I’ve worked at home for a year and a half amid the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. These days I’ve gained weight because I seldom walk, so I make it a rule to take some walk in the evening around my neighborhood. It’s good for the OSM community to have its map around the area where I live more minute, but there are some problems. How do I record minute data such as the shape of buildings, and the names of shops and restaurants. I use my iPhone to get GPS tracking data while I’m taking a walk, but they don’t have enough information. I wonder how others acquire the enough data for drawing some buildings and identifying the point of interests.

Purpose of the paper

This paper is intended to explain how to use official sources to complete and/or correct OpenStreetMap data.

Introduction

In Belgium, administrative boundaries as legally defined are fixed and can only be changed by law, ordinance or decree. The General Administration of Property Documentation is designated by the federal authorities as the authentic source of Belgian administrative boundaries. ⁽¹⁾

The data are freely available on the web site of the SPF Finances / FOD Financiën / FÖD Finanzen. In addition, it should be noted that these data are more accurate than those from NGI.

A lot of administrative boundaries are already present in the OpenStreetMap database.

At the municipality level, it appears that the OSM alignments of boundaries differ slightly from the alignments published by the SPF Finances / FOD Financiën / FÖD Finanzen.

In addition, at the lower level, i.e. at the division level, boundaries are partly absent. A division is a part of a municipality.

Why do we need the division level?

The division boundaries, i.e. level 9 in Belgium, are interesting for several reasons.

Firstly, this administrative level is still used on current cadastral documents.

Secondly, the divisions are historically the successors of the pre-1977 municipalities. While their alignments are not always similar, they are generally identical. Sometimes the place names are different. ⁽²⁾ This information, i.e. the boundaries and names, is useful for historians, genealogists and all those who read old documents. Thirdly, the postcode boundaries are essentially based on the level 8 and level 9 administrative boundaries.

Existing data

It is interesting to note that the terminology used may differ from one service (e.g. NGI) to another (e.g. Finances) are different. The following table shows the different sources and terminologies for administrative boundaries.

… See full entry

Здравствуйте, я совсем недавно влился в OSM нормально так и заметил, что в моём городе почти никто не редактирует, а если и редактирует, то только некоторые участки. Я решил начать с самой проблемной части моего города - маршруты городского транспорта, которые до недавнего времени были представлены только троллейбусом, причём по состоянию до ремонта мостов. Сейчас же, за несколько дней работы, я прорисовал основные автобусные маршруты, которые идут из разных районов. По сути пришлось править и остановки, которые в большинстве либо названий не имели, либо это было использовано как метка для маршрута. Надеюсь, меня читают сейчас неравнодушные люди, может вам будет интересно что-то тоже дорисовать в моём городе, например, дворы.

Last week, I went on a short holiday to Co. Cork, and since I seem to be a workaholic, I did A LOT of mapping. One of the things I had on my to-do list was mapping local bus routes, because I personally depend on them (because I care about the planet and don’t drive) and because they are barely mapped. Part of the reason being that some of the bus routes are fairly new. Obviously, I didn’t want to spend all my days on the bus, so I only mapped the ones I actually needed to take to get from one accommodation to the next. That was Youghal to Timoleague and then back to Cork (because the first trip was during the week and the second on a Saturday, so the bus schedule was different). I had met two women in my accommodation in Timoleague who were also only travelling on public transport, one from Dublin, one from California. They both agreed that it was very difficult, because the timetables aren’t available or do not match the actual departure time of the bus. Also, to book a ticket for Bus Éireann (which is not even possible for all their buses), you need to know the exact name of the bus stop you’re going to. You’re not gonna know that unless you know the bus stop. Some of the bus stop names refer to landmarks which are gone (pub/ shop names). So you end up asking a lot of locals to find out where the bus leaves, because a high percentage of local bus stops don’t even have a sign to mark them as bus stops. So anyway, I made a start on the routes 237, 239 and 253 using OSMTracker for Android. I guess it would be good to add payment method as well, because most of those buses only take cash and some buses (in Dublin) only take the exact change, which is something important to know.

Obviously, I did way more mapping like vacant buildings, benchmarks and jostle stones (overpass-turbo) as well as addresses (Youghal needed it).

