<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sun, May 25, 2014 at 12:46 PM, stevea <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:steveaOSM@softworkers.com" target="_blank">steveaOSM@softworkers.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div id=":2s8" class="a3s" style="overflow:hidden">Thanks to the talk-us community for entertaining my grumpiness about this, but I truly believe there is a direct connection between asking OSMers to "map well" and the visual feedback (rewards? yes, I think so) we get by doing so. Sure, it's great that beaches (and many other mapped objects, usually named polygons that describe an area, like a beach, shopping center or many other "things") can be easily found from OSM's main map via a simply-type-it-in Nominatim search: that IS good. But when we see rendered labels disappearing, even when this is explained by the reason given, it can be disheartening. I DID "miss that" news/memo about this "since months" effort. Where might I have learned this?<br>
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I am (slowly, even after being an OSM volunteer for over five years) discovering there are ways to effect how our map looks (carto-issues bug reporting, the potential to enter a mapnik feature request -- where?). But I do think it would be helpful if these "assumed to be known by everybody" facts (they aren't!) were better promulgated. Either in our wiki somewhere, or with a link from the main page, or some other relatively easily findable method. I conscientiously read (and contribute to) our wiki pages, I follow talk-us, I explore code in github, I play around with rendering tools...yet about the machinations that make our map look and behave the way it does, on a day-to-day basis -- AND the changes that happen to it -- I seem to learn absolutely nothing. Until after the fact.<br>
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Let's say I were to carefully consider that I DO think beaches (a polygon with tags natural=beach and name=*) should render in mapnik. What else? Polygons tagged landuse=commercial that also have a name=Shopping Center tag? (Maybe). And a hundred other potential things that used to (accidentally) render, but are now not being rendered in the interests of not rendering "catch alls." Do I enter a feature request for each and every one of them? Maybe, as that means I considered each and every one of them. But how do WE consider each and every one of them? Do we even do that? I ask sincerely. It seems many mapnik render decisions on an ongoing basis are made in a vacuum. That doesn't feel very OSM to me.<br>
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In short: how might intermediate mappers like me better learn how our map is built and the processes which influence and effect changes within it? We should all have a stake in participating in these processes, should we wish to do so. That starts with better learning about them in the first place. I don't mean for it to seem like I think OSM's inner machinations are some big secret, I'm just asking for a bit of light to be shined along a path I can find this stuff out largely by myself.<br>
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I'm pretty smart and resourceful, and can easily be pointed to the right places and told "Go." But I don't know a whole heck of a lot of what and where are these resources. Thanks in advance for a wide swath of pointers to get me (us) started.</div>
</blockquote></div><br>+1<br><br clear="all"><div><br></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr"><div>@osm_seattle<br></div><div><a href="http://osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us" target="_blank">osm_seattle.snowandsnow.us</a></div><div>OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch</div>
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