In my last diary post, I had written about the beginnings of mapping milk churn stands. This was kindly featured in the weeklyOSM 662 which resulted in a bit more attention from the OSM community from several countries. Thanks for all your kind comments!

Progress

When I ran an overpass-turbo query on Easter Monday, I noticed a sudden increase of mapped milk churn stands in Finland, a considerable increase (which has still grown more). I checked the changeset history to see who had caused this, found out it was user houtari and sent him a message to thank him. What followed was a very interesting exchange about milk churn stands in Finland. He even sent me a link to a most interesting article in Finnish, kindly translated by a certain popular translation website, but I’ll give you the original link, so you can decide what to use:

• Maitolaituri oli paljon enemmän kuin maidon keräyspaikka

It also led us to translate the wiki page into Finnish.

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About a fortnight ago, I went on a walk/ hike starting in the village of Tullahought, Ireland. There were two milk churn stands in the village which caught my eye, because they were restored and used as decorations and to tell the history of dairying in the area, on a small scale anyway. Tullahought milk churn stand, Author: A.-K. D., CC0 Wikicommons

Milk churn stands were used in Ireland (and elsewhere, of course) up to roughly the 1970s. The dairy farmer would leave their full milk churns on them, and someone from the creamery would do their round and pick them all up. They would return the empty churns or churns with skimmed milk in them, sometimes also leaving other purchases from the creamery like flour. It is possible that the milk man left smaller churns on the stands in other countries (judging from photographs of milk churn stands in other countries).

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So, I went to visit a friend in Westport, Ireland for a few days, stopping in Dublin on the way. I tracked all the bus routes and painstakingly added them to OSM during my stay and when I got home. There were five bus routes in total:

• bus 760 from Dublin Airport to Galway
• bus 456 from Galway to Westport
• bus 450 from Westport to Murrisk and back
• bus 450 from Westport to Dooagh on Achill Island and back
• bus 440 from Westport to Athlone
• bus 73 from Athlone to Kilkenny

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As hinted at in my last diary post, I had taken up mapping National Monuments in Ireland using the key ref:IE:nm (as documented in the wiki). I can’t quite remember when I started and how and why, but I think I noticed the numbers in the National Monuments calendar which was kindly sent to me by Jean Farrelly from the National Monuments Service (I presume in recognition of my engagement with them in the shape of reporting possible unknown monuments).

According to ohsome.org, I started on January 20th which happens to be the same day I created the wiki page, makes perfect sense. I “finished” (see TODO below) with Co. Tipperary yesterday.

The first numbers, I added from above mentioned, beautiful calendar (and the 2022 one), but of course, that only gives you roughly 12 per year. (Some beautiful sites are repeatedly presented, apparently.)

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As usual, I can’t quite remember how it started, but this week, I was trying to find a list of all the National Monuments of Ireland. The National Monuments Service publishes lists by county which only contain the ones under state care. These lists have made their way to Wikipedia which is a great start. They have their numbers recorded there which I have transferred to OSM under ref:IE:nm for the counties of Kilkenny, Laois and Offaly so far. (the key is recorded on the wiki, of course.)

I have sent an email to the National Monuments Service asking for a list, but so far, no reply. I probably have a reputation there by now…

However, I noticed while visiting and taking some pictures of Freshford Church that it has a black plaque (the type of which I had seen before, but never read in much detail) which stated that it was a National Monument.

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I’ve been looking at tumuli the last couple of days. In Ireland, they’re usually called barrows, but according to Wikipedia, it’s the same. So I went and tidied tagging in some of the features tagged as barrows (mostly https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:site_type=ring-barrow/round_barrow and https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:archaeological_site=ring-barrow/round_barrow etc).

I’ve also added that very important information to the wiki and created a table of the most commonly used tags related to tumuli/ barrows.

I noticed some possible duplicates in the tagging: I would think that round_barrow and round_tomb are the same, for example. Some of the tumuli tagged as mound probably fall into that category as well.

