Yesterday was the first meeting of the new OSMF board and i thought i’d write down some comments on it since it was noticeably different from previous meetings. With three of the previous board members having left, two of them having been on the board for a long time and one having been the chairperson for a long time it was obvious there were going to be changes and i want to share a few impressions of this from an outside perspective.

What has not changed is that many of the board members seemed remarkably unprepared. This is not necessarily a big deal, board members are volunteers and you cannot necessarily expect everyone to sit down for a few hours before the meeting preparing themselves for all subjects that might be discussed. But i as someone who just listens in and does zero preparation for that other than looking at the agenda five minutes before the start often find myself wondering when a matter comes up why no one is ready to discuss it. This especially applies to this first meeting after the election when the election of treasurer, secretary and chairperson are obviously on the agenda so you would assume that those who consider one of these positions to have made up their mind if they want it or not. Don’t get me wrong - i am generally a huge fan of just winging it - but you have to be able to do that if you want to.

The meeting started with everyone being unsure about who would chair the meeting since neither the former chairperson nor the former secretary were on the board any more. Ultimately Paul assumed the position of temporary chair since he had formerly been secretary. But it might be a good idea to make a note of the problem and add a rule for that to the board rules of order in the future.

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The following is copied from the Indiana University website:

“The bulk of Indiana University’s Russian Military Topographic Map Collection is made up of the Soviet Red Army topographic maps, which were produced for defense and economic planning. This collection came to Indiana University from the duplicate map room of the Library of Congress Map Collection in the early 1990s. These maps cover not only parts of Russia and Eastern Europe, but extend as far north as Scandinavia, as far west as Germany and the Netherlands, and as far south as Iran.

“An interactive index map of the collection is located here: https://iu.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=098c42997ca441029b69f0597ff92ea6

“For more information, visit the Cyrillic Maps Collection.”

There are very few maps of Central Asia, but coverage of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltics, Poland, and eastern Germany is pretty good. The maps of former Soviet states are uncopyrighted, but odds are good that coverage outside the USSR was taken in violation of local copyrights and so may not be used in OSM.

As you may be aware, the “switch2osm” site recently moved from Wordpress to Github. This means that it’s easy to request changes to the site over at the github repository. Any changes made there will automatically go live on the main site after a minute or so.

“Requesting changes” might mean commenting on existing issues or creating new ones (which will need someone else to make the code or text changes you’ve requested), or it might mean suggesting the changes yourself via a “pull request” - a list of specific changes you’d like to see made. Here is an example of a pull request - you can see what it’s a change from and to, and on this page you can see any comments and when it was merged in and by whom.

Obviously, if people can contribute via pull requests rather than just creating issues it’s better for everyone - it means that you’re not relying on someone else reinterpreting the changes that you’d like making, and it’s quicker for the maintainers too.

Normally if you wanted to make a major change to something on this site you’d “fork” a copy of the repository into your own github area, create a “branch” from that that relates to the change that you’d like to make, “clone” that locally into an environment on a local machine that allows you to test the site locally, make your changes, test your changes in a local web browser, submit your changes back to your copy of the site, and then create a pull request explaining the change you’d like to make.

What you may not know is that for simple textual changes you can actually do the whole process online. That’s not appropriate for anything that might break links, but for simple text changes (like the example above) it’ll work just fine, and this is what the rest of the diary entry describes.

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Started recording GPX traces with OSMTracker then Garmin Venture HC before moving full time to OSMAnd.

I gave tracking with Vespucci recently a shot it was smooth than I thought, from Abidjan to Accra here.

Try it too! Cheers!

My Promised Targets

Last year I set down my mapping new years’ resolutions well before January. So wouldn’t it be fun, and also embarressing :) to review these and see if I had the year I hoped to have. My diary entry a year ago is here. Set out the various targets.

My Hot-Spot

I wanted my heat map to shift to Ireland. While it is true that I developed a number of heatmap centres in Ireland, I achieved these by following the dispersed regional community initiatives (remote tasks and face to face meetups) set by #osmIRL. This meant that I didn’t have a particular area into which the aggregate effect of highly intense mapping could be channeled. So my big heatmap remains in Lesotho, and because it built up over 4 years it may stay that way for a while. However, considering I wouldn’t have made my largest hot-spot shift anyway, I regard the case of measles I have caused on the linked map to be a success.

