[Historic] welcome Historic OpenStreetMap, introductions

[Mikel Maron]

Hi

A long time coming (though not at all approaching the time ranges we'll be dealing with) here's the OSM Historic list.
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/historic


I wrote up this description for what this list is about. It's not the finest crafted bit of text in the world, and you may even disagree with it, but here's my best conception of what we're about here. We can refine.

This may now be the moment for OpenHistoricalMap. There's a critical mass of interest in exploring open collaboration of historic geodata. 

It makes a good deal of sense to approach this from the experience of OpenStreetMap. An open database and API, & free tagging with community discussion is a proven model for collaboration among a diverse set of uses. The software ecosystem offers much to build off: the API, renderer, editors, gazateer... 

Question for anyone who's looked at this closely is how tightly linked into OSM.org should this be. As is, you can easily specify time delimited tags (start_date=*, end_date=*), but the OSM tool chain does not have in-built awareness for them. For an example of the problem, here's the situation for multiple years of Burning Man (http://osm.org/go/Tc4Ki1bp-). Should OSM.org itself become time-aware, or rather, should OSM.org continue to represent only the "present moment"? No matter the answer, there's one good and feasible approach here to the broader question, and in any case, OHM will benefit.



There's a lot to talk about, and there's a lot to experiment with. First, let's convene. A few of us have already joined the list. Feel free to extend the invite to other folks interested in this topic. And please do _introduce yourself_ and how you're interested in historic mapping.

As for doing, I had in mind...

* Build a few solid example target use cases for OHM. A historic NYC gazateer. Mapping before and after effect of new oil industry infrastructure in Tanzania. Visualize Burning Man over the years.
* Set up software infrastructure to experiment, including custom, time sensitive render, filters for editing in JOSM, etc.
* Hash things out and do brilliant stuff.

Also curious to hear about other projects out there that overlap, and what kind of data is out there.


Welcome!

Mikel
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