Hmm, for some reason directly adding https://wayback.maptiles.arcgis.com/arcgis/rest/services/World_Imagery/WMTS/1.0.0/WMTSCapabilities.xml to JOSM doesn’t work. It would be awesome to be able to add that and directly find the available versions in JOSM.

Someone just found this, and asked me for help with it. This is a bit outdated and doesn’t work with Debian buster.

The quickest solution was just to use the one in the Debian repos. It might be a bit outdated, but it works.

BCNorwich has done it in #109499095.

Good luck, I think your unique position can help OSMF take the next step.

I keep comparing OSM to Linux, some people don’t like it, but I think it’s pretty close.

There is a lot of Linux development that comes from big tech companies, in fact it’s the majority of development now, not volunteers. But it’s still Free Software. GNU Hurd is the Free Software kernel that doesn’t take corporate funding, relying solely on volunteers and donations. I don’t use Hurd, you don’t, nobody does.

I think that’s the real risk to OSM, losing whatever traction we currently have and becoming more niche.

I think OSMF should have been the Red Hat equivalent, they should be making the data easier to use and providing support to companies that want to use OSM data. They should funding a lot more, they should be employing a lot more. Instead they’ve decided to stay small, it is noble, but it is limiting.

However, to counter everything I just said. Corporate involvement will get you things like Digital Restrictions Management, not a map of allotments. To some degree it is ‘selling out’. I think we need 2 types of funds coming into OSM, corporate goals and community good.

Corporate goals like mapping an entire chain shops does benefit OSM, but it is far more valuable to the corporation, they should be paying for it either by paying people in the OSM community, or by training there own staff.

Community good funds that can be spent on goals that they don’t get direct value back out of but improves OSM. I think we should be pushing corporations involved in OSM to provide more of this type of funding, and for it to be used for microgrants and also to pay for peoples time.

Anyway, I’m biased because I need work.

Have you considered adding Meadowhall as a showcase? I think some of the POIs are out of date, but the rest of it looks good. I’ll update the POIs next time I’m up that way.

I do love osm.wiki/Tag:indoor=! It looks and feels like a professional product, so much time must have been put into it.

I made a similar error with StreetComplete, where I inputted the housenumber as the levels. A few weeks later once the map updated I saw my mistake.

It’s great to have different renders that help identify these errors.

Even if you are online while surveying, imagine how tedious it is to enter housenumbers, but now because no-one mapped the houses properly you have to map building type as well as street name. That is three quests per building.

Furthermore, if you tag your building as “building=house”, that indicates you have terraced it properly. “building=yes” does not indicate this. If it is not terraced properly, then that makes entered house numbers a lot less useful or even impossible (as you have to enter multiple housenumbers for a single “building”).

I know how tedious and annoying it is adding the building type while walking down the road, I do a lot of StreetComplete.

Blindly adding https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:building=house makes on the ground surveying quicker, but it can be at the expense of quality. People used to add https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:building=residential to everything and now StreetComplete doesn’t ask for a more accurate tag because it already has a more specific tag than yes. The same is happening to https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:building=house, once mapped you wont be prompted to add https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:building=detached or https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:building=semidetached_house.

I’m not saying you are wrong to use house over yes, I do it too. And honestly, I think the address data is more valuable than a more precise building type, so I guess pragmatically, you are right.

That is why I recommend drawing buildings properly (i.e. spliting a “building=terrace” into 10 seperate attached “building=house”), and add the tags. It should make other tasks going forward a looot easier.

The new Bing imagery is great for splitting buildings, I’ve been doing it a fair bit.

@SimonPoole I think Strava is pretty OSM friendly, they use OSM after all. It may be worth reaching out to them to get confirmation.

I didn’t bother tagging buildings as houses, mainly because sometimes the use of a building is not obvious (can be garages, businesses etc). But if StreetComplete needs it I’ll try to revisit buildings I’ve mapped. Thanks for the tip.

StreetComplete will first ask what type of building something is if it’s just https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:building=yes so it’s not a hard requirement, but more accurate building tag does make surveying much quicker.

I sometimes use OS Open UPRN to help identify the type of building, garages won’t have a point, apartments will have several. It’s not exact as sometimes a building with two will be semi detached, or a detached house turned into upstairs/downstairs flats, then there may be an old UPRN shown as well.

There is also Inspire Polygons which should show property outlines, that can be helpful to identify how many terraces there are if imagery isn’t good enough. If your computer if powerful enough you can load county file into JOSM with OpenData plugin

Hopefully the bike accident wasn’t too bad. Good work last month.

On the pharmacy example, in the UK typically have one node for small pharmacies like Boots or Superdrug, which would be https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:amenity=pharmacy if it does prescriptions, and https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:shop=chemist if not. And then larger supermarkets that have a separate pharmacy kiosk inside are mapped separately. When I stared typing this I thought opening_hours:pharmacy had more traction, so I don’t know.

It’s an interesting problem, “shop in a shop” isn’t really that well expressed in OSM. Like this, it’s not uncommon for defibs or post poxes being inside another shop, but there isn’t really a way to say something is only available when another is open. I guess the current solution is to duplicate opening_hours, but then it quickly falls out of sync.

Big changesets (as in number or nodes added/edited) make no difference, If you are tracing ten buildings or a hundred per changeset it doesn’t matter as long as the tooling supports it.

Bigger as in area is more controversial.

I’ve been “told off” for doing bigger (as in area) edits before, so for a long time I’ve been doing a changeset per source, per area.

Now I’m starting to doing bigger areas as long as it makes sense, it’s easier to understand than tons of small changesets, and easier to revert if I make a mistake or do something even slightly controversial.

That being said, I wouldn’t add buildings around a country in one changeset, but I would fix a tag.

A changeset, like a git commit, should tell a story.

@skquinn how does that work with one feature, one element? Here in the UK they are usually one establishment, they may have different opening hours, but still typically one establishment in reality.

Congratulations, little bit jealous that you’ve got a job in the field, but enjoy it and your future there.

My defib request was successful, and Robert has added them to his tool.

Turns out you can request data in “re-usable machine readable format”, (spreadsheet), so I’ve annotated my request to say so in case anyone uses it as a template to request data from other public body. (I recommend it, it’s incredibly easy)

Have you reached out to Mappuccino to ask what source lead them to the change ref?

@a8ree yes, the first request, regarding BT was to Isle of Wight Council.

@robbieonsea I am aware, once I get a response from the defibs request I’ll ping him.

I’m not blindly trusting government data. Nor could I anyway as the license isn’t compatible with OSM.

In the phone box example OSM is even more wrong than the government data, so I’m also validating the OSM data at the same time.

I would say local language if possible, local people are the ones who will see it and so it’s best they can understand it.