Great to see someone else mapping in inner Brisbane!

In this area the highest zoom level is older than the next zoom level out, but you can trace better on the deepest zoom, so I only use the newer imagery if I have to.

I notice your buildings are not quite square. If you’re using Potlatch, a toolbar pops up, if you click “show more” you’ll see a square. Click on this when a polygon is selected and it will square it up.

It rarely works on polygons with more than 6 nodes, and sometimes not then, but I always use it after tracing.

Oh, and can I strongly encourage you to collect street address information, if it’s your local street and easy to do so.

I think the POIs around Chardon’s Corner and Annerley Junction are probably overdue for a revision, so that sounds like a wonderful plan.

I'm sorry, but I can't see how the example given is copying, but I'm open to a more detailed argument. I certainly reject that it is a "clear example of copying".

I ride past this bench just about every day. I've been aware of it's existence for at least ten years. I've sat on it multiple times.

I have mapped my area on the ground block by block, and if I didn't previously touch an object by another mapper, it's because I agreed that it was correct, current and tagged correctly.

I am only replacing objects I can vouch for. As an example, further along the river is
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/node/316736348
Even though I know there are barbecues generally along the river, and even that they're wood fuelled, I can't say for sure there is one here. I'll look for it next time I go past.

The non-CT compliant objects are a reminder that something may need mapping there, but that's no different to noticing a discrepancy between a local street directory and openstreetmap and checking it out via Bing or on the ground. I can't see an IP violation.

I would never run a landuse boundary down a road centreline, and I’m not unique in this. There are two reasons for this, it’s a nightmare to edit later in Potlatch (I can’t vouch for other editors), and the roadway is not landuse=residential. If it had a landuse it would landuse=road. The roadway is a public right of way, but land parcels in a residential area are privately owned.

I would only place a road over a residential boundary if it was a private road, such as in a gated community.

An example of how I choose to do it is here:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-27.492532&lon=153.024219&zoom=18&layers=M

I've used a program called GPS Utility before to transform MapInfo files into gpx files and upload them as GPS tracks. They can then be traced over, if that's your intent.

I've done a fair few street numbers, although I also had aerial imagery (nearmap) to trace houses from. I haven't done anything for the last two months or so.

I recorded every single street number, although typically every stand alone building only had one street number.

I was lucky to have mostly regular street numbers - 2,4,6,8,10, etc so I just had to remember the corner numbers and any breaks in the regular sequence.

I mostly did it riding past at a reasonable speed on my bike.

I was motivated to do it because there are no free address point databases in my state, but they are a fantastically useful dataset.

Ruhbarb

I believe the standard is to add the address to the building outline, however that gets complicated when there are multiple buildings (I guess you'd build a relationship, but I've never got into that), and also doesn't allow you to address vacant blocks - I've seen a number of vacant blocks with the old letter box still there. I like to record numbers for vacant blocks, so I don't have to revisit the site post-construction.

There's probably no need to do both all the time like I do, but it's a habit I got into.

There's a school of thought that you should link the buildings into a relationship with their street, and not even add the street name to the building or address point.

I think though that the street name should always be added to the building/address point. Any data extraction from OSM that I've seen doesn't include relationship data, so you'd be losing a crucial bit of information.

I can't make Bribie Island, but is there any pre-party desktop mapping that would be useful?

It's true the admin boundaries can get in the way, but they can also benefit from a bit of judicious tweaking here and there. The boundaries as derived from ABS are quite different from the gazetted boundaries, at least in my part of town, so I feel OK about doing so.

Cases where the boundary lurches from side to side of the railway line, rather than down one side or the middle, crosses multiple land parcels, has roundabout humps that are quite a long way from the roundabout, or match up very poorly to river or coastline boundaries, look appalling, and to a lay person would undermine the perceived quality of the rest of the data.

Mind you, people put up with most appalling maps from Google Maps, so maybe I shouldn't be worrying.

Cool! Nice work. I added a religion tag to the churches so they render correctly.

I'm pleased to find the rail trail is finally happening.

Considering that the rail trail association has no maps whatsoever on their site, mapping it would be a doubly good idea.

Can't help out though, sorry.

Thanks for comments and assistance.

I think coding the footways as bridges helps mark this area out as something different. I've mapped some stuff on the land too now, which I think helps put it in context better.

And it is looking better as it fills out. Unfortunately though, I can't name a single feature.

OSM will never be all things to all people.

