Incredible research project! I’m astounded by the amount of work that went into this.

Excellent work, great to see coordination with the government for a win-win project!

Of course we have some classic gatekeeping from the old guard of OSM about imports in the comments. No surprise.

Really cool stats, that’d be cool to see every so often before a new release.

Shocking loss of work. There has to be a better way to revert than just deleting the work of everyone.

Not to diminish the work you all did, just horrible that DWG couldn’t save any of it, such as at least the tags that have been added over the years (not in the original import). There has to be a less ham-fisted approach to reverting data.

Thanks for the effort, all issues notwithstanding.

Zverik, I know you get a lot of disagreement for your views on this site, but I’m with you all the way. I think Pokémon Go is a good thing, I love Maps.me and use it as a regular editor for OSM and think it’s great to have another editor, think imports are stupidly restrictive, and believe more mapper are better, even if they mess up at the beginning. People want to make this a walled garden for experienced craft mappers and that’s not how we map the world.

One of the minor suggestions is one of the best: “Creating a better building tool for iD.” JOSM has a fantastic, intuitive building tool as a plug-in that allows a four sided building to be completed in less than half the clicks (3/2 vs 4 in iD + 2 to square + 2/3 to tag as a building) that would be great for HOT and reduce complaints about new users not squaring buildings. It also makes the process much faster and more enjoyable. This is a readily needed improvement for iD.

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Looks fantastic! The live previews of the models on the website is a great touch. Really hoping we see some contributions from the talented modelers in our community, since we are really lacking in real 3D models versus all the commercial maps. As someone who’s used OSM in Paris, a real model of the Effiel Tower would have been great, and as someone that’s tried to model the Seattle Space Needle using standard OSM 3D nomenclature, this would be way better.

Unfortunately, the vast majority (some 98%, but I can’t find the source) of OSM mappers are men. Therefore, it is to be expected that the vast majority of nominees are men. We need to get better as a community in terms of bringing more women into our ranks, but the lack of female nominees is not representative of an institutional bias. There are just fewer women overall in the OSM community.

Good luck! It’s a lot of work, but it actually makes the map so much more useful. If you ever feel up for the challenge of learning JOSM, there are some great tools for adding addresses much quicker.

Michael & SimonPoole: Regardless of your views in Europe, it’s hard to say that it’s more difficult to get open data than the US. Spain and France have open castral data, Czech Republic mappers have Tracer 2 and castral maps. Go talk to the local government in Doddridge County, WV and see what kind of response you get to a request for open data.

This decision should be left up to the local mappers, not people with no skin in the game. The intent of OSM is to empower local mappers to map their surroundings, and if mappers in the US are more receptive to AI mapping than those in Europe, then we should be allowed to do so in the US.

I will disagree vehemently with most of the comments. This is a great thing, and the best use case is building tracing, especially in the US. This is frankly never going to get completed by hand. We are building new buildings faster than buildings are being added in OSM.

A lot of European contributors are used to a single national GIS program that opens up all data, so this doesn’t matter to them so they will of course be against it. But in the US, every single county and city has its own GIS system, so that would mean contacting tens of thousands of governments individually, and hoping that they will allow open use of data. Frankly, I’d be surprised to get more than 20% of them. Maybe a country level allowance is required. That way, areas in France/Germany/etc that are already mostly mapped can be avoid the effects of AI tracing.

I also strongly disagree that imports hurt the community. This is especially the case in large cities with building footprints. Users are often discouraged from mapping POI and the really useful local knowledge when there aren’t any building outlines. In my experience, activity improves with more building outlines, because the work that has to be accomplished doesn’t feel overwhelming. Just take a look at some big cities in the US that are complete deserts in OSM.

I’m really excited to see what AI (in collaboration with real mappers for verification) can do.

An additional note: think about it this way, the 45 degree angle is arbitrary. If we are truly mapping what’s real and defining a new road as where a barrier comes between those two lanes, it should be at 90°. Since no one wants to do that for routing purposes, we should go toward the way a driver visually looks for an exit, the road widen. As it stands, the 45 degree rule is a compromise that has the downsides of both the road widening approach and the strict OSM data approach (90 degrees).

Personally, I’d advocate for mapping it at the point the road begins to widen. Not only is that more visually appealing, it also represents the “beginning” of the exit. For navigation purposes, you focus on the road directly in front of you, thus having the beginning of the exit lane mapped as the exit node means that you get immediate and timely visual feedback (the road widens) of the navigation prompt.

Being timely is especially important. If the software says the standard “in 3 miles, take exit 21” then says “take exit 21” right at the point of road widening, this is much more driver friendly then “take exit 21” occurring at the point of a barricade, whether is just painted lines or otherwise. When you’re out driving, you start the exit at the moment the road starts to widen, not 45 degrees to the point where a barrier of some kind divides the roads.

Great job mapping Batifa! Always glad to have someone from Kurdistan mapping.

Thanks a lot, fresh imagery is always appreciated, especially in underserved areas.

Great job!

One possibility: a lot of people (myself included) don’t change the reviewed tag, mainly because it’s an extra step and people are less focused on that than just making the roads more accurate. The way history can give you some sense if that is the case.

They definitely got me!

I was not expecting that from the typically very serious OSM community.

Fantastic job!

Great work! As a fellow hiker, these edits are really appreciated, especially in areas that might not have cell service. I try to do the same after I complete hikes.