One huge question I have about time used in tracing Nazca lines and its shapes, is the lack of certain geometries, one would expect. Very often, long distances of perfectly straight lines, with long acute angles are common, as with lots of evidence where two lines starting rather close to each other might meet many meters away to a single point.

What seems rare is having multiple lines being the same exact length, and perfect right angles. Angles that are 90 degrees or that angles of 30 or 45 degrees, perfect circles, semi circles and/or use of tangents are never seen or given much importance. The uses of golden sections, and those proportions, never seem to be given much importance. Curves and tangents from other shapes and curves are occasionally shown, plus those that relate to a specific shape or object might be well represented. significant geometric importance. One also would expect to see more use of Pi, but without true perfect squares, rectangles or circles, any calculation using Pi is also not given any special importance. There also doesn’t seem to be much whole number equally divided segmented distances. While occasionally a line might bisect, its for more organic than just that therefore not based on any grid pattern.

… See full entry

Dear all,

Today, v5.3.1 of the OpenStreetMap Carto stylesheet (the default stylesheet on the OSM website) has been released. There are no visual changes in this release.

Changes include - Natural Earth URL changed to directly point at the NACIS CDN - Added an option to the external data loader to grant SELECT permissions on the tables

For a full list of commits, see https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/compare/v5.3.0…v5.3.1

As always, we welcome any bug reports at https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues

During the OpenStreetMap x Wikidata monthly meetup, we decide the person who abuse the data from Facebook MapwithAI project, the user whose account starts with c, his contribution of road data that has not been touched will all be removed. MapwithAI have trouble recognized dry creek as road, or recognized high-voltage power line as road. Manual judge by human mappers is still needed.

Despite complains from OpenStreetMap mappers, there are Rudy Map users or foreign hikers in Taiwan complain about strange mountain road that seems appears from no where. It is time that OpenStreetMap communities should interfere, otherwise that will be huge amount of low quality data import into OpenStreetMap.

We have to observate that person if he will be upset and revert back his edit. If this is the case, it is time that Data Working Group to deal with.

Resources of OpenStreetMap Foundation (OMSF), OSMF Local Chapters (LC): the question and status of paid services.

In the context of the community consultations phase of OpenStreetMap Uganda (see email 1), Poland (see email 2) and Japan (see email 3) Local Chapter LC applications, I shared my thoughts about paid services as a means of resources for OSMF and LCs. I have been invited to start a discussion of its own about this topic, hence this note.

I orginally developped this topics as well as others in the context of the MapUganda application which read as an email (see email 4) and a diary note (5) .

Since I think it makes sense to also discuss the status of paid services as a resource for OSMF and LC generally outside of a specific context, I am producing below the section on this topic extracted from my MapUganda-related email/note (4,5).

== Email extract - start ==

We shall first look back at OSMF and LC and remind ourselves of the early ages of the OSM project when its ecosystem was nascent and review some of the strengths that lead to its current affirmation.

Frederik’s question (see email 6) brings us with the non written rule or the jurisprudence behind the practices under which OSMF and LC from “developed” countries have been functioning resources-wise so far: banning paid services from their resources.

This is true at OSMF and this is equally true in given LC like OSMFR where this banning of “paid services” from the actual resources of the association is collectively restated year after year at its AGM.

… See full entry

Over the past few months HOT has been working in partnership with NESTA Collective Intelligence grants and 510 at the Netherlands Red Cross to implement an experiment to test the efficiency and efficacy of AI assistance on remote mapping of buildings.

The experiment is designed to compare the results of traditional remote mapping workflows (editing in ID Editor) with emerging AI assisted workflows (editing with RapID). To do this, we will be conducting mapping experiments of two locations (Uganda and US), with two different levels of mappers (beginner and advanced) using the two different remote mapping workflows (RapID and ID).

To this end, we are looking to run four experimental groups with > 50 people each, as follows: Beginner Mapathon - Uganda data Beginner Mapathon - US data Advanced Mapathon - Uganda data Advanced Mapathon - US data

Each mapathon will be a total of two hours, with participants being randomly assigned to map building footprints with either ID or RapID prior to beginning their mapping. Data will be gathered on the existence of map features, completeness of mapped features and similarity of map features, when compared with an OSM reference dataset.

For the mapathons we will be using convenience sampling from our networks by generating a public call for participants.

