Hi, Welcome to OSM. I too see you have changed the name. The way is nicely visible with its tags using way/11195965 and clicking on ‘view history’ on the bottom of that page gets you way/11195965/history

You can see from the history that the name spelling has been changed several times using different sources. If you have seen the street signs on the ground then that source should override any remote import source. However you do need to state that source .. using the tag ‘source:name’ - change it to indicate what you used .. ‘personal survey’? Or what ever you used. Don’t leave it set to what ever the last person used.. as that will get the past spelling.

It may be possible that the street sign at one end has a different spelling than the sign at the other end! In which case I’d use the tag ‘alt_name’. Stranger things have happened.

I suggest that Jason should introduce applications on all platforms.

@ I_G Yes, putting a description in a name tag is bad practice.

“name=* tag is supposed to contain solely name, not to describe the type or location of the object or one of its other properties (such as height, elevation, operator, access restrictions, classification/certification/quality labels…).” from name=*#Additional_data

Use the description tag description=* !

Ok… devils advocate hat on here …

a) What is the ‘entire field’?

b) OSM maps ‘what is on the ground’. So is the ‘pitch’ (“whole area of play”) the on the ground area where the ball is ‘in play’?

The message is .. you know what you mean, but I don’t. You’ll need to really describe what you mean so I and others don’t misinterpret it. And the description should be easy to translate into other languages.

The ‘real width’ would be similar to the ‘real width’ of the road … Some are single lane width, some on main roads are two lane… three might be wider ones but I do’t recall them.

As the road width is not rendered it does not matter so much.

HI, There is a poor choice of words in the takbe - level 1 … “Artificial surface” … the surface is not a “landuse”. I know what you are getting at .. but those words are wrong and may obtain wrong results.

@ TomH ‘We” ? From your first comment. Sounds like some royal ‘we’, as in it carries the weight of a command. All ideas are worth consideration, not to be dismissed out of hand?

The idea of having a grid of nodes each having a known ele is valid, but would need lots more data points in order to replicate the SRTM data. That is a very large work load to obtain that data, and it will not be obtained in some areas of the world as they have few local mappers - e.g Papua New Guinea. I don’t see it being usefull around the world.

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Hi, Don’t worry about your English. As long as the message is understood that is the main thing.

OSM gives a tremendous amount of trust in letting us directly edit the map. Errors and vandalism do happen and are dealt with appropriately and usually quickly. This encourages us to map things, correct things quickly as the results are also quick.

Keep mapping, it all helps improve the map.

Hi, Thanks for the history on the start of the A to Z .. never knew where that came from. I’m pleased to see that they are now in colour. My old copy I have is black and white! When I first bought one (also Black and White) I was disappointed that it was not in colour as Australian street directories had been in colour for years. Possibly a question of costs.

Yep, welcome. I find places well mapped if there are one or more mappers who take particular interest in that area. They may be ‘locals’ or have some connection there. Map things of interest to you - places you like will probably be attractive to others. Plans .. while they might have been approved some times don’t get built, or not build quite to plan so while it might be good most of the time to process planned stuff to a map there should be room for correcting that map to ‘ground truth’. There are ‘talk groups’ that might get you in contact with other local mappers too. osm.wiki/Mailing_lists#Country-Specific_Lists

Good luck.

OR you could start on learning a bit of OSM and then make further contributions of things you like or see as wrong… Probably start with http://learnosm.org/en/beginner/

If the ‘road’ goes to several complexes then highway=residential. If the ‘road’ only goes to one complex then highway=service, service=driveway
If the ‘road’ is inside a car park then highway=service, service=parking_aisle

Boo … I was looking forward to a nice list of Welsh names! :)

Some names have more than one word so need a space or three. If the name ‘CSIRO Molecular Science and Food Science’ were full expanded out the name would be Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization Molecular Science and Food Science… some 10 spaces. I use CSIRO myself - still some 5 spaces.

If something is a description .. then use the ‘description=’ tag? And I’m also using a ‘comment=’ tag instead of the note tag .. the note tag gets some prominence with some editors that I don’t want with some of my ‘comments’.

@ escada Surprised I have mapped that many fire hydrants? Probably I have retagged anothers work locally for currently correct detail. I am reluctant to fire hydrants unless they are usefull to my local fire brigade - they may already have them. I am yet to go and ask. If they don’t have that information then I’d be inclined to map them around the local bush, together with the SWS (Static Water Supply) which I expect are not mapped anywhere, nor does there appear to be a usefull OSM tag … so I’ll probably make one up without any discussion … cannot be bothered with the pain.

I am not proposing that retagging be done by the original mappers, nor that it needs to be done quickly. Look at the public transport version 1 to version 2 … will they all be migrated in a year? Or in 10 years? The point is - which is preferable in the longer term?