This morning, I started drawing some of the types and uploading them to WikiCommons (all as CC0), mostly after photographs I found online, because there didn’t seem to be any diagrams of the different types on WikiCommons. Most of them are just rough schematics (I say rough, it took me forever to draw every single stone), but one is actually a specific keyhole tomb in Algeria (there are hundreds mapped in Algeria!):

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I was going to do some more field name surveying next week, but shock, horror, it is no longer possible to “make an atlas” on fieldpapers.org.

DeBigC and I have tried to find out why. There was a post on GitHub, even before I noticed it, but no reply. DeBigC was more successful on Reddit, where the reason is given as having run out of funding.

This really is a shame; it was such a useful tool. Maybe there is a way to bring it back?

EDIT 11-01-2023 21:41: It’s back working again, very strange.

Earlier today, I reached my 5 millionth edit. It came to my attention about 10 days ago that I was approaching it, because someone on Twitter had celebrated their 15,000th edit, and I went to check mine on neis-one. I then estimated that it would take me 10-14 days to reach it, and I was right.

My friend DeBigC had given me some praise already in his diary some days ago.

Next stop, 10,000,000, I think. Well, not really stop, just a goal.

It’s not that difficult to get that many changes when you’re working on a big project like Irelands #osmIRL_buildings project. We started on Co. Roscommon mid December 2022, and apart from buildings, I’ve already added 1150km of drystone walls. You read that right. Part of that was discovering several field systems of unknown date, but I have documented the use how I tag them on the wiki. I don’t expect many field systems like that to survive in many other countries, it’s just that history is all over the place in Ireland.

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What do people think about adding archaeologist_name and archaeologist:wikidata to archaeological sites that have been excavated? It is very niche, I know, but it would help find literature about the excavation, once you have the name of the site director and the location, it should be possible to find literature associated.

It would be very similar to what we do with artwork and associating the artist with it.

I’ve started doing it, but only for two sites so far (1 and 2), because I happened to know who excavated there and because they have wikidata entries.

It would be a great job for all the Time Team fans out there! #justsaying

And I’m not trying to make OSM into a history map, in my defence; I still map a lot of contemporary things.

Motivated by OpenStreetMap Poland’s openaedmap.org, I went on a targeted survey of AEDs in Kilkenny. I had added some before, and I always do, when I see one, but this time I put some extra effort in, knocked on doors etc.

According to overpass, I’ve edited 141 AEDs, but some are in areas I’ve never been to, so I don’t know how that happened. Unless I used mapillary…Impossible to remember.

Kilkenny is a small Irish town with a lot of tourism. (They want it to be called a “city”, because they got that status in 1609, but the numbers are telling a different story.) I started off using openaedmap.org on my phone, but then I learned about the Quick Actions on OSMAnd, made myself one for AEDs and used it from then on.

Over the course of two days (3-5 hours in total maybe), I went into most

• hotels (50-50 chance)
• supermarkets (SuperValu and Dunnes good coverage, Lidl not)
• shopping centres (100% with 3 surveyed)
• banks (bad coverage with 2 surveyed, AIB and Permanent TSB)
• some doctors’ offices,
• churches,
• public offices (good coverage)
• major tourist attractions (coverage depends on size and operator)
• social facilities (good coverage)

in an about 1km radius etc. Not only was I able to add about 23 unmapped AEDs, but I also raised awareness about the bad coverage after 6pm, because many businesses close then, and none of the AEDs surveyed during these days are outdoors and publicly accessible. Some people also weren’t aware about the closest AED to them or had outdated information.

When I got into longer chats with people, I also got a chance to mention openaedmap.org, and stickers or cards would have come in handy, but they might find it anyway.

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After having had my finds reported on in their online newspaper last week, the Kilkenny People today had a half-page article reporting about my discovery of three crannógs in Co. Cavan.

