@Hungerburg: I’m at least also familiar with the ‘ski’ style grading. I have quite an extensive collection of Rother Bergwanderfuehrer where the careful selection of routes and the blue-red-black convention suited me just fine (the Fluela Wisshorn is, needless to say, black). These guides proved much more useful than the SAC guides at the time, in fact I pretty much relied on them, but I think SAC scale has greatly improved things.

I find your comments about a different misuse of the tag intriguing too, and not something I had specifically considered. Equally, in the UK I don’t think we have the same issues with apps like Komoot, although it is widely used, the number of trails which justify anything from T3 upwards is quite small. There have been discussions for a long time on the Carto-CSS github repository to render harder trails in a different manner, but these have not come to anything.

I’ve just checked a route in Scotland where a friend lost his life two years ago, and it is on OSM as a path, but with a reasonably appropriate grading. He was an experienced hill-walker: I don’t know the exact circumstances, but I fear that he may have encountered late Spring snow.

@Hungerberg: for some reason I missed your comment, which is very interesting.

There is no misunderstanding, although I may not have phrased it well. I am fully aware of the different scales issued by the SAC and the potential for overlap. My SAC guides to parts of Graubunden date from the 1980s, and many routes which are now graded with the “SAC Scale” were previously given Alpine grades (e.g., Fluela Wisshorn Nordgrat was WS and is now T5), although other routes were given grades in the earlier 3 grade scheme which I found fairly useless for identifying suitable routes. In fact when I lived in Switzerland the new hiking scale was only just appearing in publications of the SAC.

Marked blue-white-blue hiking trails are, in my experience, rather limited, at least in Graubunden. There are a couple I’m aware of in the National Park (Piz Quattervals, Fuorcla Val Sassa), plus Piz Ot and Piz Julier in the Oberengadin. The path from S-charl up towards the Fuorcla da Rims is so marked on the map, but I don’t recall any paint markings on the ground (this latter path has changed dramatically in the past 40 years — the older SAC guide books, with black covers, describe it as a glacier crossing). Uri seems to have a much more extensive network of blue-white-blue routes.

Routes to many summits are partially pathless, although equally there may be very visible, but unsigned paths, such as Piz Lischana, although SwissTopo does not show a path on the summit cone. Paths with faint visibility may be present close to the summit (Piz Minschun), but don’t form a continuous line to follow.

Unfortunately I dont have to hand books with a good description of tours graded with the SAC scale (e.g., Freie Sicht aufs Gipfelmeer) which would be the place to start with selecting other examples.

@Claudius Henrichs: Two points:

• I suspect the Japan situation is a reflection of tagging practice (small solar installations tagged as power=plant). There are 4000+ installations of over 1 MW in the predicted set, and only 350ish OSM polygons coincide with these. We can compare with the UK, which is practically complete for > 1MW installations: 1404 in predicted set, compared with 1290 solar plant objects on OSM marked as having over 1 MW. Not many of the remaining 100 or so are actually missing from OSM, but either are over-estimated by Kruitwagen (installations on large buildings), or we dont have a power output on OSM (some industrial installations, e.g., Toyota & United Utilities waterworks).
• I’m certainly contemplating a MapRoulette style approach, but would just like to confirm we’re okay in using the data with the underlying CC-BY licence.

I was avoiding using green because of people with colour-blindness. I haven’t done the reverse (ones on OSM, but missing from the predictions), but suspect it will be very low. This was a very quick analysis, not an in-depth examination of all aspects of the data.

@PierZen : thanks for the comment. I’ve had similar issues in interpreting these very dense structures without gaps. There are obvious solar panels within this polygon which does suggest the others probably are too, but it would be nice to be sure.

I’ve now had a quick look at the training dataset & it’s quite clear that quite a lot of data did not come from OSM, and some must have come from aerial not satellite imagery.

Thanks @H@mlet and @RicoElectrico. The same thoughts have occurred to me. I hope to have a detailed look at the training set, in which case I’ll do a diary entry.

@imagico: thanks as ever for the comments.

I’m broadly in agreement, but am trying to find a pragmatic way out of a tagging impasse. One update is that blanket bog tagged as heath will be at variance with any Corine imported data, all the main blanket bog areas, such as the Migneint have a wetland code in Corine (more on this later).

I think there are some things which you can do with the editor which will address some of these criticisms:

• F11 provides a full screen mode (there are a lot of useful keyboard shortcuts, this seems to be one without an on-screen equivalent)
• It is possible to filter out whole classes of objects if they are not of immediate interest to what you are mapping (in the Map Data tab on the right hand side)

I can’t address all your other points, but a few other things:

• Often OpenStreetMap works by continuous iteration & refinement. Mapping a car park as a point may have occurred because: the person was mapping other things, did it using a mobile app where drawing the area would be difficult (or, unlikely in this case, mapped it before we had any aerial imagery present). Similarly any addresses which are absent are because no-one has mapped them.
• Rendering of names is likely just limited by the actual physical geometry of objects. So things with simple geometries will show up and others won’t. Rendering of names on the main map is much more complex and considerable attention has been paid to this both by the developers of the underlying software and the developers of the map style. However automatic label placement is still an active research topic in academic cartography.
• Bus stop names are those shown on the sign at the bus stop, and only tangentially related to the feature after which they have been named. (It is not uncommon in the UK to have bus stops named after pubs which have long since closed).
• You are mapping in a heavily mapped area with a level of detail which outside of Germany is found in relatively few places. The editor is not necessarily optimised for such situations (although filtering out features really does help, see above). I think the level of detail probably affect the whole initial experience as it’s harder to add things, easier to fear breaking things and harder to see what difference one’s own edits have made.

