Background

In 2023, New Brunswick (Canada) underwent a province-wide restructuring of their municipal boundaries. This consisted of 77 Incorporated Municipalities and 12 Unincorporated Rural Districts. Between 2023 and 2025, only a small handful of these boundaries were actually imported into OSM. Thus, I took it upon myself to begin what was my largest project ever, a full import of the updated boundaries across the province.

I saw it fit to write up a post summarizing the work that was done, along with some of the rationales for certain tagging methods used in this project, in order to maintain consistency both now and into the future. It should be noted that this was not an automated import, every kilometer of boundary was manually reviewed. The data used was from GeoNB, under the Open Government License – New Brunswick.

Pre-Import Phase/Admin Level Restructuring

When I started this project, New Brunswick’s existing boundary data was a complete mess, some larger cities had admin_level=6 boundaries, while other incorporated municipalities were tagged admin_level=8, and parishes were sharing admin_level=6, leading to overlaps. For instance, Saint-François Parish and Haut-Madawaska were both tagged admin_level=6, despite them occupying the same geographical area.

To fix this problem, I decided to shift all Parish boundaries to admin_level=8, and assign admin_level=6 to all municipal boundaries. The new admin level hierarchy is logical because Parishes are not incorporated government entities and have no modern-day purpose. Furthermore, it more closely resembles data in other provinces in Canada (such as Alberta, Quebec, and Nova Scotia), which prioritize admin_level=6 for municipal districts. Both the New Brunswick wiki as well as the Canada admin level wiki pages were updated to reflect these changes.

Below are some examples of the admin_level tagging schema before and after my updates:

Example 1 [Before]:

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97394 addresses completed.

As I’m interested in pedestrian infrastructure, I asked myself what percentage of all sidewalks in Germany has already been mapped.

It is difficult to answer this question because I do not know the total number of sidewalks in Germany. However, it is possible to change the question slightly to make it easier to answer: How many streets in Germany contain information about the presence of sidewalks?

This is easier to answer, because we can assume that all streets of Germany have already been mapped. Therefore, to answer the question, we just have to count the streets that contain the desired information.

 

Sidewalk tags

Currently, four tags are in use for mapping sidewalks: sidewalk, sidewalk:left, sidewalk:right and sidewalk:both. The tag sidewalk was introduced around 2010 and is still widespread, accounting for around 80% of all sidewalk tags:

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Artificial Intelligence OpenAI Maps4 and finance. Things are progressing beautifully.

I am telling it what to do in English, and it’s writing the tags for me and making the edit. I will review everything it does and not do anything with it that I wouldn’t do by hand (but more tediously).

On September 20th, 2025, the Oyomappers Team had an amazing time participating in a map and clean-up event sponsored by the Humanitarian Open Street Map Team (Hot). We used Chatmap to help us with the exercise, and it was truly impactful!

During the cleanup at Ajegunle Market in Oyo, Oyo State, Nigeria, the atmosphere was filled with joy. The community was so grateful, and we felt their warmth as they expressed their appreciation and prayed for us. It was a wonderful experience to be part of something so positive!

This afternoon, while pondering and daydreaming about seriously quitting OSM for real, I ventured into the land of Wikimapia.

Then I stumbled upon a conversation between high-ranking admins over there.

“Why did you delete a number of TNB sub-stations from the map? Don’t you think those tags were useful, to some people at least? I think the user(s) who initially created those tags put a lot of effort in detailing the model nos., etc. for some of the sub-stations. Thanks.”

“The TNB sub stations is not a place. It just an OBJECT just like small bridges, security guard post, small jetty etc. Different with a PLACE such as Pulau Pinang Bridge or any big bridges, police station or a port such as Port Kelang. As you can see there are few users that like to tag a small roadside stall and a small public toilet. That also is in the list for deletion. You must know to differentiate what can be tag and what can’t.”

“I was under the impression that anything permanent of some importance (except personal houses) could be tagged. If that’s the case, people shouldn’t be tagging ATM machines, telco towers, transmission towers, etc. To be honest, I disagree with you on this point as TNB substations are permanent and important to some people as I mentioned before.”

