[Talk-us-massachusetts] mass-trails.org, OSM, Covid-19

[Jason Remillard]

Hello OSMer's,

I maintain the mass-trails.org website. It is a hobby project,
providing a user friendly view of OSM in MA focusing on hiking and
conservation properties.

If you have been mapping trails and conservation properties in MA over
the past number of years, your work has had a direct and positive
impact by helping many people to go outside and take a safe walk. The
tiny mass-trails site attracted 250,000 visits this year. I am sure if
you could count the commercial users of OSM like strava and all
trails, the actual reach of OSM is many times higher.

The site was not getting updated much this year because of some
technical issues. Pushing an updated map required many manual steps
and fighting with ftping 50,000 files. The site is now hosted on Azure
and the download+build+deployment cycle is automated. It is fully up
to date date now, and should stay fresher going forward.

If you are a conservation/trail nerd, you might want to check out your
favorite properties since the site makes it easy to spot mistakes in
OSM. Happy mapping...

Jason