Defining reversion

Through a healthy community and map-gardening many of the critical issues get noticed and acted upon immediately. A revert is absolute and removes changes indefinitely from the map. Repairs are more manual, often done with a mix of reversion and manual fixes, which are harder to track. osm-revert-changesets npm module is aimed at tracking absolute reverts and works well at 1:1 (changeset to changeset) reverts.

Reversion rules used

Currently, the module uses a starting set of 2 rules to identify reverted changesets.

• Deletions of created features
  • If a feature gets deleted at 2nd version. The edit that created the feature at 1st version is reverted.
• Feature state is reset
  • If Nth version of a feature is reset to N-2th version of a feature, then modifications that were done at N-1th, were reverted.

Usage

npm install osm-revert-changesets

const revertChangesets = require('osm-revert-changesets'); revertChangesets('62632427').then((list) => console.log(list));

Log [ '62629726' ]

This is the input used - DWG repair changeset osm.org/changeset/62632427. And this is the changeset that got reverted osm.org/changeset/62629726.

Use cases

… See full entry

I wanted to share how anyone can contribute to suspicious reasons in OSMCha. Recent events have only highlighted that we can tackle the problem of validation by working together and not by isolated efforts.

Wille is working on a new version of this process that would make it easier to flag features in OSMCha but I wanted to document this current way. When the new version lands in a few weeks time, I will document that process publicly too.

What do we need

• a geojson of a OSM feature with metadata tags
• a suspicious reason
• a OSMCHA production token

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#### 1. Geojson of OSM Feature

At Mapbox, we use the standard geojson schema as per http://geojson.org/. This is the reason why, OSMCHA was created to expect a geojson as an input when we want to post a suspicious reason. Please see the example geojson feature below.

Example Geojson feature with suspicious reason added in properties

… See full entry

Go catch Lukas Martinelli’s talk on validating every change on OSM this Saturday at 10:30AM in De Donato at State of the Map 2018 in Milan. “We will present how we have built bulletproof protection against the daily vandalism and newbie mistakes we see”. Here is the SOTM Talk Summary.

Places on OSM where we have found vandalism from OSM edits on the day of 2018-06-19

You can review these detections on OSMCHA with the reason Flagged for review by Mapbox.

State of the Map 2017 attendees

State of the Map 2017 was a lively event. This was my first attendance at a State of the map conference. There was good participation from experienced community members from different parts of the world along with members from OSMF, DWG and from companies such as Mapillary, Telenav, Facebook, Apple, GeoRepublic, Grab and more.

It is wonderful to be part of this vibrant community. I have Mapbox to thank, for introducing me to OpenStreetMap and allowing me to work with passionate people for mapping, documentation and validation. I would like to use this diary post to answer some of the recurring questions on OSMCha and some notes from State of the Map 2017.

… See full entry

During recent months, we have seen a lot of new user activity and pokemon targeted feature mapping on OSM. This correlated with observed/assumed association of pokemon spawn points with OSM features by PokemonGo players.

From my observations on reviewing changesets, some features are mapped very specifically for specific pokemons. Some of these features are parks, meadows, waterbodies, gardens, protected area’s, village_green’s, natural reserves, golf courses, cemeteries and forests .

So I made these comparators in OSMCha that flag a new user’s(<=10 changesets) changeset if one of these features have been added brand new(Version 1).

1. Park features added by new users

• This reason flags a changeset if there is a creation of these features in it
• recreation_ground, village_green, park, nature_reserve, protected_area, national_park, garden

2. Waterbodies added by new users

• This reason flags a changeset if there is a creation of these features in it
• natural=water, water=, landuse = pond or reservoir, waterway=

3. Pokemon nest features added by new users

• This reason flags a changeset if there is a creation of these features in it
• recreation_ground, park, pitch, playground, golf_course, meadow, grass, cemetery, grass, forest

One can combine reasons in OSMCha and look at changesets now, add bboxes to specific areas and share permalinks. Ex: All pokemon based reasons in Germany.

