[Talk-us] OpenStreetMap Isn't All That Open, Let's Change That and Drop Share-Alike

[Minh Nguyen]

On 18:28 2014-03-16, Greg Morgan wrote:
> And now for something completely different: It's the cartographers that
> are limiting the project adoption and burnout rate for contributors.
> Here's your next bottle neck to work on.

Then after that: addresses. :-)

> I understand how difficult it is to render the world.  However, I
> consider that the current method of data distribution and the rendering
> chain is broken.  I don't have a better solution yet but here's a
> problem that is right in MapBox's wheel house that can be fixed without
> a costly and damaging license change. When Alex says, "OpenStreetMap's
> purpose is to democratize who decides what's on the map" that's not true
> based on what is actually rendered.  It is an oligarchy of cartographers
> that determine what is on the map and not the democracy of what the
> mappers have placed in the database.
>
> Vector tiles are not the solution if the resulting tiles are the just
> more of the same minimalist map tiles.  We need a real mapper's map
> again.  We need tiles that are so butt ugly only a mother would hang the
> project tiles on her fridge because that's what little Johnny did in
> school today.  The type of butt ugly tiles I am talking about are
> something like Tiles at Home,
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tiles@Home.  The magic of T at H was
> that I was rewarded as a young mapper.  It was magic when I saw the
> first traffic=hump that I added to the database show up on the map.
>   From there, it was an Easter egg hunt to find traffic calming humps as
> I could while I fixed tiger data.

I had the same reaction when swimming pools started appearing on the 
Standard map.

> The cartographers are creating beautiful maps. I show people MapBox
> maps, Stamin Design, or Andy Allen's work.  However all these are just
> minimalist maps that do not show what the database is capable of and the
> type of data that the database contains.  Many people have to see it to
> believe it. Just as the iD editor has been viewed as an important piece
> of the puzzle, I view a mapper's map like Tiles at Home equally if not more
> important than the iD editor. Here's an example. I mapped a ta ta bar,
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/1801776750, It doesn't render. Another
> mapper put a poi of a nightclub,
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2354317861.  It doesn't render.  That
> was part of that mapper's first and last contribution.  The OSM process
> appears broken.  In Google maps, however, a mapper using map maker is
> rewarded with their efforts.  You can go to this same location and at
> least see what I call a "Google Donut"
> https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Candy+Store/@33.6555233,-112.0307235,20z.
>    The perception is that map maker works while iD, Potlatch, JOSM,
> Mercator are all broken.  Moreover, the mapper's map tiles can't be some
> side project that goes away like T at H did.  The butt ugly tiles need to
> be in the second slot on the OSM site and managed by OSM servers.  In a
> sense, I have off-boarded part of my mapping just like this mapper did.
>   I no longer map data of this type.  Why should I even put a sport tag
> with a leisure=pitch when all the the current tile set needs is is pitch
> to show a green blob? T at H would reward me with an icon that showed the
> actual type of playing field.  Being rewarded for mapping efforts
> encourages additional growth of the database.   Does nearing completion
> of the map mean showing highways only as all the current pretty map
> tiles show?

For all its rough edges, the osmarender/T&H map was great for showing 
people that OSM really does accept all manner of local knowledge. 
Anything with a store= tag could show up at the lowest zoom levels, just 
like on Google's map. (T&H also had very, very quick turnaround times, a 
feature we take for granted these days.)

Over the past few months, the Standard map has seen lots of improvements 
-- like offsetting administrative boundary labels! -- and I'm really 
grateful to the folks working on that effort. But there really does seem 
to be a drive to remove clutter from the map, starting with the fallback 
area labels. [1] I think it's a step backward. There are plenty of large 
features that aren't parks or golf courses: school grounds, residential 
subdivisions (estates), cemeteries, and retail developments no longer 
have labels at z14, causing the map to appear nearly unlabeled in 
suburban areas. [2]

It may be the case that a cleaner map will be less intimidating to new 
users. However, it should be possible to make the map dirtier, more 
crowded, if only to give each mapper an outlet for their detailed local 
knowledge. It is possible, of course, but we need to do a better job of 
communicating that fact.

[1] https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/351
[2] Compare <http://osm.org/go/ZTVUyTgl-> to 
<http://map.fosm.org/#map=14/39.3126/-84.318>

-- 
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us