Welcome aboard Jeff.

@richard Thanks for the advice and I will certainly look into TileMill, as you suggest the reverse engineering into a easier maintain format seems a logical first step to take. Are there any people and/or groups I should contact with regard to this effort? I haven’t been involved in the community side of things much - so I don’t want to be stepping on anyone’s toes.

There seem to be a few people that want these kinds of changes (and that would be willing to work on it), but don’t know how to go about it. I have to say I’m in the same boat. Maybe it is something that needs to be put to the community in a wider way, but again I don’t know how to go about it. Some kind of proposal? I’m willing to put a bit of work in, I have a background in graphic design… but I’m far from an expert in cartography or the technical aspect of design and implementation for Mapnik.

@Robert there is an issue in that regard agreed, but I’m not sure it is an entirely positive way to go about it. As I said in my post that map is what most people first encounter with OSM (knowingly at least) and I think it would serve us well to not drive people away at first sight. There are mechanisms in place to restrict tile server traffic and usage restrictions already. Would that not be enough to stop any huge influx of load?

@Richard

I do agree that the Mapquest layer does provide more what what people seem to want, but that is not the default layer, but this should not detract from the fact the Mapnik layer that everyone see’s when they first encounter OSM is massively flawed in both usability and beauty, the later really cannot be discounted. Fields as brown? Really? I get you point about motorist centric maps, but I’m sure that the maps that we display to the world can be made more visually appealing at least.

The fact of the matter is I don’t think what OSM contributors want in a map, and what the general public want is the same… and as it’s ‘face’ to the world i think it needs to change.

It is impossible to have a constructive discussion with someone as arrogant as yourself Chris. There is no need for all the name calling, or telling people to leave for that matter, that is what I find insulting, not the actual content of what you say.

Your opinion is exactly that, not that of OSM or the people that use it. So don’t refer to yourself as ‘we’. I have never even slightly suggested that OS data should replace anything - I suggested it should be used where there is nothing.

In terms of this thread, I’m not posting here any more as it has turned into a typical internet debate. I have far better things to do with my time than argue the toss with you.

This kind of thing seems to be increasingly common, mainly a small subset of mappers who are determined everything should be done by their (often made up) rules.

But it exposes a massive issue with OSM in general, in that there are not any easy to use, worthwhile conflict resolution tools. If you look at Wikipedia conflict resolution is central to the whole ethos of the site.

I can see this kind of thing becoming increasingly common as more people join up and it all degenerating into ‘revert wars’.

Now now ladies. Redaction is indeed a complete pain in the arse. I’m sure everyone agrees about that.

Great stuff. Good luck in your mapping!

Java runs in Linux doesn’t it? So you can always run JOSM (which is a lot more powerful than Potlatch, but admittedly takes a little learning… but then again you are running Linux so…)

I was having a look at Australia today… then I came to Sydney… wow. It look’s like a map post nuclear explosion! Lot’s of fix-up work to be done there for sure.

@chriscf I do not misunderstand what OSM is about at all. I fully realise that local knowledge is what makes this map what it is. But your insulting attitude tells anyone reading this exactly what they need to know, ‘brainless’, ‘silly’ - have you ever accounted for the fact that maybe the people making errors are just new to OSM and not just ‘brainless’ as you seem to think. These people should be encouraged not driven away by your little boys club attitude.

Surely the future of OSM is not ‘mappers’ like us at all. It is people that edit the street they live on or their route to work. They are the people that have real local knowledge. Not you driving through once in your car.

I’m not quite sure who made you the arbiter of what OSM is, but frankly when it comes to misunderstanding I think you are deliberately misunderstanding me, I have said about 5 times now that all care and consideration should be given to other peoples work. In that situation the errors you complain about are rare.

I simply do not accept the fact that using locator to add otherwise nameless roads is wrong. Lots of StreetView names are wrong too are we to discount that? Bing images may be misaligned and out of date. Discount that too? The shoreline might change, don’t ever trace that? Streets are renamed, business change, even house numbers change.

There is no perfect map. When we have 10 mappers in every town in the world then maybe your objectives are realistic… but in the meantime, I think using the hundreds of years worth of work the OS have done seems a reasonable stop gap.

