How do you handle the offsets between “detected features” and reality? When I last looked at RapiD the imagery used seemed to be the one with the worst offset of the ones available to OSM editors. Usually when adding anything to OSM I’ll align based on a mix of imagery, GPS traces (especially where there are lots of them) and other sources - OS OpenData StreetView can be good for this in the UK.

There’s also the problem of detecting “features that are not features” - my last quick test found lots of detected “service roads” in Mansfield that were either not really useful to map, weren’t really service roads (and were all offset from reality). This is a little unfair- in that area all the real roads have been added so anything “new” detected is obviously going to be rubbish; if used somewhere where there are real major roads to detect that wouldn’t be the case (although as various OSM communities have found to their cost human checking of each piece of data as it is added is still very much needed).

Are you perhaps trying to reply to osm.org/user_blocks/3794 ?

That’s just a message to let you know that lots of people have commented on your changesets. You can see these at http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=8689197 . To reply to each one, click in the comment box on the changeset, type in your reply, and click “comment”.

Best Regards,

Andy Townsend, from OSM’s Data Working Group.

PS: As the other message says, if you have any questions, you can email us at [email protected] .

There’s now an entry on the OSMF blog with all the links here.

See osm.wiki/Sandbox_for_editing#Experiment_with_the_API_.28advanced.29 .

I can hide it if you want (moderators normally only do that for spammers).

What would also be excellent would be if you could reply to some of the questions that other mappers have asked you at http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=10474167 .

Best Regards,

Andy

Sarebbe anche eccellente se tu potessi rispondere ad alcune delle domande che altri mappatori ti hanno posto su http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=10474167.

I migliori saluti,

Andy

Okay I know it’s a hurting truth as China’s army is currently occupying at some islands.

As set out in https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/d/d8/DisputedTerritoriesInformation.pdf , the “on the ground” situation is what you’ll see reflected in the OSM “standard” map tiles.

We just want people to know there is a conflict there.

As I’ve said above - the data already reflects this.

But I don’t want any people looking at the map and say “oh it’s Chinese” because after a long long period that thinking may become the truth regarding how hard we’re fighting.

I wouldn’t describe “vandalising a shared international resource” or “sending messages full of expletives to people” as “fighting”, personally. If you want to do something constructive, I’d suggest (in the order of “simple” to “more difficult”):

• Use an existing map or app that shows things in your preferred language

• Create a map of the area that shows the names that you want people to see and make that available to people. Lots of information already exists about how to do this, including links from here.

• Help create a solution by which tiles from OpenStreetMap.org can show different languages to users in different locations. That isn’t possible right now, and would be a major technical change. Also for some people it would not be desirable - a number of people have expressed a wish for OSM to continue to show on-the-ground control only, and not to reflect unmappable claims - see the comments here.

But didn’t you revert those Vietnamese edit to @NM$L edit (Sansha in Chinese or Tam Sa or Vietnames) yesterday?

Actually, no. The reverted edits were mostly just vandalism (deleting data, writing obscenities, removing names in some langages). 3 edits by NM$L were made in the area in the last 3 weeks or so; Iv’e commented on one of them changeset/82702598

So that means any edit from Vietnam to these areas will not be consider.

No - constructive edits, that try and better reflect the situation on the ground, are welcome from anywhere. Mass deletions and sending lists of obscenities to people (which you yourself have done) are not.

And by “mark” these areas as non-English languages OSM is telling to the world that these areas belong to those Countries. Because any normal human when they saw a map that have a local language on it, I am sure 99% they can tell what country this area belong to.

When it comes to places where people live and work, English has no special status as a language within OSM. We try and use local languages where possible. There are a few exceptions - The Indian OSM community uses English placenames in the “name” tag, and some countries with multiple languages have opted to use combinations of thise languages in names (e.g. Belgium). In each case though it’s a decision of the people that live there, not the decision of a claiming country.

So Why don’t OSM (I say OSM cause we can’t edit these ares :) ) ‘just’ display there areas in English ?

As I’ve already said, if you’d like the rules that the tiles that you see at OpenStreetMap.org by default use to change then raise that at https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues - but any suggestion will need to be practical and scalable.

“OSM” does not “ mark these areas” by any name - English, Vietnamese or Chinese. All of these names will be available in the data, and it’s up to people creating maps to decide which to use.

If you’d like the rules that the tiles that you see at OpenStreetMap.org by default use to change then raise that at https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues - but any suggestion will need to be practical and scalable. Currently, as noted in https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/w/images/d/d8/DisputedTerritoriesInformation.pdf , the language that you’ll actually need to use on the ground is the one used. Google Maps isn’t a direct comparison here because it actually gives a different result depending on where you access it from. The maps that you see at OpenStreetMap don’t do this, and in any case aren’t designed as a “service” to be used by allcomers in the same way.