I too would rather enter new usefull data. But I would rather enter it using tags that make sense and will stand the test of time. So I enter new buss routes with version 2 data, I update the old version 1 buss data - keeping it version 1 due to the work load but keep it current with route changes.

Yes, it is good to avoid tedious work that really adds nothing other than future order and eases future beginners learning. But for the benefit of new people it may well be worth doing.

Read through this the saying “Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men” springs to mind.

Taggs with large use do get changed .. look at the public transport version 1 and version 2. things do evolve over time.

Then there are tags that are the result of imports. The present ‘airstrip’ is from a New Zealand import that IMO should be tagged aeroway=runway surface=unpaved rather than creating a new tag (that have not been voted on). There are some 3,500 uses of this poor tag.

The tag fire_hydrant:diameter= (which has never been voted on) should be altered to the simple property tag of diameter=* (again not voted on) to comply with the present property tagging practice.

With the present difficulty of voting tags into acceptance there is a distinct lack of any advantage of proposing new tags, it is simply better to induce them without any discussion, or if discussion takes place locally it lacks any international view. Users against tag voting contribute to this. And this will mean more and more junk tags being introduced.

@ RobJN and escada
Perhaps ‘speed’ is not the right term here .. but a lack of time and number of mappers.

Umm there may be a number of terms we have used here that are not the best.

Map ‘quality’ could be better termed ‘detail’?

Where time is lacking then the result probably lacks detail.

Locally I do use imagery as it speeds things up, imagery with good resolution and applied corrections make mapping correct details easy. I don’t map all the buildings .. just the ones that are of use to lots of people. So individual homes are out of my work space! So too are parking restrictions. Imagery does not get me what the building is used for nor individual shops - that has to be done by survey and takes a lot of time. It also becomes stale to some degree. But even when stale does suggest that a service of some description will exist there. Might be upsetting for some - if they are upset enough they might become mappers - win win. There is a LOT to map, the quantity is large .. no huge! I have a number of things I would like to add to the map - ranging from rivers, streams, roads, tracks, paths, fire hydrants, static water supplies to residential areas and more.

I do not restrain myself to my ‘local’ area. I do add to the map in other areas trying to add, improve. HOT has people remotely add stuff, my remote roaming is usually because I have some interest in the area/feature and have done some research that would at least equal HOT contributors knowledge (I would hope that it exceeds it).

Tracing can be done zoomed out at a 1km per 2 cm imagery .. and get poor resolution - fast to do large areas .. or zoomed in to say 100m per 2 cm and get more detail.

GPS tracks can be generated with poor resolution too .. takes the same amount of time to do it with better resolution though, just more data storage and more battery drain.

A ‘fast map’ is still better than no map? Meaning a road represented as a straight line between 2 cities shows that it exists. Better with the curves but the line conveys the roads existence. I prefer the curves myself and trace them to a fair degree, including rivers and streams .. and I add these details to others ‘fast mapping’. But I still think the ‘fast map’ is better than no map at all.

‘Best’ is a subjective term when you have no rules on how it is judged.

In some areas OSM does not have an effective community to do local mapping so satellite imagery mapping is the majority source of the map in these areas. Here the ‘best’ is armchair mapping as that is what is available. If people insist on local mapping only being used the map will be blank on large areas of the globe. OSM should use the most detailed mapping that is available, if that is a local mapper good, if it is a low resolution satellite imagery then that too is ‘good’.

Oh .. maxspeed - don’t think you ‘ll find a speed limit sign on a footpath .. never mind a jungle track. So skip that one, possibly a width .. a sac scale if you can be bothered figuring it out. wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:sac_scale You can find may things on the OSMwiki .. just type it into the search box on the above page. Cna be time wasting though.

You can also use JOSM. JOSM is a more powerful editor - requires more learning to use all of its features. Having been through the process many times of learning one systems basic editor to then find I needed a more advanced editor to do what I need in the next course. I now tend to start with the most advanced editor - knowing that I won’t have to learn something else to do something I want to do. Thus I start with JOSM. Whatever editor you chose to use you will need to understand some basics of OSM - nodes and ways to start with, then the tags used to describe what these are .. and so on.

JOSM instructions for gpx - https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/8844/convert-track-to-road

Note the comments! “ typical GPS tracks will have far to many nodes, so you should at least simplify the ways substantially before actually uploading your work” (from the above instructions) GPS tracks tend to have places where you stopped, went to a lookout - these need to be edited out if your making a track/road (my comment 1) Some GPSes lock on to the map data they have - leading to a copy of what roads/tracks they have. OSM requires that its data is free of copyright .. so you must be certain that the GPS track is not a copy of the map data that th eGPS has. (my comment 2) and escada comment above too.

In short - many pitfalls in the use GPX tracks.

Good luck. Improving the map is fun, but be careful.