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Yeah, I’ve had ideas similar to this ( osm.wiki/User:Robert#IRC ) which have been generally well received, but of course nothing’s happened because, as with everything, it needs someone to implement it (and I’m busy implementing other crazy things).

Another (slightly more far fetched) possibility would be integrating with something like https://togetherjs.com/ to enable us to offer actual hands-on assistance to users.

I’m working on something along those lines: osm.wiki/That_Shouldnt_Be_Possible

Though it’s not really designed for “batch mode” as the results do have to be analyzed slightly to see what’s wrong.

I’m hoping to expand its coverage to more countries soon.

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Hey! Why did you lot get to be “Alpha squadron”?

Thanks spammer

The third (Alex’s) photo there is an excellent photo. It’s a bit like an osm last supper.

Generally (and this will probably start an argument) paths are used out in rural areas where designations aren’t so strict (or present at all).

In towns and cities where things often seem to be designated one way or another, people tend to break down into footway, cycleway etc.

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I’ve previously put a lot of thought into what’s preventing OSM from using a Git/DVCS/DAG-y type model and what makes OSM & large scale geodata fundamentally different from a large software project. The conclusion I came to wasn’t that it was the size of the data that was the important factor, it was the number of contributors. Sure, we know that Git-managed projects can practically scale to hundreds, perhaps thousands of contributors. But tens of thousands? 100,000? Without the process becoming chaotic and necessity of (sometimes complex) “merges” scaring off users?

Because in OSM you essentially have tens of thousands of users editing the same “repository”. And with that you’ll have an awful lot of merges to do, whether they’re semi-automatic or not.

(these really are rhetorical questions - I would love to find out the answers)

Yes, many satnav systems in particular have been known to do this when collecting gpx traces. The concern is more than just that of accuracy - it’s also potentially a copyright problem: are the traces now a derived work of the Apple road network? (that’s a rhetorical question - I don’t think anyone has the answer)

Those are some interesting idea there Alex. I suppose the difference between the approaches is like that of bottom-up change and top-down change.

I know the idea of air-quality-aware routing has been kicking around for a while - in fact I think Martin from cyclestreets would love to be able to add it to their product if he had the right data (& time to add it amongst all his other feature requests).

As for c++, well, y’know, none of us were born knowing c++. You just kind of decide to sit down one day and figure it out. The conceptual wall between programmers and non-programmers is imaginary.

Impressive.

Yes, I think the jacket-wearers have chosen to abandon stealth and decided that the best place to hide is in plain sight.

osm.wiki/OSM_Surveyors_Jacket

Sounds like exactly the sort of place we should be having mapping parties then.

I don’t know how much attention is payed to this page, but it exists and it couldn’t hurt to add your request to it.

Pity all the markers seem to be floating in mid air.

I’m also working on improving mapping quality using OSRM, see osm.wiki/That_Shouldnt_Be_Possible

Unfortunately due to infrastructure constraints the prototype is only running on the british isles at the moment, but I’m working on expanding that.

You absolutely can tag things with dual functions, just not if they both collide using the same key (amenity=…).

One of the alternatives would be to create two objects right next to each other but that’s also a bit nasty because we like to follow a principle we call osm.wiki/One_feature,_one_OSM_element