Our case revealed a serious problem. This problem is not only of ignoring international law, but also a problem of lack of transparency in an open community-driven project. The boil was present for a while now, but this case is where its existence became apparent. Data Working Group now is not what it was when it was created, and not everyone is happy with what it turned into. Currently it is a non-transparent OSM body that answers to no one but has serious influence on decision-making inside OSMF, as three out of seven OSMF Board members are also DWG members.

Our indignation and our actions have flushed out this issue into the open. We must, however, remain calm and patient. We should inform OSM community and draw attention to the issue as it is the only way to see it properly resolved.

This text is not mine but I agree. OSM currently lacks rigid rules or firm agreements concerning community, it lacks some sort of social contract. While this approach has certain advantages, it utterly fails in case of internal conflict in the community, and resolving such a conflict is challenging (to say the least).

… See full entry

(This is a description of a workshop Seth Fitzsimmons and I put on at State of the Map US 2018 in Detroit, Michigan. Cross-posting from this repository)

Workshop: October 2018

Workshop Abstract

With an overflowing Birds-of-a-Feather session on “OSM Data Analysis” the past few years at State of the Map US, we’d like to leave the nest as a flock. Many SotM-US attendees build and maintain various OSM data analysis systems, many of which have been and will be presented in independent sessions. Further, better analysis systems have yet to be built, and OSM analysis discussions often end with what is left to be built and how it can be done collaboratively. Our goal is to bring the data-analysis back into the discussion through an interactive workshop. Utilizing web-based interactive computation notebooks such as Zeppelin and Jupyter, we will step through the computation and visualization of various OpenStreetMap metrics.

tl;dr:

We skip the messy data-wrangling parts of OSM data analysis by pre-processing a number of datasets with osm-wayback and osmesa. This creates a series of CSV files with editing histories for a variety of US cities which workshop participants can immediately load into example analysis notebooks to quickly visualize OSM edits without ever having to touch raw OSM data.

1. Background

OpenStreetMap is more than an open map of the world: it is the cumulative product of billions of edits by nearly 1M active contributors (and another 4M registered users). Each object on the map can be edited multiple times. Each time the major attributes of an object are changed in OSM, the version number is incremented. To get a general idea of how many major changes exist in the current map, we can count the version numbers for every object in the latest osm-qa-tiles. This isn’t every single object in OSM, but includes nearly all roads, POIs, and buildings.

… See full entry

Today, i have been recognized, and i am in a contest with fellow mappers to reach 10000 edits by next Wednesday ( 7 days from now). Its a big challenge. This should be fun :) #osmnigeria#hotosm#microgrant2018#mapthedifference2018#uniquemappersteam#Youthmappers#unilagmappersteam

The Ukrainian community is concerned about the possible negative impact on the project as a whole, the emergence of lawsuits from users of data and the subsequent decline of the project, and therefore restores the borders of Ukraine to the internationally recognized status. The recent decision of DWG ( https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/DWG_2018-11-14_Crimea ) neglects the wide recognition of Crimea as an integral part of Ukraine expressed by numerous governments and international organizations (in particular, UN General Assembly Resolution 68/262 http://www.un.org/en/ga/68/resolutions.shtml / https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/68/262 ). DWG actions directed to cut off Crimea from the borders of Ukraine are considered to be inadequate to the interests of the project and are not recognized by law. Any blockages (bans) aimed against members who restored the border of Ukraine to the widely internationally recognized status will be seen as unjustified pressure on the entire community and usurpation of power in the OSM.

P.S.

“changing names or country information would require consensus from both the Ukrainian and Russian communities. It is unlikely that any such edit proposals will be able to achieve this.” (с) DWG //

Moreover, according to clause 4, a consensus should be reached between the Ukrainian and Russian communities on changing information about countries. There is no consensus - there is no reason to separate the Crimea from Ukraine.

CrimeaІsUkraine #DWG #CrimeaMap #КримЦеУкраїна #ИхТамНет

osm.org/relation/60199

osm.org/user/velmyshanovnyi - osm.org/user_blocks/2360 ;

osm.org/user/velmyshanovnyi - osm.org/user_blocks/2359 ;

osm.org/user/andergrin - osm.org/user_blocks/2358 ;

osm.org/user/Дівчина_з_Коломиї - osm.org/user_blocks/2357 ;

osm.org/user/паляниця - osm.org/user_blocks/2356 ;

osm.org/user/frankoivan - osm.org/user_blocks/2355 ;

osm.org/user/pumpkinpie226 - osm.org/user_blocks/2354 ;

