6: Via Local ou Estrada Vicinal

The request for a differential rendering of paved/unpaved highways has been requested to Mapnik developers 6 years ago (continues [here])(https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/110). But as far as I know there is still no progress there. Rendering unpaved roads different would be a unique feature for OSM/Mapnik which would help a lot for OSM to gain popularity here.

Also adapting the OSM highway classification to South American highways has been challenging. For Brazil we agreed to use a classification scheme called schema_br2013 following a rather complex flowchart. The idea is that if you map a highway following this flowchart you should add the tag source:highway=schema_br2013. Should the consensus change in the future it makes is a bit more simpler to change by chasing the schema_br2013 value. In this scheme we agreed to keep unpaved highways mostly as tertiary if they are important and as unclassified if they are of lesser importance or if they are very narrow.

Dear @Tordanik

About your question: There’s one thing I wonder about, though: If there are only 2 active mappers in that metropolitan area, where does all the data come from? Have there been other contributors in the past that are no longer active? Most of the data was there already when I started in 2012 and was added by users which I have never seen in mailing lists. I assume most of them have left the project. It would seem that the amount of experienced users is not really growing. I know of only one active user who moved away and is still mapping in another Brazilian city.

To @davespod : I beg your pardon?

Deat @Stalfur

about your comment: I The big picture is of course the trade-off, how many potential users do we lose if we start creating tiers where the bottom tier can’t do much?

I don’t think that protecting new, and not-so-new users from themselves would be counter productive, on the contrary.

One simple and effective way would be to introduce expertise levels in iD, something like “beginner”, “intermediate” and “advanced”. These could be set by the user himself, with “beginner” being the default level. For example, at the “beginner” level relations would not be editable and no deletions of any kind would be allowed. Afterwards, if the user feels more confident mapping and using iD he could change this to a higher level.

But then there is another pressing question: how many experienced users are we loosing because they are getting tired of seeing their work shred to pieces all the time?

Dear @SimonPoole

thank you for telling me that this is only a minor problem and that everything is easy to fix.

I wish I could agree.

You are invited to see my next diary entry where I report exactly what you are suggesting. I send each of the new users a very kind and cheerful welcoming message. Unfortunately I can only send that message after some of them have done their damage already.

I wish I could send these messages upon registration instead for waiting them to do their first edit. My experience however is that sometimes quite a lot of trouble follows even after sending our messages.

Dear @keithonearth

Obviously, everybody as the potential do cause lot of damage. However, the pattern that is overwhelming the few active users here in Brazil are those new users, who have just signed up, and start messing up the map in some very amazing ways.

You are correct, I am not proposing any particular solution, I am suggesting that the integrity of the map should become a priority, a principle that should be embedded into the design of of the OSM system. I don’t really know how to rely on a map for my everyday use knowing that key elements could be wiped away or messed up in a matter of minutes.

Some colleagues suggested modifying iD for that. I agree. However iD is just the editor of the moment. Previously we had potlatch with identical problems. As smartphones and tables get more popular other editors such as vespucci will be used and so on. It has to become a guiding principle.

On your comment: You say both that the map needs protection but that we shouldn’t “heighten the barrier to becoming a contributor”. I’m not sure how these work together. Let me ask you this: if you had the option, would you chose learning to drive in a car without seat belts, air bags or without instructor controls? When I started editing I was very afraid to break things. In fact, I felt so insecure that I almost gave up. If I knew there were safeguards, either at system level or at user interface level, I would have started with a lot more confidence.

Protecting the map is not prohibition. Suppose you have some family pictures on you computer that are very important to you, you could write-protect them to avoid accidental deletions. I honestly don’t see why a similar scheme would not work on OSM. It would give everybody a lot more confidence about the map itself and would be far less workload than constantly finding and undoing random damages.

And your next questions says it all: However, what is more important for me to know as a new editor is what can I do to avoid doing damage? you shouldn’t have to worry, but in the way the system works now you have to. Currently, the best thing you can do is to never delete anything without knowing what you are doing and start to take part in a email list or user forums.

@SomeoneElse: that is the point, it was in the UK. Compare the amount of mappers in the UK and in Brazil. I would guess that in Brazil we have 1% of the number of mappers that UK has, but perhaps even that number is optimistic. Now compare the size of the two countries. Here in Brazil it is not unusual to find this type of problems only months after. In one extreme case, a illegal import was found 5 years late, and it was a huge import.

Here a new user just deleted submarine cables https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/187929815/history

Dear Pieren

if you start with a small community and an empty map, that should be largely OK even for a large country. If there is nothing, then you can not damage it.

However, the Brazilian map is not empty any longer, but the community is still very small and the country is huge.

We feel overburdened by problems which could be very easily prevented without limiting the freedom of anybody.

Essentially the influx of new users in Brazil exceeds the capacity of the small local community to cope.

Dear Pieren,

you did not catch the spirit of my comment: we don’t have a CROWD of mappers in Brazil.

I found your comment disheartening and very disappointing. I have made no suggestion that we should become like wikipedia and it is not me who uses “the wikipedia of maps” as an opening line all the time. What I am suggesting is that some level of protection to the map would do us a lot of good and we would stop overburdening our experienced mappers (at least here in Brazil).

I also have made no suggestion of “heighten the barrier to becoming a contributor”. On the contrary. A new mapper needs to have confidence that his/hers initial edits are not breaking anything. I see that as lowering the barrier, very much like learning how to drive on a quiet residential street instead as on a busy highway.

About your comment “BTW, when it comes to destroying relations: when fixing administrative boundaries, I noticed experienced users are at least as good in this as beginners are.” I would agree, except that in Brazil the damage of new users by far outnumbers that of experienced users. Besides, experienced users are talking to each other all the time and those things end up corrected more quickly. New users don’t participate in mailing lists, they don’t even know such exists. We have to find out about them and their edits. It is a painful and laborious manual process.

When I have to tell a new user that we had to revert his edits, the reaction is often of frustration and dismay. I would prefer telling a new user “go ahead, do your mapping, the system is safe, you are in no danger in breaking anything”. I think this would encourage a lot more people to contribute then the present system.

Oi BladeTC

você está assinando a lista Talk-BR? Se não está deveria pois é onde os mapeadores que atuam no Brasil discutem dúvidas como estas: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-br

por favor se inscreva a aproveite para se apresentar

abraços

Gerald