Welcome! If you do choose to go down the path of the proposal process, I would potentially be willing to assist in the proposal drafting. It is certainly a bunch of work to get a proposal through, but it's hard because it's worth doing. I have a proposal in process now and a few others (hopefully) in the pipeline.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:ZeLonewolf -Brian On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 4:53 PM Anders Torger <and...@torger.se> wrote: > I'd love to help out if the workload and chance of success was reasonable, > but I'm a bit wary about the tagging proposal process. Most of my mapping > contributions is simple things like correcting and adding roads so all the > various online route planners (and indeed bike computers) that use OSM in > one way or another can work in the areas I spend time. For that the map > does not need to be complete at all, I just need a graph of roads, and I > use the regular government-provided maps to actually scout the area. > > Recently I got more interested in trying to make actual complete and good > cartography, make maps that accurately describes the area (to a certain > detail level) and doesn't require "a real map" on the side for scouting, in > other words make OSM to be a real map in the areas I live. It would also be > nice if one could make hiking maps for the mountains. This is an extremely > ambitious goal, in Scandinavia, and probably many more countries, we are > used at having really great cartography from a special cartography > institute which is a part of the government. Previously the maps were > expensive to get and you could only get it on paper. Today the main aspects > exists for free in digital form (which is a good thing, it's made with tax > payers' money after all). Here, this is the gold standard for a > general-purpose map. > > However, when I see there are some key features missing in OSM to be able > to reach that level, and each of those little features may take years of > processing from proposal to actual implementation in a renderer (and even > if a proposal goes through, I suppose it's not guaranteed that it may be > implemented), then it feels like it's just too much for me, as I'm involved > in many other volunteer projects too. Mapping is not even my main project. > > To make this happen it seems like I will end up with having to implement > my own style and have my own tile server and using my own tags... it's just > not feasible. What I have done so far in my own mapping applications which > works sort of fine is to use ready-made government maps in a custom layer > for the more zoomed out map (and indeed have an own tile server for that), > and then switch to OSM for the most zoomed in levels. The limitations in > name handling and missing names for large areas is less noticed when fully > zoomed in. But it would be really cool if one could use OSM for the whole > cartography experience. > > As far as I understand, OSM is supposed to be a decentralized and > semi-anarchistic consensus community that's why the proposal process looks > like it does, but somehow I was hoping for that there was a strategic work > group with access to professional cartography expertise that on their own > could recognize, pick up, and implement both the feature and the guideline > for baseline type of "must have" features, while tagging proposal process > would be for more exotic things. > > I'm afraid that with this thorough long-haul process and still pretty > basic cartography features lacking, we may never see them. I understand > that OSM is a geo database, not a map as such, and it seems like the actual > map-making hasn't been a top priority but left to third parties, and this > may be a reason that features required for top quality cartography has been > left unimplemented for so long. > > Another thing with these naming features is while they are indeed > important to reach professional-grade maps, you need to be a very patient > and persistent perfectionist to actually care (sort of like an old-school > cartographer), and have the endurance to continue to care. It's much easier > to just skip the names that can't be mapped, or make them as a point and > not care that zoomed out maps don't work well. We've seen plenty of > desperate/chaotic use of place=locality tag just to get names when there is > no real support. > > If that's the case, then it maybe is better to just relax, let go, and let > OSM be what it is today and not try achieve what it can't do. For me this > means going back to just doing road work, and switch to the government maps > anytime I need a real map. I'm fine with that. > > On 2020-11-06 20:19, Andrew Harvey wrote: > > All great points there, I've ran into many of those myself. If you're > interested in helping work on solutions to these, discussion here is > probably the best place to start, once ideas gain some momentum you can > start a tagging proposal > https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposal_process. Going through that > process takes a huge amount of time, effort and communication, but usually > results in well rounded documentation and considers a wide range of > scenarios and creates better tags than just "using whatever tags you like". > > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging > > > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging >
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