… See full entry

The Ukrainian community is concerned about the possible negative impact on the project as a whole, the emergence of lawsuits from users of data and the subsequent decline of the project, and therefore restores the borders of Ukraine to the internationally recognized status. The recent decision of DWG ( https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/DWG_2018-11-14_Crimea ) neglects the wide recognition of Crimea as an integral part of Ukraine expressed by numerous governments and international organizations (in particular, UN General Assembly Resolution 68/262 http://www.un.org/en/ga/68/resolutions.shtml / https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/68/262 ). DWG actions directed to cut off Crimea from the borders of Ukraine are considered to be inadequate to the interests of the project and are not recognized by law. Any blockages (bans) aimed against members who restored the border of Ukraine to the widely internationally recognized status will be seen as unjustified pressure on the entire community and usurpation of power in the OSM. It also violates OSM guidelines in respect of using national boundaries: osm.wiki/Boundaries#National

P.S. “changing names or country information would require consensus from both the Ukrainian and Russian communities. It is unlikely that any such edit proposals will be able to achieve this.” (с) DWG //

Moreover, according to clause 4, a consensus should be reached between the Ukrainian and Russian communities on changing information about countries. There is no consensus - there is no reason to separate the Crimea from Ukraine.

CrimeaІsUkraine #DWG #CrimeaMap #КримЦеУкраїна #ИхТамНет

New OpenStreetBrowser version! -> https://www.openstreetbrowser.org

Main new feature: * Export all visible map features as GeoJSON, OSM XML or OSM JSON!

More: https://blog.openstreetbrowser.org/node/59

openstreetmap #osm

Intro

First of all, some background. I’m employed by a consultancy agency, and anything traffic/mobility related is part of my job. It should also imply I’m familiar with several planning documents…

When diving into the world that is OpenStreetMap, I’ve had to realize a few things. Things in OpenStreetMap do NOT always mean what I assume they mean. Road categorisation is one of the key points here, and frequent need to repeat the explanation has finally made me create a diary post on the subject. For clarification I’ll try to explain in english, but add the corresponding terms in dutch after.

The problem

At the core of the issue is semantics. OpenStreetMap and ‘the real world’ but use certain terms, like ‘primary roads’, ‘secondary roads’, ‘tertiary roads’. These are however not synonymous, and editing OpenStreetMap just to be in line with those planning documents is often well.. wrong.

The planning context

• Primary roads (‘primaire wegen’) are selected in the RSV (‘Ruimtelijk Structuurplan Vlaanderen’, or ‘spatial structural plan Flanders’). They deal with the connections between ‘Grootstedelijke gebieden’ - essentially the main metropoles. Think along the likes of Gent, Antwerpen, Brussel, Brugge, …
• Secondary roads (‘secundaire wegen’) are selected one planning level lower, at a provincial level. The PRS (‘Provinciaal Ruimtelijk Structuurplan’) selects these. They deal with the connections between regional poles.
• Tertiary roads are not named as such, but fit under the umbrella of ‘lokale wegen’. In planning documents, we speak of ‘lokale wegen types I, II and III’, where I and II are dealing with the connections between very local poles, and III is basically whatever didn’t fit elsewhere’. Selection of these happens in the ‘Gemeentelijke Mobiliteitsplan’ (‘communal mobility plan).

… See full entry

Facebook uses a filter to limit distances for interested items. Example the search will only take results from this area. Would someone be able to get the distance in kilometers please. Currently it is only in miles.

Kind regards and thank you in advance.

A new evening is a new evening to play around with SQL. This is part 2 of my series on the number of messages and the most active authors on the public mailing lists hosted a lists.openstreetmap.org. Part 1 was published on 2 December 2018.

Here are my latest queries and their results:

Numbers of messages per year

SELECT EXTRACT(YEAR FROM "date") AS year, COUNT(1) AS message_count
  FROM mails
  GROUP BY year
  ORDER BY year;

 year | message_count 
------+---------------
 2004 |           180
 2005 |          2343
 2006 |         10481
 2007 |         34059
 2008 |         70120
 2009 |        102357
 2010 |         96569
 2011 |         66484
 2012 |         69943
 2013 |         67428
 2014 |         55866
 2015 |         52484
 2016 |         38914
 2017 |         36815
 2018 |         34271

Numbers of messages per mailing list and year (2004–2008)

Mailing lists with less than 50 messages in all of these years are not shown in the following table. Rows are sorted by number of messages in their first year.

… See full entry

Last year I wrote a short blog post titled OSMF should vote more often…… after I have seen the rise of the number of OSMF members just before the election. This holds true this year as well.

As the most recent numbers are as of Nov 16, also members not yet eligible for voting at this year’s election are included.

