-envy, I have imagery-envy.