[Talk-GB] Windermere and Rydal Water - missing

[Nick Whitelegg]

On 24/03/2013 12:46, Nick Whitelegg wrote:


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>To reply to your points:
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>1. Firstly I don't think I have ever responded in a "rant" style fashion on the OSM mailing lists before, but could you please qualify your insulting first comment? Are you simply a troll, are are you simply so pathetic and small-minded not to realise that a) Freemap is a hobbyist project and is thus inevitably subject to limitations in server power and b) any time I spend on it is my own spare time, I am unable to work on it 24/7? If you think it could be improved I suggest you check out the source code at https://github.com/nickw1/Freemap and contribute, rather than pathetically insulting and denigrating a lot of hard work? I do You are the first person I have ever launched a "rant" at in eight years of contributing to OSM - well done ;-) Come back when you have some positive suggestions as to how I can improve Freemap without needing to invest more money in it, or when you have some source code to contribute, otherwise....
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>2. I always thought lakes were simply represented as natural=water. Anything special about these two which suggests they shouldn't?  True, they have islands in them but so does Derwentwater.
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>Nick
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>Nick

>I didn't realise you were the creator of FM, but that wouldn't
    change my opinion of your work. 

I see. That's why I suggested troll to be honest, I thought it was a deliberate wind-up. If so, I apologise and take that suggestion back.

>Was it you who informed me that, for
    some reason it intentionally doesn't display Bristol &
    surrounds? How is a map that leaves >out chunks of data meant to be
    taken seriously?

You could use the same argument to argue that OS maps should not be taken seriously because they do not show France. Or IGN maps should not be taken seriously because they don't show the UK. Freemap is not claming to be a "map of all the UK" but just parts. If some part is missing, that's just the way it is. Don't use it. But don't publicly use aggressive forms of criticism like "it's a joke" on public mailing lists.  

FYI the reason why the whole of the UK is not there is because I do not have the necessary RAM and disc space on the server to handle it. Such things cost money. I earn nothing providing it. 

>How long has FM been going? 3/4 years? in my
    experience of (trying) to use it I would say it's actually got more
    unusable over >that time. I've always thought the "why don't you help
    then" counter argument as weak. You put it out there, you have to
    take the >criticisms. 

Constructive suggestions of improvement, yes. Cheap  insults, no. Freemap  is a hobby project, it never offers the sort of guarantees that paying customers would expect. It's something I do in my spare time. For fun. If you can't hack that, so be it.

>It has however, revised my opinion of you:
>It's disappointing you don't understand the internet meaning of a
    troll. In point two I was clearly giving you help, which, from your
    >reply, you appear not to have taken.

See above - this was a misunderstanding as I thought you knew that I developed Freemap. I apologise again. 

>I replied to you thinking you were a user of FM & wanted to
    point out that it was not a stable platform to test the integrity of
    OSM. >However as the creator of FM you must be aware of it's
    limitations, so to use it as a basis to see if something is missing
    in OSM is >foolish, & to then assume it's the OSM data that's
    incorrect, is IMO, arrogant.

I checked Potlatch too and found no natural=water polygon on there, hence I thought it had been deleted, accidentally or via vandalism. Not just Freemap. I wouldn't have just used Freemap  only to report a possible bug. 

>"I haven't done a lot of work with multipolygons so I'll let someone
    with more experience sort it out."
>Brilliant. As that's the case, doesn't it stand to reason you
    should: 
>a) Learn about the subject?
>B) Check your own software first?

See above - was not just my own software. I actually thought the tagging had changed, to natural=lake or something. That was my initial thought. I wouldn't have mailed reporting the issue had I gone into the editor and found some other tagging.

Yes, I ought to learn about multipolygons, fair enough. 

But I'm afraid that I still think it is very rude to use unconstructive criticism such as "a joke" on the public mailing list.
Running Freemap is a constant battle with resource limitations, I'm doing my best. I don't claim that it's bug-free or couldn't be improved. But you should also realise that it's a hobby and one of many OSM-related projects I'm working on in my own time. I'm not trying to serve paying customers.

And to put the record straight, it was the "joke" comment that made me react. If that hadn't been present, I would not have responded in the same way. These sorts of comments can make people afraid to even release anything in the wild.

Anyway, I have no wish to continue this on the public mailing list, if you have any more comments please email privately.

Nick
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