[talk-au] LTUAE

[John Inkson]

Hi from another newbie

By way of introduction I have been mapping only for a few weeks.  Based in
the Northern Beaches area of Sydney.  Heard about OSM on a forum I belong to
and took a look.  Have played around a bit extracting data from the map and
making my own routable map for the gps.  I have a particular interest in
travelling long distances and thought that OSM would be a great resource for
adding stuff that I research e.g. 24 hour petrol stations in rural areas and
sharing that with other like minded people. 

Initially cut my teeth on some small modifications like adding detail to
poi's fixing a couple of local street names speed limits etc, even put in a
driveway at the local kfc up the road whoo hoo.  Ended up duplicating spit
road / military road from spit bridge to neutral bay and tried very hard not
to break anything along the way.  Turned out ok I think, and I even
discovered Tramway Lane at Neutral Bay which was a real buzz :)

Very sad to see so much go but somehow I get the feeling that OSM is here to
stay and although various australian cities and rural centres have been hit
very hard by the redaction process I have no doubt it will be rebuilt to
it's former glory.  Just may take a while for the detail to get populated.
The map was blank once before right?

I travel a fair bit and spend a lot of time travelling from Sydney to taree,
sydney melbourne by various routes, nsw south coast and quite a bit in the
central west of NSW.  Off to Border Village on the SA / WA border next week
for a beer and a hamburger and stay overnight and then come back to sydney
so will have the opportunity maybe to do some minor mapping on the way back
home.  Planning to be away 4 days total. Meeting with a largish group of
"travellers" and will take the opportunity to see if I can encourage some
participation from that diverse group who meet there once a year and live
all over australia.  In fact that might even be some of those in here
already, I'm not sure.

I have been working on through roads mainly, and intend to continue to do
that until I can "go places".

Once that main stuff I know is done I will start on the local area say from
Dee Why to Mosman if I haven't collapsed into a screaming heap by then.

So far I have done:

Metroad 10 from Neutral bay to Mona Vale.

Pittwater road from Brookvale to Manly, sydney road to seaforth and
wakehurst parkway to narrabeen

Metroad 3 from mona vale to the pacific highway (will continue along ryde
road tomorrow if I get a chance.

The pacific Highway from gore hill to pearces corner at hornsby.

State highway 29 boundary street roseville through warringah road dee why.

Forest way from frenchs forest to terry hills.

Sydney newcastle freeway from pennant hills road north to mount white so
far.  Just going a little more slowly there as I fix up a couple of
interchagnes etc.

Have been aligning the roads to gps traces or on some minor streets where I
have been where there are very few or no traces to bing imagery.

Also done various other through roads in our local area.



A couple of questions:


1. I am still getting my head around a couple of things regarding relations
and just want to check I am on the right track.  Basically I ended up
copying from examples where they were available.  But for metroad 10 for
example, there were 2 x relations for metroad ten.  I expected they were for
north and south bound routes as that is the way they appeared to be listed
in some other areas I checked so that is what I have done.  Put one relation
for north and the other for south.  If that's not right let me know and I
will fix.  Not sure how a routing relation works anyway.

2. for the road naming where the ref tag for metroad 10 was MR10 I have
changed those to network=MR and ref=10.  Same for the other roads I have
worked on.  Not *certain* that is correct though either so if someone could
enlighten me would be good thanks.

3. state highway 29 continues from boundary street along pacific highway and
then along delhi road, which makes that small section of the pacific highway
sh29 *and* mr1.  what should I use to reflect that?


Just my own view on the redaction process.  No issue with people who
declined the licence agreement.  However it was annoying for me to see one
of the very first things I used for practice vanish in a puff of smoke. It
was just a building outline, a coles supermarket.  I named it, put in the
opening hours, telephone number, full address details eg addr: city: etc
etc.  I turned it into a thing of beauty by entering approx 10 odd pieces of
information, just for practice and learning.  I thought it a bit harsh just
because someone traced a building roof everything I added went as well.
Tracing the building would have taken less than a minute.  I spent 40
minutes researching and entering that extra detail on that single item.

No big deal, it was just practice (and learning) after all, but after that
and then seeing a couple of the ways I had drawn go as well because I had
connected a new and dead straight way to a bad node, and then along with
what I have seen around makes me realise the amount of work that other
people have done adding bits of information to have it split by a decliner
and then deleted by the bot, or just all the detail lost because the
original way traced from aerial imagery goes and the work of a thousand
hands after that is not enough to retain it.  Very very sad. Anyway what's
done is done and one moves on I guess.

If it is any encouragement, for the old hands around in here.  I am only new
by a few weeks and I knew full well what was coming re the redaction
process.  I've decided to hang around and do what I can.  So, I came here at
"the worst" time and have decided to stay.  I don't think I will be alone in
that.  There will be others as well.

Sorry for the long post and have a million other questions no doubt but I
will leave it at that for the moment.

See you on the road.


John