My Ireland Rank

Next, I want to maintain a top 10 place in the Ireland 2 monthly contributor list. I was able to do this exept for twice, as in June I fell to 20th and in August I was 25th. This was caused by a lovely summer where I went outdoors a bit more plus my old trusty laptop had some issues and I couldn’t afford to replace it immediately. I have learned that to stay on top (top10) in Ireland one can have 2 week breaks, but no longer. In 2020 I will not have breaks longer than 2 weeks.

Map on the move

I wanted to hit the Mapillary millionare status by the end of January, and then I wanted my total in Ireland to hit 1 million by the end of June. I comfortably made it with both these, and my Mapillary is now 1,292,702, and I don’t want to set more targets here, except to capture images where osmIRL needs them most of all.

Mapping Gaps

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I tend to be an armchair editor since I don’t get out much, focusing mostly around Virginia in the US. Most of my time is spent obsessing about detail work around the Richmond and Hampton Roads area. I try to follow the Wiki as best I can, but if you think I’ve goofed, please don’t hesitate to send me a note.

Now that I have been away from Turkmenistan for six months, my efforts at continuing to map that country are by necessity confined to “armchair mapping”, using a combination of Soviet-era military maps that identify municipalities (albeit by Soviet-era names, which often differ from current names), the “Districts in Turkmenistan” list of names of municipalities I posted some time back to the OSM wiki, and the various official name-change documents I also posted to the wiki. It is different from primary data collection on the ground, which I must confess I miss.

Some of the local mappers I trained are continuing to collect and post data, however, so there is some work going on based on local knowledge, and that is a good thing.

I had a successful meeting with Victor Essang and some UniqueMappers OSMNgera Leaders for community expansion of UniqueMappers OSMNIgeria at Uyo-Nigeria

Meeting time :9:30-!0:28pm Nigerian time Meeting ID 755 993 243 Zoom

Highlights: 1.Introduction of attendees 2.Introduction of Victor Essang OSM Effort-Uyo
3.OSM Community Structure 4.UniqueMappers-Uyo 5.Annuual OSMites Diary Record/Reports 6.Mappy Chrismas and UniqueMappers 2020 7.AOB
Convener:Victor N.Sunday UniqueMappers OSMNigeria National Coordinator

Prior to this meeting,we had a chat yesterday during which I did acknowledge his efforts in hosting #OSMGeoweek2019 Mapathon as well as applying for a #HOTMicrogrant2020 .

Our meeting today,Victor Ezeugwu-State Coordinator-UniqueMappers Kogi ,Knigsely Chukwu-LMTEnugu and Onyeukwu Nnadozie-State Coordinator-UniqueMappers-Yola was were in attendance. To drive a well coordinated OSMNigeria Community,we need everyone to work together with selfless effort to sustain and expand OpenStreetMap data and local communities in Nigeria.We have the workplan to mobilize and build local communities in every state and Universities in Nigeria like we now have UniqueMappers-Kogi ,UniqueMappers-Yola and for for Uyo,we have beein limited by time and resources and so would not like to duplicate the effort of Victor Essang ,who already has raised up a team.As such we need to consolidate and support the team as UniqueMappers Uyo. By doing so ,we are going to mobilize more osmites and get them trained to sustain UniqueMappers Uyo both as a local community at Uyo and a student team at University of Uyo. I also informed them to encourage their team members to update their OSM diary with their individual annual report.so we can share our motivations,insights and achievements to the OSM global community. Victor Essang was quite glad and responded with excitement as we welcomed him to UniqueMappersTeam,Nigeria the Community NGO for #OpenStreeTMapNigeria #OSMNigeria

Well the 2019 OSMF AGM & board election is over and I was elected! Thank you all who voted for me! The election system was a PR/STV system, so the full rank of preferences were relevant (check out the results).

I’m only now getting set up with all the accounts. The first board meeting of this board will be tomorrow, Mon 23 Dec 2019 18:00Z, as always you are all welcome to listen in. For lots of us the Christmas holiday season is starting, so many of us (incl. me) won’t be doing much until after that (~6th Jan 2020).

previously: I’m running for the board, Manifesto, feedback²

After some quite busy months with lots of work and engagements, I am happy to be able to finally share with you my experience at State of the Map 2019.