From our experience validating, a lot of this mapping is really good and rarely do we find any suspicious edits. Let us know if you find these useful or if I need to tweak them based on changing Pokemon trend.

Screenshots of some really interesting mapping activity I have come across

… See full entry

It is always interesting to review the latest map edits in your local area. It can be fun to send a welcome message to a new contributor or track changes to a neighbourhood that a fellow mapper has surveyed. It’s an opportunity to both learn from an experienced contributor as well as teach someone new a helpful tip to make mapping more engaging. In a more rare case, these tools can help investigate some missing data or suspicous mapping activity.

The OSM Changeset Analyzer (OSMCHA) tool by Wille Marcel has a powerful interface to filter changesets in your area and flag any suspiscous changesets for further action.

Here’s how you can start using OSMCha in your area:

Step 1 : Understanding and using Filters in OSMCha

OSMCha

Currently available filters in OSMCha

Introduction to filters

… See full entry

OSMCha is a an open source changeset exploration tool originally created by Wille Marcel. Early 2016, few of us at Mapbox were interested in using this tool for trying out validation on a changeset level. Over the course of 2016, we made several improvements to the tool. As of this morning we reviewed more than 23000 changesets and found 1150 to be harmful to the map. OSMCha database consists useful changeset metadata such as changeset ID, username, editor used, changeset comment, source, imagery used, and timestamp.

You can download a CSV of all the reviewed changesets here. For community members who are interested in validating the map using OSMCha, our validation guide can be a good starting point in understanding the tool, how we use it and validate their own neighborhood.

Few things to note

• OSMCha does not parse all changesets from OSM. There are a few that go unparsed each day because of various edge cases that we are working on fixing. So do not take numbers on OSMCha as absolute but as near accurate estimates.

• Some of the mapping activity marked as harmful in OSMCha are not necessarily harmful. Undiscussed, unannounced imports in OSM are constantly tracked and reverted by the DWG. These edits to the map do not necessarily have mapping mistakes in them but were found to be uninvited into the map to maintain a data import protocol, accuracy on the map and local community accord.

• Hence, mass deletion of above imports in revert changesets by DWG cleanup accounts like Woodpeck_repair are also marked as good edits. These can be ignored by filtering out repair accounts.

• The reviewed changesets were from random places on the map and are not specific to any place. For area specific filtering we can take advantage of bbox filter in OSMCha or filter manually as the CSV contains the bbox information for each changeset.

Basic analysis

… See full entry

As a follow up to our previous reviews of Maps.me user edits, these are the Maps.me issues we have observed during the month of November during validation using OSMCha. Documenting the errors observed can initiate a conversation on improving user experience, information to the users, characteristics of mapping activity from users. This in turn improves OSM.

Summary

• Reviewed: 1078 CSV
• Suspicious changesets: 46
• No issues: 1032

We commented on these changesets:

• Added my home in the name tag: 1
• Added 76 fuel_stations: 1
• Added ton of outdoor shops: 1
• Added attractions for address and buildings: 1
• Added amenity=school for bus stops, canteen, parking lot due to the presence of an adjacent school building: 1
• Added Korean names in the name:en tag: 1
• Added attraction tag for addresses: 1
• Added description in the name tag: 1
• Added ton of sports shops and other POIs: 1 - Cleanup
• Added 101 benches: 1
• Added 133 confectionery shops: 1

… See full entry

During the month of August this is the approximate changeset percentage breakdown between editors that uploaded user edits into OSM:

Source: OSMCha

As a follow up to our review of sample edits from Maps.Me, we decided to randomly review changesets during August to understand the difference in quality and contributions from this editor from our previous review.

Summary

• Changesets reviewed: 475

• Problematic changesets: 12

• Minor issues: 33 Raw notes

• No obvious issues: 430

Problematic changesets

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1.Changesets 1, 2 with a lot of amenity=fountain and tourism=camp_site tags on residential areas with alphanumeric names. We commented on the user’s changeset.

… See full entry

Continuing from our previous weekly round-up, we would like to keep you posted on some of our observations this past 2 weeks.

