This is part 1b of my analysis of the candidates of 2017 OSMF board elections. Part 1a can be found here.

Please read the notes and explanations at the beginning of part 1a before reading this part!

David Dean

David Dean is Australian citizen, only understands English and is classified by HDYC as Heavy Mapper (very active). He started mapping in 2007 because he found all geocaches which were reachable during lunch break. He has been an active mapper since then although he has only very few active days between 2011 and 2016. He wants to increase the representation of the communities in AU/NZ/South Pacific Region. He works as a scientist on machine learning. His OSM edits are focused on Australia but he also contributes to HOT tasks. David wants to bring OSM to the indigenous communities around the world (he himself has no indigenous roots). They have a different look at the world than people from Europe or North America. In addition, he states that OSM data should take ownership of their OSM data.

He wants to bring the “present and future impact of automation, machine-learning and/or artificial intelligence [on mapping in OSM]” to the board, a topic has been working on for more than ten years. Although it might sound so, he thinks that machine learning is no antithesis to his opinion that local communities should hold ownership on their data. Instead, machine learning applications should support mappers and should be accessible to mappers and not be used in an import-like way.

David has not been active in the OSMF. He organized local OSM community events (see his user diary) in Brisbane between 2008 and 2011. He became inactive in 2011 because he thought that OSM was “finish” in his local area. He continued with mapping in 2016 by tracing buildings and using StreetComplete.

There is no formal OpenStreetMap association in Australia, so the question about his activity there is unnecessary.

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I’ve submitted a FOIA request to find out where the byelaws cover, as I’ve seen areas where (according to new-ish signs) the byelaws still apply even after the land has changed use.

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/aldershot_and_district_military

I am having a bad night and just messing around online

The members of OpenStreetMap Foundation are called to elect board members for two seats on the OSMF Board of Directors this year. In this blog post which consists of two parts the four candidates will be presented. Part 1 summarizes their manifestos, their responses to the questions by community members, criticism and other available and relevant bits of information. Part 2 will evaluate them based on the opinion of a German craft mapper.

Links to the manifestos can be found on the OSM wiki about the election. There is also a talk page where everyone can ask questions to the candidates. In addition, a lot discussions can be read in the public archive of the OSMF-talk mailing list.

How does the election work?

All members of OSMF are eligible to vote if they have been a member of at least 30 days before the AGM which will take place on Saturday. It does not matter if you are a normal member or an associate member. Associate members are not listed by real name on the list of members which everyone has to be given access if required. But only normal members are allowed to vote on changes to the articles of association.

You can vote between 2th December 2017 16:00 UTC and 9th December 2017 16:00 UTC. The general assembly will start on 9th December 2017 16:00 UTC on a special IRC channel. The results of the election will be announced at the end of the meeting.

The election itself uses the Single Transferable Vote system (STV). It is a proportional voting system to vote persons. Every voter creates his/her personal list of desired candidates ordered by perference.

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Dear Folks,

We are computer scientists concerning with analyzing the data quality of your great contributions. To help us, please feel free to participate in our cognitive study. It is simple and takes about 30 min. Your feedbacks are more important for us for improvements. Press here to participate http://hccvgi.informatik.uni-bremen.de/

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After my laptop crushed, I started using Gomap! Application, it have many features like u can add places and making roads, making building areas, pointing trees. ..etc , OSM edits is like a cocaine I can’t leave it . Click on this link to learn how to use this app : Gomap! Learn

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Over time the number of OpenStreamMappers is increasing, almost every day the community is getting new Mappers. Indeed it’s a great news but, a matter of tension as well in terms of data quality because of the no or minimal knowledge of tagging, proper drawing, and the fate or end use of data. Its a great news for us that recently a java based android application has been developed what is suitable for new mappers for collecting data in the field offline. It uses Mapzen vector tiles for display. Thanks to Tobias Zwick

Let me introduce you the application named streetcomplete.

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Previously all navigation methods on this route would recommend an illegal turn while heading north on Panalatinga to the right and then to the left, asking you to enter and leave trunk road and join another.

