Thanks guys - I'll probably keep using my phone for logging while cycling, but the laptop might come in handy for driving. I've had the most success so far with LiveGPS, but I'll keep looking for other options.

Good on you! The nice thing about OSM is that each time you make a change in the right direction, it's 100% win.

I've pasted the howto that Ainsworth posted on the wiki: osm.wiki/Photogrammetry That's a good place to take this discussion further.

I've dumped this text at osm.wiki/Photogrammetry - please see the talk page: maybe one should go straight to PGM instead of a 100% jpeg? I dunno.

Wie FK gesagt hat, arbeitest Du mit Potlatch (siehe z.B. osm.org/browse/changeset/3616473), was auch kein Fehler ist. Man kan so genau aufzeichnen wie man will (auch Hecken und Mauern) aber ich zeichne typisch was fehlt. Wo es viele Straßen fehlen, soll man sich besser nicht um Geschäfte kummern.

Gruß

Wow, thanks for the offer! I've already gotten the replacement, thanks.

Ouch!! Almost a very expensive lesson on safe GPS usage, eh? I've got a bluetooth GPS unit for my phone and I used to clip it onto the front of my shirt while biking, but these days I just leave it in my backpack - I'm too scared of it dropping off unnoticed. When I'm in the car, it can be lying in the glove-box and still pick up 10 satellites, so you really don't have to wave them about.

Thanks!!

Thanks guys! Now I know... @NE2, no idea. @HannesHH They're coming to take me away, haha.

Interestingly, Google Maps was quite useful to me recently. My latest edits took the following form: I took a look at my neighbourhood in Google Maps and OSM. I saw the difference, climbed on my bike and went logging tracks. OSM was mostly right, and Google Maps was way wrong. I added some new features that neither had (one blocked-off road, three boom gates and some private access), fixed the length of two roads and added a road that we didn't have. It also was my first time to scan data into Walking Papers, which is a pretty cool tool.

Not completely relevant, but not completely irrelevant.

More relevant, I'm going to talk to my landlady, who teaches geography, and see whether I can get her to start a walking papers project at her school. More useful than fighting google maps: let's just keep being better.

Not perfect, but I've classified everything that I added that I could find as well as I could.

OK, I'll remember that in future.

Brilliant, thanks!

Unfortunately, because I was driving alone, I couldn't take very good notes, so where I didn't know anything about a road, I didn't say anything. But I guess I should at least have marked them as "highway" or something so that it's clear that they're not railways.

I know exactly where the overlapping ways come from: I was adding new nodes in JOSM, and I didn't realize that I was creating ways at the same time. I'll be aware of that in future.

Sie sind ein wahrer Genie, und Holux sind scheinbar Philantropen! Wann werden wir die Holuxe auf dem Verleih-webpage sehen?

Everyone starts as a newbie. Fortunately "good" and "useful" are the required level - "perfect" can come later :-)

This kind of person can sometimes be coaxed into making useful contributions even if they originally come only to point and laugh (and make marginally relevant comments in as opaque language as possible). If not, no big loss: If he's one in a million, there's 6000 others just like him.

OSM might not be doing everything right, but there's an impressive amount of professionalism happening now that the project has achieved critical mass. Now it doesn't depend on one individual, but on maintaining and supporting a core of well-informed, dedicated contributors who routinely do the impossible in their free time, and shepherding an army of well-intentioned amateurs who sporadically do their best.

Bike mapping is good fun: gets you close to the ground and the exercise is nice. One can still miss some small details on a bike, though: are you sure you didn't travel through some buildings and large rivers and just not notice?

Great stuff! You sound like the right kind of maniac.

Congratulations on your re-entry!

Check out osm.wiki/Key:sac_scale for some ideas on marking footpaths.

Wow, after reading that discussion, I was first convinced that your way was better, than than it was all wrong, and then that it is quite subtle and depends on context. Near where I live, there's a housing estate surrounded by a fence, with a grassy area separating it from the highway. Clearly, that is an example where the highway is not the border of the estate. However, if I were to map a farm that goes up to the highway (i.e. the highway is the border of the farm) I can on one side argue that it is cleanest and simplest to re-use the highway nodes, or on the other side argue that there is 5 metres from the centreline of the highway to the farm fence, so one should map the two separately. I won't shoot anyone on either side of this argument. As soon as we have the whole world mapped to the satisfaction of the keepright tool, we can start fighting about stuff like this.