Commented

We commented on the following changesets:

• Deleted a tertiary road: Changeset.

• Deleted landuse=residential polygons: Changeset.

• Deleted buildings: Changeset.

• Added duplicate buildings: Changeset.

• Added POIs with numbers in the name tag: Changesets 1, 2.

• Building, parking lot and service roads deleted: Changeset.

• Some of the POIs added are on roads and river: Changeset.

• Created duplicates of highways and buildings: Changeset.

• Deleted highway=tracks and waterways: Changeset.

Community members commented on the following changesets:

• Deleted highway=path: Changesets 1, 2.

• Added a POI in the middle of the sea: Changeset.

• Changeset using Google as source: Changeset. A DWG member commented on the changeset.

Reverted

… See full entry

Following up on a recent series of posts that summarized the suspicious changes on the map, an interesting question that we bring to the community - what is a good amount of time to wait for a response from an inexperienced mapper before fixing or reverting their edit?

You can see examples of such changesets that do not seem right on these posts:

• osm.org/user/Chetan_Gowda/diary/39219
• osm.org/user/Chetan_Gowda/diary/39166
• osm.org/user/nammala/diary/39055
• osm.org/user/Maanya/diary/38972
• osm.org/user/manoharuss/diary/38941
• osm.org/user/manoharuss/diary/38907
• osm.org/user/manoharuss/diary/39050
• osm.org/user/manoharuss/diary/39050 (Maps.me review)

Observations from last week

• User added unexplained nodes with alphanumeric names: 1, 2. A community member commented on these changesets and reverted them.

The community is great at responding to mapping issues but there are few issues lying under the rug. When we see unexplained edits without a clear comment or source, we do not go and fix them immediately, but let the user know the best practice and try and encourage them to to become a better mapper.

During the last 3 months the data team at Mapbox has commented on around 78 changesets and fixed only around 10 changesets. Over the course of last 1 year we have commented on around 250 changesets that did not get a reply from the user (quick map of these changesets).

It is a very subjective question to ask how long do we wait before we take the plunge into fixing or reverting changesets like these which may be suspicious, but is difficult to verify from the original mapper. Happy to hear how you approach this issue.

Sharing this open dataset of Canada road networks from the Canada Open data website. The wiki mentions Statistics Canada(StatCan) as one of the data sources, but the StatCAN wiki page, provides a link to an outdated portal where road data is available only until 2010.

Details

The data quality and technical specifications of this 2015 dataset is detailed in the new StatCAN page.

• Provider: Statistics Canada
• Published date: 2015-05-27
• File formats: Shapefile, GML, JSON
• Frequency: Mentioned “As Needed”
• Contact: http://open.canada.ca/en/forms/contact-us
• URL: Canada road networks files 2015
• License: http://open.canada.ca/en/open-government-licence-canada

The road network supplied includes road classes, road names, city etc. Through a preliminary look in QGIS I have these findings.

Coverage as seen on QGIS, road classification on the left

… See full entry

Turn restrictions are the last missing piece in the puzzle to make OpenStreetMap ready for accurate routing. With Mapillary street photographs and their traffic sign recognition, it is easier than ever to start mapping missing restrictions onto the map.

At the data team in Mapbox, we have been experimenting with creating mapping tools to simplify such efforts and after adding over 1,200 turn restrictions in 30 US cities, we are ready to start mapping in Canada with the help of the local mapping community! Our team will focus on the following 5 cities: Ottawa, Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver and Calgary

How to contribute

Mapping

If its your first time mapping turn restrictions, read the guide to mapping turn restrictions using Mapillary to understand different scenarios and special cases.

… See full entry

TLDR: Most contributions from MAPS.ME editor are constructive and has significantly increased new contributors to the map. With any new tool, there are common mistakes that is made, many of which could be easily prevented by simple improvements to the editor and awareness for the users. __________________________________________

MAPS.ME is quickly becoming a popular way to contribute to OpenStreetMap, with over 250,000 changes within 3 months of launching the map editing feature.

