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Openstreetmap is having a moment

joemorrison.medium.com

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Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#41

Post by rathel »

joejoebags wrote: post #27
Freak_NL wrote: post #12

One minor nitpick: measuring the output of a mapper is hard to do on the basis of the number of edits. Local mappers appear to have larger edits where many details in a neighbourhood or some topical regional updates are performed. I think corporate editors focus on fixing bugs and weirdness reported by linters, which are much smaller in scale in terms of changeset size.

Not a nitpick at all--interesting observation. Can you think of a better metric by which to measure contributions? (I'm truly asking out of ignorance)

You may have a look at http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?Stereo to try and find metrics relevant to you (example profile, to retain privacy profiles are hidden behind an OSM account login-wall, unless said user links to that page in their OSM profile site, which this example user did)

One great metric is mapping days (distinct calendar days in which the user was active) which sort of abstracts the fact that different people tend to have a different idea how much work warrants a single changeset.

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#42

Post by kazinator »

smegcicle wrote: post #10
kazinator wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes no difference: OSM Wikipedia ^ ^ | | | | v v Atlas Encyclopedia It's just which parallels of the commutativity diagram do you focus on. The map-versus-text operator (left to right), or the digital-versus-dead-tree operator (top down).

It's logically equivalent, but it seems much easier to parse that OSM [is digital version of] an atlas vs OSM [is a map instead of text like] Wikipedia

I don't agree; to me, it looks like the the atlas encyclopedia operator is a more complex, nuanced relationship than dead-tree digital.

So that is to say, it's more interesting to focus on that relationship and look for analogies of it elsewhere.

More concretely, this equation seems to me to be mildly weird and interesting to try to solve for X:

     Bicycle     X 

      ^                 ^
      |                 |
      |                 |
      v                 v

     Atlas   Encyclopedia
This one doesn't seem to invite erudite thought:

      X      Wikipedia

      ^                 ^
      |                 |
      |                 |
      v                 v

     Fish  Encyclopedia
This is because the difference between the Wikipedia and Encyclopedia is narrowly defined: one is digital, online and massively edited all the time. That tends to narrowly restrict the thinking to be along the lines of what is like a fish, but digital, online and massively edited? And that quickly fizzles out.

Another angle on it is that atlas + encyclopedia form a parcel; they are artifacts of the pre-digital world. Historically, people had an instance of each in their library, often on the same bookshelf. The original sentence preserves this encapsulation:

  digital: {X, wikipedia}    pre-digital: {atlas, encyclopedia}
What is X? Oh, possibly OSM. OSM is to Wikipedia as atlas is to encyclopedia.

The big divide is between pre-digital and digital. Users that use Wikipedia don't reach for a paper atlas. Users of paper atlases probably still use encyclopedias too.

The only way in which it might be confusing is that the encyclopedia and wikipedia seem to be a red herring. There is no need to bring them in at all simply to ask "what is the modern, digital equivalent of an atlas?" But, ah, this is not so because that loses a sublety. The digital equivalent of an atlas can be something quite different from OSM, such as the proprietary firmware and map data installed in a navigator. Like the Wikipedia, The OSM is (1) online, and freely accessible everywhere by anyone, and (2) editable by its users. The analogy to the relationship between an encyclopedia and Wikipedia is entirely relevant.

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#43

Post by jmkb »

joejoebags wrote: post #27
Freak_NL wrote: post #12

One minor nitpick: measuring the output of a mapper is hard to do on the basis of the number of edits. Local mappers appear to have larger edits where many details in a neighbourhood or some topical regional updates are performed. I think corporate editors focus on fixing bugs and weirdness reported by linters, which are much smaller in scale in terms of changeset size.