You can sign up to participate in the experiment here >

Kindness,

bo

A geoglyph of a Flying Pelican 125m x 100m depicts the bird heading west.
The shape reveals a pelican diving for food, revealing a side view of a head, eye, pouch like beak, wings, tail, body and two feet. There is a long geoglyph of a single 125m line that suggests under the pelican that there is the ocean surface.. In regards to details provided by the artist and seen from satellite, the pelican’s pouch appears properly scored, with a hook at the very tip of its beak.

The survey now offers 18 languages (Arabic, Chinese (Traditional; Taiwan), English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish (Sorani), Persian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Spanish, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese).

As of today (3 February) the survey has received 2381 full responses and 962 incomplete responses, for a total of 3,343 responses. A total of 3,875 tokens have been requested.

Responses are predictably tapering off from the peak of 461 on 23 January (the day after a banner went up on osm.org), but remain relatively high with over 100 responses daily. The survey will remain open until February 14th, so if you have not taken it yet, please give the OSM Foundation five to ten minutes of your time to share your opinions!

50m x 50m placeholder

deleted Parrot with Spots.

This 20m x 50m geoglyph depiction of a standing monkey has his head turn to the west. He is oriented in the north to south and admist groups of Nazca lines on this flat topography. It is completely unclear what he is doing or what the artist intended monkey to be representing.
In the westerly direction of which the monkey was viewing, 3000m away is where Rio Nazca intersects a stream. (Suggesting a village location)

The humanitarian OpenStreetMap community working group is looking for interesting panellists for a webinar mini-series on Colonialism in Open Data and Mapping. Do you have any suggestions?

This is the explainer for the webinar:

“And while maps may be missing from digital platforms and social networks, we are still here.”- David Garcia, 2020

Maps and digital data have played crucial roles in humanitarian aid eg. disaster response. Although it is of best interest to help local communities through generating data and features on the map, humanitarian actors and mappers should take note that we are not only mapping features (houses, roads, waterways, etc), but also mapping the land, oceans, and communities who live and are stewards of that space. With this webinar, we want to examine and discuss this balance (community <> digital information), decolonising open data and open mapping, and representation and power in humanitarian mapping, among others.

There will be two events in this series that hopefully accommodate interested people in different timezones : 26 Feb 2021 at 06:00 & 16:00 UTC.

Our panel so far for the 06:00 UTC event are:

• David Garcia
• Imma Mwanja
• Feye Andal (moderator)

And, for the 16:00 UTC event:

• Trudy Hope
• La Sele
• Heather Leson (moderator)

We are looking for one more panellist for each event. If you would like to suggest someone, please feel free to get in touch via the comments or the community-wg slack channel or via email at pete.masters @ hotosm.org

For more info on the webinars that the WG organises, there is a wiki page, here.

For more info on the working group, there is a wiki page, here.

Yesterday I replaced diplomatic=consulate_general by diplomatic=consulate with consulate=consulate_general over 400 objects (266 nodes, 131 ways and 3 relations) all over the World (see osm.org/changeset/98531944).

With the release 4 days ago of the v5.3.0 of openstreetmap-carto (see https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md) “amenity=embassy is no longer rendered, and office=diplomatic with diplomatic=embassy or diplomatic=consulate is instead (#4168)”. Therefore the diplomatic=consulate tag becomes very important.

As we “don’t tag for the renderer”, don’t consider this news as an argument but as a bonus in my motivation for doing the switch.

Let me detail the reasons why I did it:

• The tag consulate=consulate_general is approved (see osm.wiki/Tag%3Aconsulate%3Dconsulate_general)

• The tag diplomatic=consulate_general isn’t approved (see osm.wiki/Tag:diplomatic%3Dconsulate_general)

• The main “diplomatic” wiki page (see osm.wiki/Key:diplomatic#Values) recommand to use consulate=consulate_general

• De facto, the consulate=consulate_general tag was way more used than the diplomatic=consulate_general one (500+ > 300+ as displayed yesterday at https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/consulate=consulate_general)

• Earlier in the day I made several edits to run some tests, step by step. At one point I made the switch only in France. I then realised that:

  • Both tags are well interpreted by OpenDiplomaticMap (see https://anders.hamburg/osm/diplomatic)

  • iD editor is only supporting the consulate tag and not the diplomatic one

  • To the better of my knowledge, no other project is impacted

I also would like to highlight that this tag is a minor one: it’s only a complementary tag giving more details with office=diplomatic.

Feel free to give me any feedback about this move.