A properly prepared cartographic map is a thing of beauty, brimming with useful detail and information(and usually quite a few years out of date). OSM is quite a way off matching the output, but can win on currency.

However, most people never go within coo-ee of cartographic output, they just use street directories, and ones that are many years old at that.

Hell, Google Maps is really popular, and it's often bloody awful.

OSM is pretty respectable, and improving all the time.

The real strength of OSM is not the Mapnik rendered map, with a slow and not clever search function (but improving - Nominatim is a step up), but having data that you can get your hands on and obtain it easily, and it's fulfilling that function better all the time.

I'm impressed at the improvement in my local area over just one year. Waiting a couple more years is quicker than trying to get data out of government, which will probably have problems with it anyway.

All this positivity? You must be able to think of the negatives.

It's too beguiling to finetune the curve of every last street and footpath and trace the footprint of every single building. Recent imagery just means I need to update areas I've previously passed through.

Any other negative suggestions?

Files don't need to be in OSM format. Any GIS format can be manipulated. Shape files seem to be the standard.

It would be well nigh impossible for someone to go out and capture the park boundaries themselves, other features yes, but boundaries no. You need an authoritative, copyright free source from which to obtain the boundaries.

I'm not volunteering to do it, by the way.

I'm still no clearer on why you want it in OSM. If Parks Victoria would like it there, they need to help enable things.

Hello Louise

I have to say I'm intrigued. Your profile says you work for Parks Victoria, so I'm not sure why they don't have the information.

The park boundaries is a difficult one - a good way to get the information is from the digital cadastre. Is the Victorian cadastre available to the public?
The Queensland one is available from here http://data.australia.gov.au/152
and the SA National Parks here http://data.australia.gov.au/589

I have myself created some NP boundaries from the Queensland data.

If you do work for Parks Victoria, and want the data in OSM, can you arrange for Parks Victoria to release a copyright free version of the park boundaries?
(a lot of Victorian Govt data is available, so there are precedents there)

(I'm sure there must be some other great datasets at Parks Victoria that people would be delighted to find in the public domain as well)

Regards
Fairfield

You could try using GPS Utility (it costs about US$60) to get the data into OSM.
There's a free, file size limited version you could use first to see if it will do the job.

I've used it to change Mapinfo data into GPX for import.
(I had to use Mapinfo MIF format because GPS Utility didn't deal well with TAB format)

GPS utility won't deal directly with dwg, but if you can get it into another format that it uses (http://www.gpsu.co.uk/functions.html) you can get to gpx from there.

At work we got in a batch of QSTARZ travel Recorders, BT-Q1000X.
Somebody did some research and testing and decided these were the best for our purposes.
About AUD$100 or $150 I think.
They pick up a signal reasonably well, but the good thing is they are not attractive (ie likely to be stolen), there is no screen, just an on/off button and waypoint button. No-one can screw with your carefully chosen settings or delete tracks either.
If you don't have the password protected software you can't get anything off.

I've noticed you've got a whack of roads in the centre all coded as tertiary. I don't want to step on your toes, but this just appears as a thick yellow mess at farther out zoom levels. I'll clean them up unless you object.

I tidied up your trainline and then extended it south, but I'm not so sure the extension was legit - it certainly went some way, and then seemed to disappear, with just an easement, but no tracks. A bit hard to be sure with the level of imagery. Perhaps you can remember from your time there.

I wouldn't have thought I was doing enough edits to get noticed....

First up, fair call on copyright, until I look into it, I'll ditch the "proposed" designations, except for ones that really are likely to happen, such as on the Hale Street Bridge or the Gateway duplication.

As far as the rcn goes, I have sufficient knowledge of cycling infrastructure in (most parts of) Brisbane, activity centres and hotspots for cycling, I can define my own rcn. (and other people can argue with it)

Perhaps the two really major routes, the Pacific Mwy/V1 bikeway and the Western Fwy/Bicentennial bikeway could be considered ncn (national cycle network).

Re the yellow bicycle, I agree that this doesn't deserve the name of 'cycling facility'. A green lane that doesn't keep disappearing would be my minimum requirement for this designation.

However, the connection between the Western Fwy and Bicentennial falls in this sub-standard category, as does part of the route out to University of Queensland. A lot of cyclists use these routes. If these sections were not coded as part of the rcn, it wouldn't be very informative to someone trying to ride around Brisbane.

Ideally, opencycle map would have different linestyles for "rcn superior" and "rcn inferior".

While not the original intention of the lcn/rcn/ncn coding perhaps lcn could be used for the crap bits?