Not a nitpick at all--interesting observation. Can you think of a better metric by which to measure contributions? (I'm truly asking out of ignorance)

The "How did you contribute" dashboard from Pascal Neis [0] is a good place to explore some possible metrics. IMO some good predictors of mapping quality are:

- Focus on specific regions

- Both creation and deletion of map features, but more creation than deletion

- Unique and descriptive changeset comments

- Engagement in changeset comment discussions, both of your own and others' changes

[0] https://hdyc.neis-one.org/

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#44

Post by sleavey »

I can understand why the tech giants are getting involved in mapping. There are some really cool things being built with OSM and other data, like OpenRouteService [1] (Google Maps navigation for OSM), OpenTopoMap [2] (space shuttle topological data overlaid as contours on OSM), ORBIS [3] (Google Maps navigation for the Roman road network), and loads of detailed maps using OSM data directly but with a particular purpose like OpenRailwayMap [4] and OpenInfrastructureMap [5].

I'd go beyond what the article says about OSM being the atlas to Wikipedia's encyclopedia: I'd say it's becoming the spatial knowledge base equivalent to nothing seen before in history. This truly is an awesome, revolutionary tool that has shown its true potential. I look forward to the awesome things we've not even thought of being built with OSM data, and, I hope, all continuing to be free.

[1] https://maps.openrouteservice.org/

[2] https://opentopomap.org/

[3] https://orbis.stanford.edu/

[4] https://www.openrailwaymap.org/

[5] https://openinframap.org/

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#45

Post by CameronNemo »

joejoebags wrote: post #23

Hello, HN. On the rare occasion my writing has appeared on the front page, the tone of some anonymous commenters has left me feeling indignant. Last time, someone called me a dog. Please keep in mind that a fellow human wrote this piece! You don't have to be nice, but at least be constructive.

Hi. I didn't read this. I don't go on medium.com. please consider another content distribution method.

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#46

Post by choward »

whimsicalism wrote: post #15
afandian wrote: post #14

I had to look up "having a moment" in American. In British English it means being distracted, having a brain-fade, being a bit down. I think this article probably means the opposite...

In American English it can mean either. Usually the use you mentioned would be if you said "I'm having a moment" or something along those lines.

I think it just means something different than the norm. "I'm having a moment" can be something positive in certain contexts.

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#47

Post by Paul-ish »

There's still low hanging fruit in OSM. There are still areas with official government GIS data that hasn't been imported to OSM. For example Irvine County in CA. I wanted to try it but I don't have the GIS skills. It would be nice if someone created a tutorial to teach the bare minimum GIS skills to do an import that is up to OSM standards. Importing whole counties would be a huge boost.

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#48

Post by tweetle_beetle »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #35

As a long-time OSM contributor (former editing software maintainer, former OSM Foundation board member yadda yadda) I like this piece, because it actually gets the "mutual aid" dynamic between corporate OSM and enthusiast OSM. The two should not be opposed. Rather, the more people are exposed to OSM via Facebook, Apple and so on, the more enthusiast contributors OSM gets. The more rendering tech that Mapbox releases…

Out of curiosity, is the Facebook infringement well known in the community, but considered too big an issue to broach, not worth putting time into, etc.?

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#49

Post by folli »

walrus01 wrote: post #31

I'd like to add a note here that fully self hosted openstreetmap is a powerful tool. The vector graphic data sets exist freely for anyone to mirror for their own use. The full tool chain of software needed to build your own tile server is available and not very difficult to implement. I'm aware of more than one ISP using openstreetmap for NOC monitoring of outages, individual customer premises endpoint status, and so…

Any good tutorials on this? What are the required specs? I assume the dataset is huge?

Re: Openstreetmap is having a moment

#50

Post by adrianb »

It's interesting that all the big tech companies except Google are invested in OSM, but at the same time none of them bought one of the classic, "traditional" digital map makers - Here Maps formerly Nokia, formerly NavTeq and TomTom formerly TeleAtlas. They would certainly have the budget so I wonder why they weren't interested?

Do they think it's better to pool their resources into one digital map data source? Are the traditional makers using too much legacy tech?

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