“You may disagree with me but TNB sub stations is not an important objects for WM users. It just like tagging a bus stops and taxi stands if you know what I mean”

Well, maybe I should stay in OpenStreetMap.

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Jokes aside, I’m quite surprised that Wikimapia is still active today. I still see several Wikimapia mappers still doing dedicated micromapping in their respective neighborhoods.

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One of the trickiest challenges in OSM is when a river (or any linear water feature) doubles as a regional or administrative boundary.

Rivers shift course over time; floods, erosion, and meanders, while boundaries often remain legally fixed. The result? Misalignments, overlapping lines, or confusing gaps on our maps.

For many contributors, editing such overlaps is daunting. Boundaries are sensitive, technically complex, and mistakes can cause big issues. Yet, leaving them mismatched affects disaster planning, legal clarity, and overall map quality.

My Question to Experienced Mappers 🙏

How do you decide whether to follow the legal boundary or the current river course?

Rivers don’t wait. Boundaries don’t move. But as mappers, we can bridge the gap. I’d love to hear your experiences and solutions!

Qwajo OSM

While working on an OSM-related statistics project that I need to present in the next few months, I stumbled across some ‘conversations of the past,’ scattered in changeset comments and block reports.

Some of those conversations triggered a strong emotional response in me—so much that I had to pause for a quick breather. I think I’ve just been exposed to a serious infohazard.

Then I remembered “that page” on Wikimedia Meta-Wiki.

Wikistress is stress caused by activity on a wiki like Wikipedia such as conflict, vandals, trolls, edit wars, and incivility.

I’ve suffered this kind of stress several times on Wikipedia, and now—since OSM is by nature quite similar to Wikipedia—I’ve relapsed again.

By the way, on that page, there are several tips for dealing with personal wikistress. I think we can adapt those tips to the OpenStreetMap context.

“Edit a less controversial page.”

Instead of big, difficult tasks such as place and highway classifications, adding things like toilets, cafés, restaurants, and pet shops might be less controversial (and more wholesome to do).

“Stop looking at your watchlist. It does contain pages that you are emotionally involved with. Of course, not having any pages in your watchlist is a good start :)”

Stay away from the OpenStreetMap Carto basemap (or any OSM-derived map tiles) for awhile?

“Take a long vacation. Treat yourself to relaxation, favorite TV shows (unless they cause you wikistress), spend time with friends, family, and pets, and maybe try something new.”

“If you are just reverting and deleting and not enjoying yourself then STOP. Someone else will have to deal with it. Do something else. “

“Remind yourself why it’s best to avoid fights and ignore trolls “

“Unsubscribe from the mailing lists and escape the pointless repetitive arguments, the endless recriminations and the general desire to create more heat than light.”

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Dear diary,

Yesterday, I was in a meeting of the HOT QCQA WG, when Patrik_B asked a question at the very end of the meeting. How can you download select data within a given complex geometry via overpass; the geometry in the JOSM layer isn’t visible when downloading?

The Objective

 Download all desired data via overpass within this boundary.   Fig.1. Area of Interest.

Download Along to Highlight the Boundary of the AOI on the Slippy Map

Ralph was first to answer the question. His solution was to download data from OSM using the download along plug-in. The area of downloaded data would then be visible on the slippy map and this could be referenced when drawing a bounding box to download the data. Very clever.

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Someone ask me for “What experience do you have building websites with Open Street Maps using controls limit then monitor and report on tile usage?”

According to the official statistics page, today OpenStreetMap has hit the milestone of 10 million registered users! This is not the first time though; in fact it already happened earlier this year and in 2023 (during which year the amount even exceeded 11 million!); lately, the number of registered users graph shows a saw-tooth pattern, probably, in my opinion, due to the SPAM accounts being continuously banned by the admins.

By the way, if you happen to have an account on OSM wiki, please check the translation of Template:Contributors/count in your language as it may need to be updated. That template is pretty simple but it’s used by a couple of “main” wiki pages.