I was happy to attend SOTM2019 conference, which took place in Heidelberg, Germany. This was my first international conference. Before I start sharing with you my experience there, I would like to thank everyone involved with the organization of the event, the volunteers, the “OpenStreetMap Foundation” and everyone who helped on making State of the Map 2019 possible. I really appreciate being accepted as a scholar not only for SOTM’19 but for HOT Summit 2019 as well, since I had the chance to attend both events.

I’m a contributor of OpenStreetMap for almost one year now. I have a background in geoinformation and have always enjoyed working with maps. When I first learned on OpenStreetMap I was quite intrigued by the idea that I could contribute to improving local maps and all of my contributions would become visible and available for other people to use. So, first I was involved mostly by editing local maps, and also by co-hosting events in the city I live in. I had my first workshop on a openstreetmap related topic in May’19 at Open Source Conference Albania where I was happy to share with beginners what I had learned so far and help them get started as well. This was quite challenging for me since I didn’t have much experience with speaking in public, but everything went quite well and as a result I had enough confidence to fill my CFP application at the biggest gathering of the year of the OpenStreetMap contributors. And as you can guess, It got approved. :D

My topic at State of the Map 2019 was: “First steps with OpenStreetMap editors”, the reason why I decided to host this workshop was because I was new to the community so I thought that this would be a nice way to share my experience with beginners and try to engage them as well with OSM.

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Recently, Maxar has seen sharp usage increases through automated requests coming from a few areas of the world that are of concern. These are having detrimental impacts to our service and we are taking measures mitigate. Unfortunately this will mean an interruption of our imagery services for OpenStreetMap. Soon we will suspend our imagery service, and we are working with the developers of OSM editing tools to implement a more secure service and restore full access to the Maxar Standard and Premium layers as soon as possible.

Thank you for your understanding and we look forward to solving this problem together.

Best, Kevin

Home on the Ranch…. The Stewart Estate. 🌞🌛🤬🌜

Points to Truro

Die OSMF-Vorstands-Wahlen dieses Jahr sind vorbei - die Ergebnisse der Wahlen und Abstimmungen finden sich hier:

• https://www.opavote.com/results/6500446103404544
• https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Annual_General_Meetings/2019/Suggested_AoA_Changes_revised

Es ist bemerkenswert, wie sich jetzt anscheinend unter manchen Leuten Unverständnis, Enttäuschung und Ärger über die Resultate artikulieren, die ja doch eine recht breite Unterstützung in der OSMF-Mitgliedschaft für die Kernwerte des Projektes - die egalitäre und selbstbestimmte Zusammenarbeit zur Erfassung lokalen Wissens über die Geographie - erkennen lassen. Da hat wohl manch einer in seiner Filterblase etwas Anderes erhofft.

Beeindruckend ist auch, wie manche sich jetzt geradezu in ihrer Voreingenommenheit und Intoleranz suhlen und gemeinschaftlich darüber spekulieren, wie man denn nach einer Machtübernahme das Projekt nach den eigenen Vorstellungen und kulturellen Werten umgestalten könnte. Die Rede ist da zum Beispiel von bezahlten Managern, die die Mapper zu erwünschtem Verhalten erziehen sollen (euphemistisch als “active community management” bezeichnet) und von der Zensur unerwünschter Äußerungen (“active moderation”). Es geht da also klar erkennbar nicht um Offenheit gegenüber anderen Kulturen und Werten, sondern um die Ausgrenzung von solchen Ansichten und Werten, die der Dominanz der eigenen kulturellen Vorstellungen entgegenstehen.

Klar, wenn jetzt ein paar tausend amerikanische SJWs entschließen würden, in OSM einzufallen und dort mal aufzuräumen dann wäre OSM als soziales Projekt Geschichte. Insofern sind diese Überlegungen nicht komplett unrealistisch. Aber wie unverfroren und unreflektiert da manche ihre Intoleranz, ihre Ablehnung von anders Denkenden und Ausgrenzungs-Bestrebungen artikulieren ist schon bemerkenswert.

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Thanks to Syver Stensholt, OpenStreetBrowser has a new translation: Bokmål, which is a written standard for the Norwegian language! Thanks a lot :-)

If you want to create or improve a translation, you can do so on OpenStreetBrowser Weblate.