… See full entry

The geoglyph of the alligator attacking a swimming man 100m wide x 40m long is oriented east (head) to west (tail) on moderately sloped land. It appears to be chasing a person trying to swim away approximately 15m from its mouth also oriented east to west.

The artwork indicates the alligator with a slightly open mouth targeting the swimmer that is directly in front of him.

I mostly just map footpaths and pedestrian amenities because often these get overlooked. Usually just stay around Christchurch.

Aside from imports, about 99% of the features mapped in Fortuna were mapped by me. It’s an interesting feeling.

It feels like the local map is a personal creative project. Like building a model train…that, uh, helps other people navigate and travel.

The most difficult part is deciding what’s important – what counts as “progress.” One of the big problems I’ve fixed is mapping errors that make Osmand spaz out when you’re traveling along the 101 or Main Street.

I’m gravitating toward focusing on having correct lanes, turn lanes, nearby buildings, and nearby driveways along the most important roads. Then slowly focusing on less important roads as I make progress.

And osmose error hunting. That’s always fun!

New Users in Washington State

2020 saw 746 new users in Washington State make their first edit. Down just slightly from the previous two years. Anecdotally it appears that we had fewer SEO edits than in past years.

Welcome Message

Welcome messages were sent to 696 of those new mappers, up from last year. Only 26 people replied at least once to the welcome message. I should note that the welcome message doesn’t ask for a reply. Of the new users, 84 replied to changeset comments. A total of 1784 changeset comments were made on the new users edits. Not all of these changeset comments required a reply. Tips were left on 351 changesets.

Edit Quality

I tried to review all of their edits before I send out the Welcome message. Some days when I had other more pressing chores the reviews were just a quick check. In some cases I left a Tip: in the changeset comment on better mapping practices. If the edit was harmful I either reverted or fixed their edit. Harmful could mean that the new mapper unintentionally dragged a node or disconnect a road.  There were eight cases of vandalism which were all reverted.

TIPS

As mentioned above, I left 351 tips. Below are the most common tips left.

… See full entry

My November 2020 in OSM

Here’s some of the things I’ve been doing in OpenStreetMap in November 2020. (Yes I know I’m posting this in late January, I’m sorry for being late. Hence some parts of this document will appear out of date)

… See full entry

I have noticed an issue with the OSM map that it is a little blurry on all tiles, no matter what longtitude or latitude. Please help, I want it to be sharp again 😫

I’m excited about the idea of getting Fortuna’s roads and trails entirely covered with Mapillary. It makes editing OSM much easier for me, being able to look back on any bit of road I’ve driven on. I hope that the machine learning Mapillary does can one day make OSM mapping much, much quicker.

My main frustration with Mapillary (Android app) is that it has a poor sense for where the camera is pointing. I tell it my camera points forward, but 1/5 of the pictures are like, “are you sure you weren’t pointing 150 degrees backward.”

No. Normalize sequence.

The Geoglyph Meeting Circle 18m in diameter within a series of complex geometry of lines, connecting points, and unexpected alignments. The meeting circle shape also becomes repeated in a location 900m to the northeast. Located in an area of relatively low amounts of slope, the vast distances are difficult to fathom when you think of the primitive tools used to make them. The use of meeting circle is unclear as an overview with these maps. It is also difficult to say if the geoglyphs relate to each other or for that matter the layers of geoglyphs covered by time.

The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Policy Special Committee of the OpenStreetMap Foundation has been asked by the Board of Directors to assess the degree to which Free and/or Open Source Software or Services are being used within the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF), the board itself, the different working groups, and committees. This analysis focuses on collaborative services to be used over the Internet. The FOSS Policy Special Committee was explicitly excluding the software used by the community at large, local chapters, or systems running on personal computers.

Indicators

The committee has defined two indicators that cover the most important aspects of freedom and openness of software. These are:

1. Programs or Services released under a Free and/or Open Source Software license: Are the programs or services used released under licenses that have been officially approved by either the Free Software Foundation or the Open Source Initiative. Only these licenses are following the standards to be considered free and/or open.

2. Control over data stored at hosted services: The key aspect of hosted services is the ability of the OSMF and the community to fully control the data hosted and to prevent this data from being used for other purposes by a third party. Some of such services are based on open-source software and can be self-hosted by the OSMF, then offering full control and ownership of the data. Non-open services usually do not offer this ability and the full control of the data is at least questionable if not completely impossible.

Inventory

… See full entry