Below script converts tracks in lg2 format of Marek Baranowski’s withdrawn IOS app to gpx

#!/usr/bin/perl
use POSIX qw(strftime);

my $name = shift or die "Usage: $0 filename\n";

open (FH, "<$name") or die 'No such file';
binmode(FH);

my $buf;
my $mul = 3600000;
my $fmt = "vVVvV";

print '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gpx version="1.0">
	<time>'.strftime("%FT%X", localtime).'</time>
	<trk>
		<name>'.(split(/\./,$name))[0].'</name>
		<trkseg>';

while (my $got = read (FH, $buf, 16)) {
	my ($H, $B, $L, $X, $T) = unpack $fmt, $buf;
	print '
			<trkpt lat="'.$B/$mul.'" lon="'.$L/$mul.'"><ele>'.$H.'</ele><time>'.strftime("%FT%X", $T, 1, 1, 1, 0, 70).'</time></trkpt>' if $T > 100000;
}

print'
		</trkseg>
	</trk>
</gpx>
'

A funny thing OSMWeekly mentions my posts as “ad hominem”. Whether it truly is or is not, I’m not sure.

However the thing I know is, this discussion is not about exclusively professional topics. It is not a “perfectly sterile scientific discussion”. We are talking politics since OSMF and DWG are essentially OSM politicians. OSM is heavily used by many organizations related to governments. OSM depends on grants offered by international organizations and corporate sponsorship, it uses infrastructure provided by corporations. It does not exist in a vacuum, and is related to the processes happening in the real world. It influences said processes and is, in turn, influenced by them, whether we like it or not. OSM’s independence is important - but it is independence from corporate politics, not public responsibility. Since OSM itself is not commercial, its success is greatly dependent on its reputation and public image. In this situation the one who makes decisions should understand that his decisions do not concern him alone. Like circles on the water from a thrown stone, these decisions cause consequences, both close and far-reaching, both for OSM and outside OSM, and it is paramount to understand these consequences. Legal consequences. Commercial consequences. Influence on mass-media and public opinion. In our century sources of information can start and stop wars, make or break a man. Or an organization, for that matter.

(Seriously though, I feel really uneasy now, as I perceive all of the above as self-explanatory, and it is extremely hard to explain something you see as obvious).

… See full entry

Yesterday the answers of the candidates to the official question for the OSMF board election 2018 were published.

This is a lot of material to work through and to simplify this for me i produced a summary of the key points i read in the candidates’ answers and manifestos. In addition i put together some further research from publicly available sources. This is available here:

osm.wiki/User:Imagico/Analysis_of_OSMF_board_candidates_2018/

Although this does not really aim to communicate an opinion on the candidates - i try to describe the positions of the candidates rather than to judge them - this is of course not meant to be in any way an objective summary of the positions. I none the less thought it might be interesting for others to read and it might also be useful for candidates because there are comments pointing to answers that i perceive as strange and ambiguous. I would welcome any clarifying statements - here, on osmf-talk or on the wiki talk page.

I would also encourage others to present their own reading of the presentations of the candidates - because it is very valuable to learn how different people have different perspectives on the same matter. With the large spectrum of cultural backgrounds of the candidates this would help developing a clear picture of everyone and make a fact based decision in the election.

While reading the manifestos of the seven candidates of this year’s OSMF board elections, I though that getting some numbers about their activity could add a little bit more information to my personal decision whom to vote.

Numbers? Many readers will think of the number of changesets which is the most visible number of an OSM account. However, this number should be interpreted with care because changesets can contain between 0 and 50,000 (nowadays 10,000) changes. Users of different editors create changesets of different size. To get a better picture of the activity of an OSM user, I recommend to use Pascal Neis’s HDYC instead.

The number of data edits or the HDYC level (e.g. “super mapper (very active)”) is only one information. There are a few more contributions which can be counted:

• Users of the OSM Forum (you have to be logged in but you don’t have to be a moderator) can search other users’ accounts by their names. It’s the menu item “members”. It will show the number of postings of a user.
• The OSMF runs a StackOverflow-like system where people can ask questions, e.g. how to use OSM or how to map things. It’s called OSM Help. Answers can be up- or downvoted. This leads to an reputation. You can search for a user names and get their reputation. The forum and OSM Help have a a 1:1 mapping of Help/Forum and OSM API accounts but users who rename their accounts might get a new one (at least on the forum).
• I haven’t found where to get the “editcount” using the MediaWiki front end but you can query the API (you might have to be logged in). The URL is https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/api.php?action=query&list=users&usprop=editcount&format=json&ususers=USERNAME where USERNAME is the display name of the user.

That was the easy part. The most difficult follows – our Mailman mailing lists.