Check the translation statistics.

I had earlier written some PT schema thoughts on my wiki page. I’ve since had some more ideas, which I figured I’d try sharing via diary and see how they are received.

Non-breaking extensions to PTv2

Classed by use cases. (I’ve probably missed some. Please do point them out.)

1. Simple routes

The Stereo system - stops + optional via-points to disambiguate route. No route segments - consumers should generate that themselves.

This makes it significantly easier to create and maintain bus routes, to say nothing of train routes. It also removes some cases of relation-breakage. OsmAnd already supports such relations, although it doesn’t display the route itself in route visualization, only the stops.

(I don’t know of anything else that supports this. Indeed, PT Assistant in JOSM complains about “stop not served” for such relations. If you know of anything that does, please share it.)

2. Stations + varying platforms (trains, buses)

Same as #1 but use stations instead of platforms.

3. Stations + fixed platforms

Same as #1 but maybe platforms should be part of a stop area relation (depicting the station? But isn’t a stop area distinct from a station?), so routers know which station a platform belongs to.

Alternatively, platforms should have the same name=* as the station. (Tag duplication alert)

4. hail_and_ride, ferry routes

Use PTv2. Stop positions to mark start and end of route, ways to show route.

Breaking-change ideas for PTv2

1. Multiple values for public_transport=* - introduces duck tagging goodness to PT, doesn’t abuse tag semantics (like e.g. highway=bus_stop or railway=station do), and supports multi-modal stops.
   • platform values - bus_stop, minibus_stop, share_taxi_stop, train_platform, metro_platform [1], etc
   • station values - bus_station, metro_station, railway_station, etc

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Having originally found OSM through the collaborative project called Missing Maps, tasks that I complete are recorded on my HOT Tasking Manager (HOTOSM) profile. OSM accounts are also linked to Missing Maps profiles, where badges and achievements like those found in video games can be obtained.

Over the past few days I’ve noticed that the sync between OSM and these 2 other platforms, HOTOSM and Missing Maps, has not been completely up to date. For example, in HOTOSM there is a “number of changes/edits to go until you become an advanced mapper” bar that fills as you make edits in OSM. This bar has been filling up as expected, but the “total mapping time” hasn’t changed. I’ve barely obtained any Missing Maps badges either, whose objectives I have already surpassed. Neither of these features mean a great deal - as long as the mapping gets done then that’s the main focus. But it would be nice to know what the problem with the synchronization is and if it can be fixed.

I was at 2018 IEEE 3rd International Workshops on Foundations and Applications of Self* Systems (FAS*W)

I have tried, in the past, to explain to people that the board of directors of the OpenStreetMap Foundation is not a group that provides, or should be expected to provide, “leadership”.

There are no people to be led in OpenStreetMap, no worker ants who just wait for a missive from central command to start their contributions. Nor does the board of directors allocate vast amounts of funding to projects deemed worthy of support. The whole OSM Foundation, including its board of directors,is there to keep the lights on in OSM’s server room, and perhaps to fend off the occasional trademark or license violation – but not to “lead” anything.

Which doesn’t stop some people from making a huge cult around this idea of “leadership”. Among the questions asked of candidates to this year’s board election was one that went:

Do you have experience of managing a project or a team of people? Do you have any experience of coaching others to lead (i.e. managing managers)? How long have you been doing these things?

While it doesn’t say so explicitly, it is obvious that whoever asked this question believes that these are important qualities in a board member, and that members should consider this in deciding whom to vote for. And candidates dutifully obliged, listing their previous chief-of-something-or-other postings and leadership experience.

One (European, white, male) mapper was not deterred by this and replied:

No, I’m just a grunt. Despite coming from a relatively middle class background, I wasn’t born to lead the plebs. I’m not a manager, nor have I gone on executive training courses.

This mapper is now on the board of directors.

A mapper from the “Global South”, who expressed unhappiness about the (European/American, white, male) composition of the board, was asked on Twitter if he’d consider standing for election next time, and replied:

I’m not able to run next year because I do not have the leadership skills

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First of all I really enjoy doing mapping and it really felt like I was home because besides doing school works and going to church, I found out that mapping is a great bridge in helping out in my own way the Filipino community. I love CWTS