[HOT] Kenyan or African OSM community?

Daniel Westergren westis at gmail.com
Tue Aug 27 07:02:20 UTC 2013


2013/8/23 Mikel Maron <mikel_maron at yahoo.com>

> > I think it would be great with a tagging page for Africa or even more
> generally for "subtropical" regions
>
> Agreed, we could build off the North Africa tagging page (either
> incorporate content there, or just rename the page). I'm not sure the best
> way to capture all of it with a name ... subtropics/tropics doesn't capture
> all areas which might have this kind of infrastructure, nor do all areas
> there have this kind of infrastructure (ie Florida vs N India). "Developing
> Infrastructure" might work? (Of course, any definition of developing is
> problematic...)
>

I'd suggest renaming the page to avoid confusion. Perhaps Africa to start
with and extend it to whatever term is better to include countries
traditionally referred to as "developing countries". Or why not even use
that term, since it's well established, although criticized? Then mappers
can find it more easily, possibly redirect from terms like "Africa", "South
America" and "India" as well.

Also the Mali Highway
page<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mali_Highway_tag>should be
renamed to the name of its page: Highway Tag Africa, or similar.

Is there an established workflow for adding new recommendations on those
wiki pages?

A couple of other questions that have come up relating tags in "developing
countries":

   - How to tag a fence of dry bushes laid on the ground to protect from
   animals? Particularly in northern Kenya it's common to fence the enclosure
   where animals stay at night, as well as the entire enclosure for a
   family/families, that way. Hedge refers more to planted living bushes.
   Perhaps barrier=dry_bushes?
   - I'd also suggest to add the intermittent tag to the HOT presets for
   rivers and streams. Virtually all rivers and streams in northern Kenya are
   intermittent. Possibly combine the preset with the seasonal tag.
   - Lastly I'd suggest a consensus on when to use highway=track or
   highway=residential within villages. In small villages where the "road" is
   more of a track, only suitable for 4WD's, then it feels more logical using
   track even within residential areas. It makes it stand out from "real
   roads".




> When are you next in Kenya?
>

I'll be in Kenya in August next year. But I'm also trying to engage those
who helped mapping parts of northern Kenya with Google Mapmaker. Leonard
Ouma, a former Google Mapmaker advocate in Kenya, has already introduced
himself on this list and will engage his fellow mapper friends too.


This is addictive! :D

/Daniel
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