The problem is that it is not as "free" as OSM, and the licence is incompatible. If I understand correctly, the company behind it gains ownership of the user-submitted data.

This highlights the difference between Australian and UK postcodes. In Australia, as in many countries, one postcode is often associated with one town or one suburb, making it sensible to mark the boundaries. In the UK, there are typically two postcodes _per_street_ in urban areas (usually one for each side of the street), so marking the boundaries would mean a boundary round each side of each street in urban areas. If we had a Free source of postcode boundaries, we could, however, mark the boundaries for the first part of the postcode, which are more akin to Australian postcodes. Sadly, we don't (yet).

I should have added "unless you or someone else has obtained separate permission to use this data in OSM and posted this to the wiki, in which case, please could you point me to it?"

Thanks

David

Please remove these. Sorry, but gadm.org data is licensed under terms not compatible with OpenStreetMap's licence:

"This dataset is freely available for academic and other non-commercial use. Redistribution, or commercial use, is not allowed without prior permission."

OpenStreetMap's licence is specifically designed to allow redistribution, including commercial use:

osm.wiki/Licence
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Sorry - I hope you had not put too much work into this. For future reference, before using any other secondary sources, I would recommend reading up on the following:

osm.wiki/Copyright
osm.wiki/Potential_Datasources

I assume you are talking about this:

osm.org/?lat=53.03741&lon=-2.181&zoom=16&layers=B000TTFT

Maplint reports "not-in-map-features" for any tags it does not recognise, and whilst it can indicate typos, often highlights quite deliberate tagging, including some widely used tags. In this case, it seems to be the "is_in" key, which is quite widely used. However, it does appear that one user has tagged every single node in a number of ways with "is_in" tags, which does seem a little strange (I say strange, rather than wrong, as people are really free to tag as they please, and clearly each of these nodes is in Staffordshire!).

I suppose you could message him and ask him if this was intentional? Not sure what else to suggest.

Looks like you've fixed the upside down text - was it an unclosed way? I've had similar effects when I have thought I have closed a way, but have not. The cut-off name will be due to some of the tiles rerendering but not others. It is probably that the traffic lights have been added, and the tiles in which they appear have been rerendered, but not the adjacent tiles. It will probably rerender eventually, but if it is bothering you, you can, right click to find the URL of the tile, then load the tile on its own in another browser window, with the suffix:

/dirty

The tile will then be submitted for rerendering. In this case, it will probably cause the label to disappear, as there may not be room between the traffic lights. It will probably reappear on a stretch of the way with fewer obstacles.

I am a bit unclear as to how this is of use to OSM. Please could you explain?

Thanks!

Hi SVdP O'boro

If you have the time and the inclination (and a GPS helps), you can survey this area and fix it yourself. If you are interested, most of what you need to know is here:

osm.wiki/Beginners'_Guide

If not, you can record "bugs" here, and if there are mappers active in the area, they may pick these up and fix them:

http://openstreetbugs.appspot.com/

I would recommend having a go yourself, though. It really is great fun (and quite addictive).

Welcome! Is your apartment really a castle?

Re: tracing. Are these maps to scale? The Brum looks a bit schematic* to my untrained eye.

*probably not the word I am looking for, but you know what I mean

Sorry, should have provided links to a bit more info. Definitely worth reading the following before you consider using any secondary source:

osm.wiki/Copyright

osm.wiki/Legal_FAQ#Can_I_trace_data_from_Google_Maps.2FVirtual_Earth.2FOrdnance_Survey.2F....3F

If you are adding footpaths just based on looking on Google Maps and verifying via Google satellite view, and Google street view, you are (probably) breaching copyright.

highway=road is useful for situations like this, where you don't know/remember is that it is a road, but not how to classify it. It basically means "road of an unknown classification". Renders in grey in Mapnik, so should jump out at other mappers as something that requires further work.

Oops! Sorry :)

By the way, the coordinates in your link are wrong!

spam

Found it! It is lorries it is directing.

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/31/uk-village-posts-ign.html

Also a general article here, showing a yellow temporary text-only sign:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-436983/First-ignore-sat-nav-roadsigns-up.html

I came across an official road sign in Wales telling drivers to ignore their sat nav and not turn off through a village. It even had a symbol of a satellite above a car. Wish I'd got a photo.

I too agree with chilly. Where the abandoned railway has been replaced by a road, the rendering is really busy and would leave a casual user of the map confused, e.g., here:

osm.org/?lat=53.39693&lon=-2.35824&zoom=16&layers=B000FTF

Thanks, RichardB. I now understand a little more of why he raised this point. The blog was about mapping in the Philippines. In fact, the point he seems to be making seems to be to do with understanding the particular inaccuracy of using GPS in the Philippines, so he may be right that it would be useful for someone to explain the issue in lay terms to local mappers, so they can be aware of it (though I think they have some hi-res aerial imagery anyway). It's just a shame he made the "kiddy" comment. I think that kind of approach is always just going to switch people off.