… See full entry

I have not really been following the OSM dispute over the borders of Crimea for health reasons, but I think that the problem lies with how we portray disputed borders and how we are not really providing the appropriate tag schemes to make it easy for data users to portray borders as they see fit.

I do not know if anyone is considering proposing the appropriate tag schemes that make it easy for data users to portray borders as they see fit, instead of arguing over the “on the ground” rule and whether Crimea belongs to Ukraine, Russia or the Isle of Wight (hint: they are both diamond shaped).

As for OSM-carto, the stylesheet should be truly neutral, showing all disputed borders as a dotted line version of the relevant administrative level.

There is a real danger of the project falling apart if we keep limiting ourselves to choosing one side over another. There are people like me who just want to make maps, instead of arguing over politics, and in my case, putting my already fragile mental health in danger.

Meanwhile, how do we get Nominatim to recognise Bir Tawil (3335661) as not part of any country?

All 13 border crossings between Turkmenistan and its neighbors are now mapped, named, tagged. All but one of the known national highways has been drawn, tagged, and had relations established (the missing one is in a border zone and I cannot drive on it without special permission). Next I have gone down the list of municipalities in search of a) missing cities and towns, and b) mistagged and misnamed cities and towns. Some bear names from the Soviet period, others have not been updated since the current government either restored an old name or assigned a new one. Slowly but surely the data in the Turkmenistan map are improving. The next editions of Lambertus’ Garmin map, MAPS.ME, and Pocket Earth should have much improved routable maps for Turkmenistan.

When Ann and I started this 3-1/2 years ago we focused on simply getting street names and POIs entered–raw data were lacking. Increasingly we find ourselves doing quality control, cross-checking names of municipalities with locals who live there and can tell us both what is on the sign and what it used to be called. For example, I suspected that “Imeni Kirova” had been renamed because it is not listed in “Districts in Turkmenistan” and Kirov was a Russian Bolshevik. Sure enough, a check with a resident of that area revealed a new name for the municipality. Some municipality names are transliterations from the Russian and thus are not what is on the signs, which are all Turkmenized. This takes detective work, but again, slowly but surely it is paying off with improvement of the database. I take all this as a sign of progress.

I just discovered webglearth.com, which is similar to osmgo.org. Both 3D renderers are open source web applications that have been in development for many years. These renderers can help us understand data in new ways. Each differs by what is rendered and by navigation style.

In WebGL Earth, 3D terrain is visible on the globe after zooming in. A click and drag moves the camera along the ground. Along with two modifier keys, the Alt key rotates the camera from a fixed position to allow looking around, and the Ctrl/Shift key rotates the visible surface about a fixed distance to allow orbiting.

In OSM Go, every building, tree, fence, utility pole, hedge, etc. is rendered as 3D. Selecting an object will display info and tags for that feature. Moving along the ground is possible with arrow keys. Holding shift allows looking around. Additionally, PgUp/ PgDn moves the camera up/down.

Neither project overlaps with the other. WebGL Earth considers a holistic reality by animating the earth. It has the potential to provide APIs for showing interplanetary trajectories. Meanwhile, OSM Go renders every urban cartographic feature, including underground ones. Its interactivity feels like the precursor to a Sims-like garden and floor plan modeler.

I traveled on this highway yesterday and uploaded a GPS trace osm.org/user/aintgd/traces/2854472. To my surprise, NH 930 is mapped from a very different route near Bhadravati (at the start of above trace). Probably, the route on OSM is an older one. Can someone please check? (Google shows the correct road as per GPS)

I don’t want to touch an important highway myself.

Today is my first day at editing. I’m planning on adding some mountain bike routes to part of Fort Ord, in CA. We’ll see how that goes :-)

As I was walking through NG3 Nottingham this afternoon, on my way towards Tesco at NG1, I was stopped by a chap in an electric car with his wife & 2 kids (lots of electric cars in Nottingham these days) and asked if I knew where Hartley Road was. They were trying to get to the House of Pain Wrestling event in St Peter’s Church Hall.

I have mapped most of NG3, 4 & 5 in Nottingham, but not NG7. He had internet on his mobile so I suggested that he bring up https://www.openstreetmap.org in his browser. To my surprise, this brought up a long list of short lines of text (I could not read them) (desktop OSM brings up the map) but after a short while he got the map of England up. I told him confidently that he could now search for Hartley Road, but he could not find a search box nor any link to a search box. By this time his wife had used Google to locate the road & also discover the route from ourselves to it (3½ miles). He thanked me and set off.

Oops. Google has got user needs & interactions well worked out, whilst OSM struggles in it’s dust to even get started.