This time, the journalist did a bit of extra research. Last time, when I discovered the two enclosures (as mentioned in this article), they used my press release almost verbatim. It must be newsworthy, if they put extra effort in. I wouldn’t know, I’m biased. :P

I sent them the press release about two weeks ago mentioning OSM as often as possible, because there is still a lot of ignorance in the general public about it. So, I will definitely keep on reaching out to the press every time I discover something, just to hammer the message in about OpenStreetMap.

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I’m still “obsessing” about crannógs. There are now 205 mapped in Ireland and the UK with https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:site_type=crannog. The timing is unfortunate with the proposal about changing https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:site_type=crannog to archaeological_site pending, but I have been delayed for so long; I did not want to wait any longer. I’m adding disclaimers to every video to keep watching out for tag changes…

Five parts of a mini series about crannógs are planned, two of them have been published on my channel already, one will go public next Saturday.

I have created a page on the wiki mentioning some of the sources for finding crannógs, and I’m basically covering all the options in these videos.

• Mapping Kilkenny’s only crannóg
• Mapping a Time Team Dig - Llangorse Crannog (Wales)
• Mapping a crannóg found in the School’s Collection (duchas.ie) (Co. Mayo)
• Mapping a crannóg from excavations.ie (Co. Westmeath)
• Mapping a crannóg from WikiCommons (this will most likely be an example from Scotland, because there are hardly any photographs from Ireland)

I’m hoping to gather some interest from historians and archaeologists in OpenStreetMap with this. Long shot…

As some will know by now, crannogs are my “thing” at the moment. I was hoping to produce a couple of videos about them on my channel, but it takes a bit longer to get the tag approved than expected. And I can’t tell people how to map crannogs when there is no standard.

But I digress…

While mapping buildings in Co. Cavan in Ireland, I had discovered 12 suspiciously circular features in the lakes within the last 3 weeks, and I had reported them to the National Monuments Service this week. They got back to me yesterday and confirmed 3 as actual crannogs (the rest were apparently just naturally occurring circular vegetation).

• way/1102716166
• way/1106651412
• way/1105294164

If you want to check them out, Bing or Esri Clarity imagery are best.

There are a couple more to report, but I’d rather do it in bulk than send an email every 3 days or so.

I made a quick video about it: https://youtu.be/7BJukQ8hKXw

Still influenced by my proposal for https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:settlement_type=crannog, I’ve looked at how historic settlements are mapped on OSM. There are three more or less “right” ways to do it (and so many wrong ones…). The three options are * map as historic= [whatever type of settlement] * map as https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:historic=archaeological_site + site_type= [whatever type of settlement] * map as https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:historic=archaeological_site + https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:site_type=settlement + settlement_type= [whatever type of settlement]

The distribution today¹ was (in reversed order from above, sorry):

settlement type/ form	settlement_type=*	site_type=*	historic=*
ringfort	131	2	0
crannog	82	0	2
hut_circle	24	348	1
oppidum	8	15	3
city	6	612	16+(messy mapping) 2
village	3	11	58+ (messy mapping3)
town	2	0	12 (+ 3 “ghost_town”)
longphort	1	0	0
rundling	1	0	0
hut_site	1	0	0
hut	0	0	12
vicus	0	24	0
shieling	0	0	20 371
settlement	n/a	3 788	~25

In my opinion, historic= [whatever type of settlement] should only be used when the remains are still recognizable as buildings, like a ghost town or some sort of preserved settlement used as a museum (or “visitor experience”, as they’re now known), like some of the Pioneer towns in America.

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Following the discussion over my proposal for https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:settlement_type=crannog, I have done some clean-ups in the Historical group. Dear me, it was needed.

Today, I tackled site_type on taginfo which comprised of 38 messy pages. I spent 3.5hours

• fixing spelling mistakes
• changing upper case to lower case
• changing spaces to underscores
• translating values from a myriad of languages into English etc
• translating and fixing values for historic:civilization
• moving values from site_type to description or name
• etc.