I made some no turns and it filtered out most navigations, but GraphHopper is still suggesting the illegal route:

osm.org/directions?engine=graphhopper_car&route=-35.06841%2C138.58965%3B-35.12197%2C138.52112#map=15/-35.0846/138.5519

Dear Folks,

We are computer scientists concerning with analyzing the data quality of your great contributions. To help us, please feel free to participate in our cognitive study. It is simple and takes about 30 min. Your feedbacks are more important for us for improvements. Press here to participate http://hccvgi.informatik.uni-bremen.de/

Thank you in advance

Dr. Ahmed Loai Ali loai@informatik.uni-bremen.de

Using my alter-ego EliotB_linz, I have imported 150k addresses for Christchurch from LINZ. All addresses for NZ are available as OSM changeset files for JOSM if others want to do the same - get in touch!

.. is still headache :/

I have added number of Commercial and education buildings, and have started adding some houses as well. I am finding houses to be really difficult to do. The satellite images are not the best, and its really hard to map out houses, particularly with trees and what not in the way as well. =( I did a good bit of, “uh, I think this is part of a house…”

Oh Niantic, curse you! lol

I need to train my fingers to spell “permissive”. Alternatively, I’ll try copying and pasting it…

As an active bicycler, I use maps on a day to day basis to help me navigate easily and hence my interest in mapping on OSM platforms. I became interested in OSM through connection from ICT4D conference in Hyderabad and have since have been interested in using maps for development.

I have a passion in using Computer Science to support learning and innovation environments and in my work with She Codes for Change (www.shecodesforchange.org), I am interested in seeing how more girls and boys can learn the power of technologies including GIS and map platforms to solve their problems.

Since Pokemon Go changed their maps from Google to OSM, I find myself living in an empty ugly green wasteland. So, here I am, putting buildings and structure back into my nerdy PoGo live, one edit at a time…

Hi, I am Ilya and I have been uploading changesets 15 days in a row. Not because I’m so into it or somebody makes me: I’ve made a tool that reminds me to do it. In a year I expect my HDYC activity chart to be completely filled. And you can have the same too.

Introducing OSM Streak: a website that gives you points for submitting changesets each day. You get 1 point for the first changeset, and then you get more: for example, I will receive 4 points for my next changeset tomorrow. And that is not all: it gives you a random task each day, so you don’t stare at the map trying to come up with an idea. For completing a task, you get an extra point. And when you map many days in a row, you gain levels, which open more tasks.

Forgetting to visit a website is expectable, so OSM Streak is also a Telegram bot (find the link on the “Connect” page). With the bot, you can forget about the website: it accepts changesets and sends you tasks every day. Alternatively, you can subscribe to e-mail notifications, which will be sent on 1:00 UTC.

All the tasks and the website and the bot can (and should!) be translated into your language. We have English and Russian, and I would be very grateful for more translations.

Finally, there are 26 tasks at the moment, and you can add more by making a pull request or an issue on github. You can also use the source code as an example for writing a telegram bot, doing migrations with peewee ORM, sending e-mails with python or adding i18n with transifex.

derrrrp do not respond

It would appear that the map data used on the OSM Cycle Map overlay is well out of date.in North Yorkshire. Although apparently coming from Sustrans, the data is put onto OpenCycle Map by Andy Allan, and this is then incorporated as the Cycle layer on the Open Street Map. Clearly this stage of the data transfer is subject to massive overload of changing problems and priorities.

I’d like to change the rendering of protected areas on osm-carto (the style which is used as a default map layer on the main OSM.org website). That proved to be a complex problem, however thanks to the comments from the community on the issue tracker and Talk list I see the general plan what to do. This entry is just a slightly edited message I sent to the list.

_Exhibit A: [Adirondack Park](osm.org/relation/1695394#map=8/43.975/-74.309) disaster..._

TL;DR summary: I think that for now we should render all the existing tags, but make some of them appear earlier to encourage smooth migration to a more precise scheme.

General findings

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Yesterday I created a filter in OSMCha to get all edits made by new users in Brazil, as we are having a new wave of Pokemon motivated edits. Today I spent some time reviewing some of those edits. I sorted the changesets by the number of features created and started by the big ones.

I reviewed 11 edits, six of them had between 132 and 400 elements created, and 5 with 400 to 510. It was a surprise to me that only ONE of those edits was bad (the user created a river that doesn’t exist). Some edits had some small errors of course, but nothing very dangerous to the map quality.

So, believe in new users, they also can do amazing things and congratulate them by their good edits!