Following recent reports of bad edits, we decided to review a random sample of changesets in detail last week to understand the quality of contributions from this new editor.

Summary

• Changesets reviewed: 215
• Problematic changesets: 8
• Minor issues: 19 (Raw notes)
• No obvious issues: 188

Problematic changesets

Looking at these changesets in detail can give some insights on what improvements could be made to help new mappers contribute constructively to the map:

… See full entry

Here is this week’s collection of suspicious mapping observed between 20 - 24th June.

• This changeset from a new user was observed to be deleting POI’s, beach, public toilets and adding a random square without reference to the imagery or any mentioned source. This was reverted.
• This changeset changed name of the Paracel islands from Chinese to english, changed the locality from Chinese to Vietnamese, added a traingle on the map with no reference. This was reverted by the DWG.
• This changeset was observed to be deleting a lot of buildings and roads.
• This changeset deleted a lot of service roads.
• In this changeset the nodes had landuse=farmland tag.
• This changeset had given building=yes tag to resendential areas instead of the individual buildings.
• This changeset deleted buildings using iD editor with no explanation in the comment.
• This changeset deleted private roads using the iD editor. This was reverted by the community.
• This changeset added address tags to every single object in the changeset including the nodes. The cleanup of this changeset was detailed in this diary post.

And ofcourse, look forward to this roundup again next week. If you observe any suspicious mapping, comment on the changeset and let the mapper know. Mistakes happen all the time.

Happy mapping!

Weekly observations between 27th to 30th June can be found here.

The amount of data on OSM sometimes boggles the mind, there was 23471 new changesets just yesterday. With so much great mapping work being done by the community, there’s always a possibility of a few bad apples. So, here’s a collection of a few that I have stumbled across last week (13 - 17 June).

• This changeset in which a number of highway=footway & footway=crossing & crossing=zebra tags were deleted and nodes on highways with highway=crossing tags were added in downtown Atlanta. It is to be remembered that both these methods are suggested in the OSM wiki for mapping crosswalks.

• This changeset deleted roads in Ethiopia using iD editor. Also 5 harmful changesets from 2 other users from whom one was deleting buildings and the other was editing features without any reference imagery or mentioned source.

• This changeset gave non-latin names in name tag in London and this was reverted.

• In this changeset, nodes had attributes meant for the ways.

• This changeset fixes a user changing trunk road to primary road tag.
• These 3 changesets 1, 2,3 were reverted because they looked like this.

… See full entry

I have been mapping my home town of Gudivada. This is where I grew up and did all my schooling. In the Telugu language, “Gudi” means temple, and “vada” means a settlement or a town - Gudivada has many Hindu temples.

When I decided to map, I expected that since this is a small town there would just be a node with a name, and not much else. I was wrong though - trunk, primary, secondary, and tertiary roads along with many points of interests and buildings around the center had been well mapped, thanks to the active OpenStreetMap community.

I focused my efforts on mapping residential streets, and adding places like hospitals, temples and schools I was certain about.

Before and after

Here are the residential roads I added within Gudivada. A number of features such as water bodies, public water tanks, school names and area names which I have added most recently are not visible in the ‘after’ gif due to OpenStreetMap not rendering those objects at that zoom level.

… See full entry

Locality mapping and updating addresses

Hello everyone. I am a mapping enthusiast and I seek to add geocoded data for Sri Ramachandra nagar in the city of Vijayawada. It is a city with about 850,000 population and it is a major city in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. I am familiar with the area around my home.I am looking to tag places of importance in the city, create and edit data in Sri Ramachandra nagar. I have started by tagging full addresses for major establishments I know of. I would like it if anybody in the area helps me out with the door numbers and details of newer businesses and residential buildings.

I have started by tagging around Ayush Hospital. For anybody who is interested to map in Vijayawada, I am willing to collaborate. Usually ton of educational institutions, hospitals have websites. In the business website you can find the full address with door numbers and pincodes. That should help you to enter the information into OSM. These businesses have constant addresses and should help in tagging addresses. Cheers.