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Has anyone ever mapped an area because it was in some true crime podcast or video? I mapped the area (i.e. buildings) in Co. Cork in Ireland where the Sophie du Plantier murder took place while listening to a podcast about it.

And then Netflix went and made a documentary about it and used all that lovely OSM material without attribution.

I was preparing a video tutorial about stiles (online tomorrow morning on my channel). Even though I have mapped quite a few stiles while hiking, I came to the realization that I had mapped a lot of them wrong (mostly using OSMAnd, where I have to remember a lot of tags, bc they’re not presets) after reading the wiki page https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:barrier=stile. Oops. While reading the page, it occurred to me that it was a bit messy, so I tried to tidy it up a bit and tried to find some examples for such cases that are a bit tricky to decide, like the stepover. I had tagged some of those as ladder, because they included more than one step.

I also took a look at the taginfo for the stile values, and boy, was there chaos! I mean, we’re mostly all humans, so we make mistakes and typos which might then be propagated through auto-text in JOSM or copying and pasting, who knows. I actually found one mistake I made myself this way. Some were obvious typos (steover) that I could correct without having visited the site, for others, I contacted the person who had added them (sometimes as far back as 8 years ago, so they couldn’t remember, and just had to delete the https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:stile line, unfortunately).

But I also looked at commonly used ones like hipster and added explanations to the wiki page. Two I had to translate into English, and I hope I did it correctly, because they were both in languages I don’t speak, so I used image search to figure out what could be meant. I reduced the list from 4 pages of values to 2.5, so it’s a bit tidier now.

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Disclaimer: yes, I know, it’s absolutely micro mapping, but see “Side effects”.

It’s now been about 4 weeks since I started mapping thatched buildings in Ireland more systematically than just ad hoc adding https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:roof:material=thatch whenever I saw one. I had focussed on Co. Kilkenny, because of a 1994 survey carried out by thatcher and archaeologist Jimmy Lenehan in that county, so all I had to do was revisit the sites and check whether the roof:material was still the same. I ended up visiting about 58 of of the 106 sites in his survey. (I tried to remember to add survey_date to those, so I could run an overpass query.)

He also told me about some newly thatched buildings, where I could add the tag, too.

I also had a long talk with him in his own thatched house which was a very interesting experience, because it was a very warm day (for Ireland), and the thatch really did insulate the house really well. He is not very good with technology, but I think he understood the potential of mapping the thatched buildings on an OpenData platform. I’ve added ref:IE:lenehan to the buildings from his survey and documented the tag in the wiki.

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I’m preparing a video tutorial on thatched buildings - it’s dead simple, but it’s an interesting topic, I thought. So I was doing a bit of research trying to learn something about local thatching traditions and came across a 1994 survey by - it turns out - a thatcher. I only came across one volume which is basically a photo album of 106 thatched buildings in Co. Kilkenny with handwritten captions given the location. Location being in most cases the townland. But because it is handwritten and because this is Ireland, I have not been able to identify all the townlands.

What I’m doing now is trying to find the townland and trying to identify the building. Most times, if there are other buildings in the picture, it is possible to spot them in the townland by comparing the arrangement of buildings. Luckily, most buildings in Co. Kilkenny are mapped thanks to our #osmIRL_buildings project. And luckily, those are mostly old buildings, so I don’t have to worry about them being built since 2019. The National Index of Architectural Heritage is somewhat helpful in that they have indexed some of those buildings, but not all. They have a map where you can find a blue dot for those marking the spot. However, they are not always correct. They also have pictures of those buildings (sometimes also the wrong ones) which I can compare to that survey/ photo album. Sometimes, rarely, because those are very rural areas, I have mapillary to work with.

If they are not too far away and accessible for a non-driver like me, I’ll go and check them out in situ, take mapillary and a photo or two for Wikimedia. #OpenData, baby!

You can kind of see on Esri World Imagery (Clarity) Beta, whether it is thatched or a slate roof, because the thatched roofs have smoother corners and the colour is a bit different.

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