Yeah I saw this, got a leaflet in the post… I’m in one of the pilot areas. No doubt that data will be locked up tight. Although was wondering why they are using a laser distance measurement… distance from the road?

@rovastar I completely agree, one of my main reasons for moving on from mapping my local area via survey and Bing etc, is that I have already mapped it to a very high degree of detail. So I moved onto the north of England and areas that had little or no mapping and hadn’t been touched for years… adding missing features using Bing and the various OS sources. How this can be a bad thing I have no idea.

The idea that because a feature is actually in the database then nobody would bother to go out and survey it is just not true. Once mappers in that particular area join up it will be easy to see where that data has come from and correct anything they know is wrong.

I have a feeling this all stems from the fact that a certain subset of mappers that have been here a long time and spent a long time surveying with GPS cannot help but feel armchair mapping is ‘cheating’ in some way, and the accuracy debate is used to a certain extent to expose ‘cheaters’.

It is understandable to an extent, but data is improved over time. With the help of local mappers. Suggesting that because your source MAY have a tiny amount of error in it, then you shouldn’t add it is retrograde and holds everything back. Surveying on foot probably has about the same error rate.

@chriscf While ground surveys are preferable, OSM is not ‘the garmin club’. Potential data sources are wide and varied, although ultimately, of course your eyes are the best source, they are also far from accurate, and consumer GPS devices are extremely inaccurate.

There is no rule that says ‘everything you add to this map has be seen with your own eyes first on the ground’.

Tracing is perfectly acceptable and to be encouraged (in a considerate way of course). Why anyone might deny that they did it I have no idea. This is a community, we are collaborating, tracing some roads from StreetView is helping the project not, as you seem to think, hindering it.

These kind of highly negative attitudes will drive away potential mappers, not encourage them. I have made it perfectly clear any mapping should be done with thought and consideration for others, ground based or otherwise. (on a side note I sincerely hope your edits such as ‘remove blind mapping’ and your seeming huge number of reverts had valid reasons. Because using StreetView or Bing as a source is not one, unless you know something different on the ground)

@ Vclaw. I have updated my post to reflect your concerns.

@ Vclaw I think you are misunderstand, I don’t change any names that are tagged with source:survey or local_knowledge. 99% of roads I tag are source:OS_StreetView without a name tag or do not exist at all. Street view does not include the names of small side streets.

I’m very careful not to destroy other people’s work. When I said some are surveyed, I mean’t some have been surveyed by me. Not that I change the names of surveyed roads because Locator might say something different.

As for the data being available already, that is entirely true, which is exactly why we shouldn’t be wasting time surveying roads that have already been surveyed by someone else largely accurately.

I would go further and suggest that all of this should have been dumped into OSM long ago just like the tiger data, and then checked. Rather than the opposite way around.

If OSM is to become even more popular surely it needs to offer something that other maps don’t have, which is detail and local knowledge. But a map with highly detailed pockets around where mappers live but in other areas doesn’t even have roads is a useless map. Which is why I’m all for using this data, then mappers can concentrate on adding the things that make this map so much better than any other.

@ Vclaw Yes some are surveyed, some are not. The fact of the matter is OS Data is generally accurate in areas I have looked at that have been surveyed on foot as well, at an estimate less than 1% errors.

We would need hundreds of thousands more mappers to survey every road in the country. Currently there is around 3000 active on any given day in the entire world, that expectation seems unrealistic to me, after all we are all doing this as a hobby rather than a full time job.

I’d rather have a tiny amount of naming errors than no road at all. Street signs can also be wrong. Data can always be updated to correct any errors.

All named roads that I create (that are not surveyed) are tagged with source and source:name. So there is no doubt about where the information is from and the relative accuracy of it.

No doubt ideally every street and every building and every sign post and every path and every tree should be surveyed, but honestly I’d rather have a usable map within this century.

I can understand there is a left turn Alex, but it certainly isn’t off the side of the bridge! :P

Sorry that should read *any sign of* not any sign of any indication. But yes I agree, maybe someone should contact them?

If this is OSM data should it not be attributed according to http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright? I had a look and couldn't see any sign of any indication where the map data has come from at all :/