I do think it’s interesting to hear your perspective on the other topics.

HTH,

Jerry aka Sk53

In the UK the aversion to #13 can be seen to largely arise post-WW2.

Most streets built prior to WW2 will have a number 13, although often this is now 11A, 15A or similar. Social housing dropped #13 a lot later than speculative private housing as I know estates built in the late ’70s which still had #13.

Any builds post-1980 exclude #13 and usually have a clever break in the runs of houses so that it is not obvious that one number is missing. (A prediction of this is that #12 & #14 or #11 & #15 are more likely to be end terraces (or the appropriate side of a semi detached house).

I think culturally the aversion to #4 in East Asian cultures is even more noticeable.

Typical ones here use corduroy slabs (I suspect 40 cm by 40 cm) just behind the kerb: example on Mapillary here. Like the blister slabs the number of grooves corresponds with dimensions of the slabs. This I think is just a generic hazard warning. Iincidentally I have measured the pavement widths on this stretch because it’s a serious pinch point for cyclists, electric scooter riders & pedestrians, not helped by having a poorly sighted corner constrained by being a Grade II* listed building, and Grade II* cast iron bollards & chains behind the bus stop. Sticking a big CCTV pole at the corner doesn’t help either.

The other type I haven’t mention are the lozenge blisters used on tram platforms. I haven’t physically measured those, but at this tram stop they appear to be the same size with 6 blisters in a 3 x2 pattern in the 40 cm paving slab. This latter photo shows all three types in a short distance.

None of my local bus stops have anything like Kassel Kerbs, all are pretty much plain kerbs, although I’d need to check as some may have the new perforated kerbs. I’m also not sure if it’s only the raised kerbs which have tactile paving or all bus stops (although all are raised close by).

I forgot to add the estate in Nottingham where all the streets are named after British Nobel laureates. Unfortunately there are two people surnamed Hodgkin who won Nobel Prizes: Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, a crystollographer, and Alan Hodgkin, a physiologist.

You may wish to check out the twitter account @everyringfort: they are tweeting all of them from official records. Sacly quite a few have been lost to the plough since the GSGS 3906 maps (available in editors) were compiled.

@mboeringa Check on the Publications page, listed as CHF 10

You can build a dynamic query using Overpass. Rob Nickerson wrote a useful how to some years ago: https://www.mappa-mercia.org/2014/09/creating-an-always-up-to-date-map.html

@0235: an ambitious project!

I would also recommend using Robert Whittakers’s UPRN tool: very useful for checking counts of terraces etc. There’s a bit on the wiki too.

Less readily available, but probably useful when you get to places where it is difficult to resolve detail from imagery is the EA Lidar data. You will need to download & process the data to a hillshade format if you want to see it it in an editor. However, you can sort of preview it on the NLS Maps site.

Good luck

Interesting oddity. When I use OSM Tracker I tend to use the “bus stop” key as a generic waypoint, I wonder if this is what these Maps.Me users are doing. I note that they are all using things near the start of the alphabet: once you’ve selected one as a personal convention, it’s quite likely to continue using the same thing.

I think one issue might be many of the provided links were to documents in English. There was a lot of material to take in if this was a language one was not comfortable with for reading, and perhaps automated translations are confusing too (quite likely given the content).

Also if the content was new to the participant this would also be a hurdle.

Most of the content would have been covered by weeklyOSM, but I’m not sure how extensive RU & JA translations have been throughout the year. There is no coverage of HU & ID by weeklyOSM. Also Zverik did not cover the survey on ШТОСМ which may have elicited more interest from Russian-speakers.

Great report Clay.

I’ve encountered a similar dilemma with underground stations.

My particular use-case arose because I missed a train on a 30 minute schedule because I didn’t know where the speedier lift access was located above ground. Needless to say I remedied this my mapping some of the detail, but was troubled about the best way to map the underground concourse with ticket office, machines, a convenience store as well as an underground pedestrian walkway.

Pretty much the standard way this is done with UK not-for-profits (especially charities) is to set up a separate for-profit entity which is owned by the not-for-profit. Examples might be a conservation organisation which runs a cafe. The subsidiary remits profits by dividend payments to the parent organisation.

This may seem slightly unwieldy, but protects the NGOs finances (other than any capital deployed), provides clearer accounting & governance structures, and also allows partnership with other organisations.

In my experience profits returned may be rather patchy as often investments are needed to ensure the continued viability of the profit-making element. This in turn may be another good reason for separating them, as management time is likely to be devoured by this aspect if all part of one organisation.

On the other hand OSMF have never done this with SotM.

I think all of these have examples outside Ireland: Celtic Crosses on the Atlantic seaboard of Argyll (Iona, Kildalton etc); Passage Graves, at least one example in Brittany, two round towers (Brechin & Abernethy) in Scotland, and dolmens are common across much of the UK and France to my personal knowledge (Wikipedia cites them from across the world with masses in Korea).

I think burial site is a very sensible approach as it can covers tumuli, long barrows, kurgans, tholos tombs & many others.

This is a photo of the holy well I surveyed: