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Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

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Re: Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

#71

Post by orblivion »

contrapunctus wrote: post #66
orblivion wrote: post #56

I'm trying my hand at organizing mapping events. In fact I'm doing one tomorrow by coincidence. The first few, I agonized over making sure everything was prepared, I have an agenda for how I think things will go. It's pointless. People are doing their own thing. One guy came with a phone without an Internet connection so we couldn't even edit the same area without saving over each other. He had to upload later and de…

Hey, author here. I guess this is something I should update the post to address. I guess I have always been in the "agonizing over every detail" stage, and remain so today (looks like we both have mapping parties tomorrow, because tomorrow's our 7th party :) ). In the beginning, we were much more "lax". We waited for latecomers. During the survey, we moved in one big group. We focused on the social aspect of the meet…

Yeah once I get to the point you're describing I will think about rules and details again. And I will keep your blog post handy. I just think I've just been optimizing prematurely. I have to get a sense of the failure modes before I start making too many rules. I end up spending energy on the wrong thing and get frustrated when it doesn't work anyway. I'm also doing something much simpler than you guys. Good lord, laser distance meters!? I'll be happy to number the houses in town and add all the restaurants and stuff for now :-)

BTW I'm also not just targeting newcomers, I'm also trying to gather a community among the existing local editors. It's just something I enjoy doing and it would be fun to do with more people.

As for the low numbers of newcomers - I could reach out more. There's a local tech scene slowly coalescing in my area. Once I have regular mapping meetups I'll be able to invite people at the wider tech meetups here with more confidence. (For existing editors, I should spend more time combing local edits, that's worked so far)

Re: Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

#72

Post by progval »

komali2 wrote: post #24
progval wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix.org (and Element) is running out of money and hosts a large number of free users. The rest of the community probably won't be able to handle the influx of users the day the Matrix.org homeserver needs to close.

That's the usecase of Matrix As IRC I guess you mean? I've never participated in any matrix.org rooms outside of the matrix / synapse / element support rooms (I believe they're on matrix.org). For our community it's kind of moot if matrix.org closes, the only downside is of course support will drop off precipitously. But other than that, we self host.

I don't see what this has to do with IRC. But if all your users use your homeserver, then yes you should be fine.

Re: Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

#73

Post by contrapunctus »

Tactician_mark wrote: post #70
contrapunctus wrote: post #63

Hi! Author here, wasn't expecting that someone would share this hastily-hacked-together post on HN ^^' Thanks for reading, and ask me anything! PS - I suspect some may have missed my footnotes if they were reading on mobile - tap the numbers to see them.

Those footnote toggles that transition to margin notes on bigger screens are absolutely amazing! Definitely going to try stealing that, thank you :)

Glad you like them :D They come from the tufte-css project - https://github.com/edwardtufte/tufte-css

Re: Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

#74

Post by aendruk »

ikawe wrote: post #60
sp8962 wrote: post #49

I need to quote myself on this thread https://twitter.com/sp8962/status/1534079141640904705 Steve hasn't been a relevant force in OSM for more than a decade and if you want to do OSM a favour, point people to the editor on openstreetmap.org, not any of the mobile or "simplified" editing apps.

> if you want to do OSM a favour, point people to the editor on openstreetmap.org, not any of the mobile or "simplified" editing apps. If you want to make the time to take photos and take notes, and sit down later and enter them on your computer, go for it. Likely that's a faster way to do a larger entry. In particular, I haven't seen a mobile app that does a great job of polygon geometry editing — a mouse really hel…

To add to this, not everyone needs to pursue the same kind of work. As a more experienced mapper I make a point of allocating my time toward what I think of as “scaffolding” tasks that enable others’ mobile contributions—geometry, wide area edits, alignment, navigational references, model clarification, or anything that might trigger new quests in StreetComplete or declutter formidable ones. It’s gratifying to have exposed new opportunities for mobile contributions and see the questers begin filling them in.

Re: Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

#75

Post by zilti »

taude wrote: post #17
david-gpu wrote: post #8

OpenStreetMap is great and I only wish more people using apps like Strava, RideWithGPS, Komoot or OSMAnd realized that they can contribute, benefitting everybody else using those apps. In Toronto I only see a very small number of people contributing to OSM's cycling infrastructure, which results in the map not as up-to-date, which in turn means that the aforementioned apps will not propose routes through the nicest,…

If i'm using ridewithgps, how do I contribute? is there an easy tool, or maybe it's something these tools could integrate? I know I ride trails thatdon't always show up on OSM views.

StreetComplete is really nice

Re: Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

#76

Post by fizwidget »

doctoboggan wrote: post #29
ikesau wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, as recommended in the article, StreetComplete[1], which shows incomplete areas on your map and marks them as quests to add to :) Also recommended, Organic Maps[2], which is an OSM client that's good enough to use as my main map app (in my city, at least) Final recommendation, this interview[3] with the founder of OpenStreetMap Steve Coast. 3 hours of fascinating insight into the history and future of the p…

Street Complete sounds very interesting to me, but it seems like there is no iOS version?

The Go Map!! editor on iOS recently added StreetComplete-style quests.

Re: Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

#77

Post by gerdesj »

ikesau wrote: post #15
pietervdvn wrote: post #12

Shameless plug for my project where one can easily see data from and add data to OpenStreetMap: https://MapComplete.org

Similarly, as recommended in the article, StreetComplete[1], which shows incomplete areas on your map and marks them as quests to add to :) Also recommended, Organic Maps[2], which is an OSM client that's good enough to use as my main map app (in my city, at least) Final recommendation, this interview[3] with the founder of OpenStreetMap Steve Coast. 3 hours of fascinating insight into the history and future of the p…

Street Complete is rather good. I filled in a few details in Hong Kong (come on you lot, the population density there is huge!) recently.

Street numbering is generally quite awful on all maps. Google has made a right old hash of much of my town. It manages to put a hairdresser in the middle of the road on the exit from a pretty large roundabout and a taxi company on a small C17th Methodist cemetery.

The entrance to my own company as shown by Google would involve a multi car pile up thanks to the massive "intelligence" that can't manage multiple requests for a change from someone who is listed at Company House, who uses a 20+ year old Google account with the same name and a company email address with the same, quite uncommon surname, in it. I have tried multiple ways to address getting Google to correct their fucking map. I've even tried simulating their own instructions in my correction attempts.

Go on try it yourself - which little UK company am I MD of? Go and find it and put street view on to see why driving through a railing, pavement and a 20' retaining wall is a bad idea. No, it isn't hard for humans to figure out but it is hard for the clever kiddies at Google to get their algorithms let me fix their fucking map to find the actual entrance and the route to it.

In the UK a postcode can cover something up to 100 properties, as required. My business is in a fairly odd stub of land and has its own postcode. The other property adjacent, within the same plot also has its own postcode.

A fairly large dose of irony is that I do occasionally do reviews for Google and am apparently a guide or some such nonsense and my reviews have 1000's of views. My reviews are treated as gold (and might help or hinder a business) but my attempts to fix a real issue with my own company address is ignored.

Just fixing up street numbering will make a huge difference to navigation but Street Complete covers much, much more. I've also done my best with the paths in my local [edit: sp] park, to describe accessibility and "cyclability" etc.

Re: Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

#78

Post by pietervdvn »

contrapunctus wrote: post #66
orblivion wrote: post #56

I'm trying my hand at organizing mapping events. In fact I'm doing one tomorrow by coincidence. The first few, I agonized over making sure everything was prepared, I have an agenda for how I think things will go. It's pointless. People are doing their own thing. One guy came with a phone without an Internet connection so we couldn't even edit the same area without saving over each other. He had to upload later and de…

Hey, author here. I guess this is something I should update the post to address. I guess I have always been in the "agonizing over every detail" stage, and remain so today (looks like we both have mapping parties tomorrow, because tomorrow's our 7th party :) ). In the beginning, we were much more "lax". We waited for latecomers. During the survey, we moved in one big group. We focused on the social aspect of the meet…

In all communities, your gonna have churn and only a small percentage that is gonna continue contributing.

In Belgium, we've done some active community building. A chat channel helps, but regular meetups too - often these are just sitting in a bar or in a cozy place and discussing everything that is related to OpenStreetMap.

It also helps that quite a few have jobs in or at least using OpenStreetMap.

Re: Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

#79

Post by komali2 »

thriftwy wrote: post #67
thfuran wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like it'd do little to decrease the amount of space cars take up: It doesn't decrease the amount of traffic (actually, empty cars driving around when they would've been parked before increases traffic), so it doesn't decrease the amount of roads. It doesn't decrease the amount of people driving to businesses, so it doesn't decrease the need for non-residential parking. It probably slightly decreases the fo…

It would absolutely decrease the amount of non-residential parking. You will be obliged to direct your car to off-site parking when driving to businesses in urban core. That's the main point. It will be somewhere in the vicinity so it will only congest local roads, which would be much emptier now that they're not used for parking.

Building the infrastructure sounds more expensive, physically difficult, and politically difficult than expanding bus and train lines.

How do you justify the car option given that public transit objectively takes up less space and is better for the environment?

Re: Organizing OpenStreetMap mapping parties

#80

Post by komali2 »

KiranRao0 wrote: post #31
komali2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> including how he doesn't think OSM will be relevant for much longer once someone manages to develop a mapping project into their self-driving cars As someone who intends to never drive again, this is very funny to me. Cars are very obviously not the future of human transport, self driving or otherwise. They take up an absurd amount of space.

> Cars are very obviously not the future of human transport I wish this were true. However, I'm seeing the trend pointing in the opposite direction almost everywhere. For example, almost every European country has seen a rise in the motorization rate. [1] China is also firmly on the rise, and America remains 80-90% [2] Given this, I don't expect that OSM has the ability/authority to make a dent in motor vehicle usage…

I should clarify: if it is our future, our future is grim.

I'm optimistic that anti car efforts will win out in the end as our message spreads and people's quality of life decreases hand in hand with even further trafficization of their lives.

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