Someone logged into my Instagram acct. from Parma, Id. From Samsung Verizon on July,17 2021 again 36 min. ago from Bern, Id. From Samsung SJ337V

Context

The US NGO Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT Us Org*) organizes an election to replace five of its directors for a 2 years term.

See the election wiki for more details.

Below reads my electoral platform; it adds and draws from my answers to members questions for candidates which can be read here as a complement.

Summary

… See full entry

Discrimination against China and Chinese mappers SHOULD NOT exist in OpenStreepMap

This is a reply to a previous diary that has spoken evil of China and Chinese Mappers. As a Chinese OSM user I feel terribly offended, outraged and disappointed about the opinions conveyed from the diary - and I feel obliged to write a reply.

This reply is solely my own words and does NOT reflect the opinion of OSM China community, if any.

　

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“Chinese Commies”? Whoever doesn’t want political nonsense in OSM is talking the most political nonsense.

Yet here we are again, the Chinese Commies just spit on everything they thought was rightful.

That was the beginning of the diary. The message was pretty clear: The author was NEVER really meant to exclude political nonsenses from OSM communty, and interestingly, he who referred Chineses as “Commies” is the most political nonsense-maker.

Typical ad hominem attack, and even as a non-communist I feel offended. Communist is called Communist, not the word commie that the author has disrespectfully spelled. And I really don’t see the point of the author mentioning communist or communism.

What I have perceived between the lines from the author is merely discrimination and hostility against China and OSM China users. And given such discrimination, I wouldn’t believe there would be any fruitful and meaningful discussion with the author.

Long story short, OpenStreetMap should not be biased against any ideology / politics / religion.

　

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The Truth of Vandalism

Thanks for the detailed list that summarizes the existing vandalism from Chinese users. I believe that OSM China is also positively coping with such vandalism - and that IS what OSM China is doing right now - please refer to the so-called “Wonderful poppycock from zh-CN users”.

Vandalism from Chinese users does exist, but please do not cherrypick, exaggerate and attack.

… See full entry

Almost one year ago, I decided to take a crack at fixing something that bugged me in the way golf courses were rendered in carto. And now that fix – or what it evolved into – is finally merged and getting deployed!

If you look at the wiki page for leisure=golf_course, you’ll find a rich vocabulary for how to (micro)map many aspects of the layout: tees, holes, pins, bunkers, so on and so on. And in many of these tags, there’s an admonition: don’t tag for the renderer just to get these features to show up. Naturally, mappers will do what they want to do, and most fairways, greens, and bunkers have accompanying landuse=grass and natural=sand tags. In fact, in iD, creating a fairway, green, rough, or tee automatically adds landuse=grass to the tags. Likewise, bunkers add natural=sand.

This is useful for making a case that carto needs to render these tags, and that there’s a general agreement on what they should look like. After much back and forth and discussion in the PRs, a consensus emerged. golf=tee, fairway, driving_range, and rough would get the same fill color as landuse=grass. rough would also get a subtle pattern on top of its fill to highlight the different length of grass. The green would get a darker shade to differentiate it from the surrounding fairway, and so golf=green would get the same color as leisure=pitch. And golf=bunker would get a natural=sand color.

On top of that, agreement was reached on rendering golf=hole, a line that shows the playing path, along with a label of its ref or name. And finally, the actual location of the hole – golf=pin – would get an icon, labeled where applicable.

One final change was updating the fill of leisure=golf_course. The original green background was a single-use color. Carto is already a green-heavy color scheme, and the opportunity was taken to remove one shade, instead using the same color as campsites.

… See full entry

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I have mapped using mapswipe as a member of Oyo mapper team

I have mapped using mapswipe as a member of OYO mapper team

I have contributed using the mapswipe as a member of Oyo mappers team

I have mapped using mapswipe as a member of Oyo mapper team

I have contributed using the mapswipe as Oyo member mappers team

I have contributed using the map swipe as oyo members mappers team

I have mapped using mapswipe as a member of Oyo mapper team

I have mapped using mapswipe as a member of Oyo mapper team

I have contribute by using map swipe as new member of Oyo mappers steam

I have mapped using mapswipe as a member of oyo mappers team

I have contributed to open street map using mapwipe as member of oyo mappers team