the mapzen [https://mapzen.com/metro-extracts] (Metro Extracts) show another approach, with city level files at the highest detail data, a kind of micro version of the geofabrik downloads but made available in a wider range of re-usable formats. I don’t mean to kvetch too hard about mapzen’s work, i just don’t understand the thinking behind the current rage for vector tiles, when we’re still struggling to escape the pull of the ESRI Shapefile format for everyday work…

Vincent, i hadn’t thought of it in that way, but something like a set of pre-canned, editable overpass queries to explore local areas / cache data in the client is what I have in the back of my mind. But what’s also missing there is generalisation.

I dug around in the Mapzen vector tile service a little more, seeing that it uses generalised data sources at higher zoom levels, but there’s only human-readable documentation to that effect. In a tab open I find this set of PostGIS queries that powers the backend at different zoom levels, and wish there was a better way. In my view, you can see the handprints of cartocss / tilemill all over this, and it’s quite unsatisfying: https://github.com/mapzen/vector-datasource/tree/master/queries

By the time i’ve invoked that many queries and when i’m hauling that much structured data into the browser, I expect a lot more of the work of selection and curation in a local area to have been done for me - stashed overpass queries would make sense, but the same overpass would have to be running over different generalised datasets in addition to the main OSM dataset. Is this making sense here, or do i not understand overpass well enough?

Thanks for the comment, Gregory, i’ve been in touch with the main organiser of the Edinburgh event and encouraging her to join the main talk-scotland list and post updates there.

I would count myself as both a pub-attending tech geek and a flower-wearing social justice worrier, so i don’t think a polarity is particularly applicable here ;)

I was too shocked by the strength of the language to take it all in at the time. I even foolishly tried to mediate until i realised how bad the situation was.

My question is how can we find a healing experience in this? The situation, though indeed sad and baffling, was interesting as we seemed to have a microcosm of bad OSM mailing list conversational behaviour, and perhaps have a chance to use the diversity list to work through some of the problems in front of an audience and then try again, setting a good example for other fractious lists.

Instead you got unjustifiably banned to shut the thing down, I don’t even know where to start on the ethics of this and i think that the diversity list is probably unredeemable as it stands. I haven’t been back to read more.

I got more involved in OSM again recently because I was inspired by Kathleen’s mini-crusade on the need for diversity; I may never have spoken so publicly about my own neurodivergence as on that mailing list. It’s a shame it blew up, isn’t it.

I thought i noticed some White Knighting going on, you know, with people using their defence of Alyssa as an excuse for aggression. But we all deal with our corners.