However, the number seems pretty high, but it may be worth noting that only about 23% (~2.25 million) of the total number of registered users has made at least one modification in the OSM database. Considering that the database has received 17 billion¹ edits, that means that every contributor has made an average of 7,400 changes from their entire lifespan as a user (you can see how many contributions you made on your HDYC page).

One last question that’s been bothering me: how many users would be registered on OSM if no one had been deleted or banned? Well, according to the API, at the time of writing, the last valid user id is 23,302,305 so the answer is more than double the number of currently registered users.

Imagine what could be achieved with twice as many contributors!

¹ number calculated using the file changesets.osm dated 2025-04-07 (license ODbL 1.0); the values shown here are unverified and may be incorrect.

Happy mapping to all 10 million users!

I joined OSM from the https://deflock.me/ community, and have since added 21 ALPRs. I’ve also contributed a few new developments to the map, and looking to add more.

GIS has been a huge interest of mine, and I’ve been maintaining my own private ATAK repository for a while. I’m excited to find a place to share this knowledge now. When I was younger, I would systematically walk areas of Baltimore, MD looking to uncover interesting POI. I wish I had OSM back then to store my findings.

I see there’s an “OpenStreetMap US” but not “OpenStreetMap Illinois”?

I’ve been editing OSM for about nine months and have been a heavy JOSM armchair editor for about eight months. Recently, I started using a stylus for entering geometry and it’s increased my stamina tremendously. I’ve been able to create hundreds even thousands of nodes per day without feeling any signs of repetitive strain injuries cropping up in my hand.

Someone ask me for “What experience do you have building websites with Open Street Maps using controls limit then monitor and report on tile usage?”

I’m currently exploring OpenStreetMap (OSM) and trying to understand what kind of real-world projects or applications can be built using it.

I’ve checked the documentation, but I’m still not sure how OSM data is typically used in actual applications or what kind of problems it can solve.

Could anyone please share:

Some common or professional use cases of OpenStreetMap

Any example project ideas or scenarios (personal, commercial, or open-source) where OSM is used effectively

Also, if possible, please suggest any recommended tools or libraries (like Leaflet, MapLibre, Nominatim, Overpass API, etc.) that are commonly used to work with OSM data.

Goal: I just want to get a clear idea of where OSM can be applied so I can plan my first project with it.

Thank you!

I have been preparing a RFC for several days, but now weekend is over and i won’t have time to finish things up. Here’s drafted tldr of a draft of a RFC in case this ends up as another forgotten project. Scope of this proposal is limited to Estonia. For international uses, I suggest to read EU report on waste sorting standardisation.

Problem: When surveying packaging recycling containers (PRC) it’s repetitive to list all kinds of waste collected there. There’s also risk of errors introduced by human input. My initial estimate is that trio of standard PRCs should get about 20-30 recycling:* tags.

Observation: PRC colours are standardised across Estonia – Paper blue, glass green and metal/plastic/beverage yellow (source). While Estonia has adapted Danish color schema as nationwide standard for garbage collection, PRCs have bit different colours. Standard-PRCs are often accompanied by reusable clothes container (no standard colouring).

Objective: Simplify & standardise mapping of different waste collected.

• Mapper has to simply pick colour(s) of the container(s) they see and..
• …preset ensures consistency of different waste types listed.
• Therefore PRC can be mapped at higher quality from further distance (assuming mapper doesn’t know PRC colour codes by hearth.

Solution: Introduce localised custom (iD & JOSM) editor tagging preset (e.g “Pakendikonteiner EE”)

Downsides:

• Difficult to scale legal rules up to international level, in some countries even to county level. Some cities may use own colours.
• Unclear if this idea is technically fully achievable (editor limitations, namely adding multiple colours to single node)
• Technical scale-up difficulties – possible performance loss is each major city or county in developed world gets own preset.

Initial idea originally published on 2025-09-12. Full 40 pages of notes are not processed yet.

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Ditinition

Ditinition

Started with Thurso on the North Highland Way. Our preferred hotel supplier is there