OpenStreetMap
We seem to be consistently attracting 10-15 people along to the London random pub meet-ups which is cool. For last night's session it looked like "Dirty Dicks" by Liverpool Street station was going to be way too crowded to fit us all in. Luckily there's a big upstairs area, and the crowds there are very much of the "quick few pints before commuting home on a train" variety, so later we had plenty of space, but maybe pubs that close to train stations commuting chaos are to be avoided in future.
Steve Coast was along this time, which is a rarity these days, what with him living in the U.S. He headed out to the area earlier with a clipboard to gather some building numbers. Seems to be the latest obsession for bored London mappers. I notice Blumpsy has been taking the terracer plugin for a spin, whacking in a load more buildings in the Angel area. Geez are we really going to do this? ...I'm pondering whether it's worth making a start on my area :-)
What did we talk about? The pub music was a bit loud so we were mostly having conversations in groups.
Stephen was showing me the latest trackmyjourney feature, sat-nav style spoken directions! ("turn left" etc) He got someone from his office to record all the words.
We discussed some evidence of copyrighted data appearing in OSM, and what action should be taken (rather urgently)
We had more freebies! This time people who showed up were rewarded with awesome openstreetmap calendars. They're really rather beautiful (isn't anything with OSM maps on?) and we've got quite a lot of them to get rid of. Fancy one? Come along to the next random pub meet-up which will be in Angel on Tuesday 3rd March!
Discussion
Comment from maning on 20 February 2009 at 03:32
> We discussed some evidence of copyrighted data appearing in OSM, and what action should be taken (rather urgently)
We are also seeing "copyrighted data" around here (Philipines) as well.
I hope this could be sorted out both at the international and local level, without resorting to eit wars.
Comment from Harry Wood on 20 February 2009 at 14:04
If you have suspicions about a particular user's contributions, follow the instructions here: FAQ#I think someone's been entering copyrighted data - how do we deal with that?
It does need to be dealt with carefully. We don't want to start making accusations willy nilly, but on the other hand (and this was the point Steve was making the other night) we need to take action swiftly to remove offending data in cases where it is clear-cut.
Comment from LivingWithDragons on 20 February 2009 at 15:55
I'm starting to think about my Easter return to London, with my new bicycle.
I'll at least cycle Kings Cross to Waterloo to avoid the tube, maybe I should make it a wednesday and aim to accidently conincide with the pub meet. 1st of April probably, maybe 8th.
I'm also considering cycling a bit out of Durham to get some stretch of mapping done (we'll see how much of that happens).
I remember when people started mapping terrace buildings (just as house numbering started to have a defacto), I thought it would end up being a statement of mappers level. As in if you were well know for mapping a lot of places, it should be expected that your home area would have full coverage of buildings and bus stops.
I haven't really got interested though.