Lots of options exist for showing names in different languages - if you’d like to use OSM data to create one showing your desired names and country boundaries you are welcome to do so, and plenty of people already have.

Various mappers have over the years tried to have OSM represent their country’s (and their country’s alone) claim to these islands. The wikipedia article that you linked to for the Paracels notes 3 claims and says “Administered by People’s Republic of China”. The Spratlys are more complicated, with apparently 5 different occupying powers of bits of the archipelago.

I’m aware that a post-COVID-19 campaign has been whipped up by the Vietnamese press (see here for example). This isn’t relevant to OSM.

OpenStreetMap has historically represented disputed boundaries with a “disputed” tag, and that tag is already present on the main Paracels boundary. By all means try and work with the rest of the OSM community towards a better representation of disputed areas. Last year one was proposed but was rejected largely because it was just too complicated.

If you’d like to engage with other mappers and try and work forward to a solution please do so. Like COVID-19, only an international solution will work. However, sending expletive-ridden OSM messages to people and writing (now hidden by us) expletive-filled diary entries will only suggest to people that you are not worthy of trying to have a conversation with.

Best Regards,

Andy Townsend, on behalf of OSM’s Data Working Group

@Jason_Brown - you always have the option to edit diary entries, so at any stage you could have removed you expletive-laden rant. You didn’t do this, so someone has hidden it. The advice that I gave at changeset/83634605 still stands - please do follow it.

I’d suggest talking having a chat with people at https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-au - the various licences and waivers from potential government sources get discussed there quite a bit.

Who have you asked?

I don’t think that “uploading a GPS trace LOWERS the quality of OSM” - it only would if you then converted that trace to some sort of highway without looking at any other data source (which is something that I would hope that no-one in 2020 would ever do, except in the very unusual case that there’s no other data sorce available).

If you can provide a bit more information about where you’re interested in adding data, I’m sure local mappers can explain which sources locally they find most helpful - both in terms of being not offset and also in terms of being recent.

@Rob perhaps you need to reread what I actually said:

If an individual mapper on the ground can’t verify your edits made from this source, then they have every right to change the data to what they believe to be correct.

That applies to everyone - my edits, your edits, someone working for Amazon’s edits, everyone.

Best Regards,

Andy

Hello,

How do we know that the source that you are using is licence-compatible with OSM? Can you publish that licence, so that it is clear to the community that you do have the right to use that data and there are no potential future problems?

Also, there is a very real problem here with osm.wiki/Verifiability . If an individual mapper on the ground can’t verify your edits made from this source, then they have every right to change the data to what they believe to be correct. They’ll only have access to the normal sources available in the usual OSM editors, so it’s very possible that some of your changes will be removed because they don’t match what other mappers can see. In the event that such a dispute is escalated to the Data Working Group, we’d have to favour the publicly available imagery over private imagery that no-one else has access to.

I’d therefore suggest, in order to avoid the issues above, that you find some way of working where the data that you’re using is actually verifiable by the rest of the OSM community.

Best Regards,

Andy Townsend, from OSM’s Data Working Group.

The link shows 3 colors that are valid color for color-blind people

Ah, OK. A problem would be that there are many more than 3 colours in use - if you look here you can see a selection of them.

Another possibility is to use a number of dots as scale (0 dot=0 1 dot=restricted, 2 dots=yes).

Something like that would be a possibility (but with 4 states not 3 of course - “don’t know, no, restricted, yes”). The wheelchair indicator is already intentionally not “in your face” - you can use two fingers on a leaflet map to quickly magnify a section, and there it might be possible to count 0,1,2,3 or 4 pixels.

@trial I’ve no idea what your link is supposed to show?

On the more general point - no, common forms of colourblindness were not taken into account when choosing the colour palette used, mainly because pretty much every possible colour variation is in use for something. If you can suggest how to show the same variation of information and make it work for people who are colourblind as well that’d be great - the best way to start would be by opening an issue explaining what you propose to do, and then if that sounds sensible pull requests as necessary.

Although it’s not that that time consuming to create a few more icons that differ only slightly from the originals, it would be interesting to be able create at least some of the variations automatically.

I think that Imagemagick supports scripting (though I’ve never used them with it), and I’ve no idea if it supports things like “change pixel x, y to colour z”.

It’s a lot of icons but not a lot of pixels - it doesn’t take long to take 3 copies of an existing icon and dab in two dots of green, yellow or red.

The original pub icon was an old OSM Carto one - that started out as an empty beer glass, with the other features added to that.