[Talk-us] [OSM-talk] Your opinion about SOTM US

Greg Morgan dr.kludge.gm at gmail.com
Mon Mar 23 07:37:47 UTC 2015


On Thu, Mar 19, 2015 at 9:11 PM, Alex Barth <alex at mapbox.com> wrote:

>
> On Wed, Mar 18, 2015 at 3:40 AM, Greg Morgan <dr.kludge.gm at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Thanks for another TIGER tool.  I used it to look at some areas and made
>> changes.  The map reminds me of another map that MapBox produced several
>> years ago using a slider tool.
>> Useful features:
>> * Timely updates.  The old slider map was never updated and lost value
>> after a couple of edits.  Oh! I see that my edits showed up.  The problem
>> is how do you remove the yellow TIGER data?
>>
>
> Yea..... this is on my far-out backlog. A live (or daily) updated TIGER
> diff map, ideally at first showing only major roads.
>
>
>> * iD, Potlach, JOSM, remote control features.
>>
>
> What do you mean by that?
>


Often I will go to the OSM site to look around.  If I see something
interesting, then I will use the edit menu option to started editing the
area in JOSM..   I am not sure what your plans are with the tool. If the
tool only has a web browser interface like the current version, then having
an "edit in" drop down feature would be really useful. Since there are few
major visual clues in this great low contrast map, I find it hard locate
the same area in JOSM when I switch from web browser to JOSM.

Perhaps I am experiencing beta blues?  I found the secret hand shake to use
the map in JOSM as a tracing layer:  tms[21]:https://{switch:a,b,c}.
tiles.mapbox.com/v4/lxbarth.647bc246/{zoom}/{x}/{y}.png?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoibHhiYXJ0aCIsImEiOiJFVXdYcUlvIn0.bbaHTEWlnAwGgyVwJngMdQ
<http://tiles.mapbox.com/v4/lxbarth.647bc246/%7Bzoom%7D/%7Bx%7D/%7By%7D.png?access_token=pk.eyJ1IjoibHhiYXJ0aCIsImEiOiJFVXdYcUlvIn0.bbaHTEWlnAwGgyVwJngMdQ>
If this is your ultimate design, then I am sure my "edit in" drop down
feature request would be puzzling.


Yup. We're cautious and trust the TIGER data only where it coincides w/
> imagery and there we trace off the imagery and don't just take the TIGER
> data. Sometimes you run into situations where you just don't know whether
> TIGER's right or the imagery (a lot of imagery is pretty old on Bing) - in
> these cases we just don't touch the data, maybe drop a note.
>
> There are also many places where TIGER is just flat out behind - an
> opportunity for community and government to work more closely together.
>


I spent some quality time editing with the map on Friday and Saturday.
There were some great improvements that I made in OSM while using your
Better than OSM map.  In practice, I had Bing, MapBox Satellite, Tiger
2012, Tiger 2014, and your Better than OSM as background imagery. Between
ITOWorld Tiger Fixup [1], Better than OSM, and Battle Grid,  Better than
OSM comes in second place to the ITOWorld map.  Both ITOWorld and your map
provide me more precision than Battle Grid.  That's just my way of working
and preferences.

1. Better than OSM made me reexamine areas that I thought were mostly
complete. One of the issues I have with ITOWorld and Battle Grid is that
the colors can obscure single roads that have not been reviewed.   I found
that Better than OSM threw all those issues in my face in the area that I
was editing. The same yellow at all zoom levels is also a plus.  Not sizing
the line width between the highway=* tags is also a plus.  The simple
styling made me see all issues clearly.

2. I needed the other two TIGER maps to add missing names for some roads.
The yellow contrast is great and keeps the map simple but is missing the
names.

3. I concur about TIGER being behind.  Some of the yellow lines where
"stray" roads that had not been cleaned up in the TIGER data.  The "stray"
lines really did not point to where TIGER was better than OSM.

4. Since some of these "stray" roads do not touch other OSM roads, I don't
know how you would "turn off" the yellow TIGER line once OSM had been fixed
or that TIGER data had been determined to be a false positive.  If feels
like you would have to have a tiger:reviewed="yes" interface or something
like what Keepright uses to turn off the "stray" roads in Better than OSM
map.  Perhaps some sort of attribute can be kept in the "flagging" data.
You could then pass the information on to the government as you note in the
community and government working closer with each other comment.

5. I found that painting OSM highways white without bridges or tunnels an
issue.  I went to these areas thinking that the there was a problem because
there were yellow lines in the area too.  I found the bridge and moved on.
There may be some other data to add to the white OSM layer but I am not
sure what that would be right now.

Thanks for the tool.  I am not sure how long it will be available but I did
find it useful for a number editing tasks.

Regards,
Greg

[1] http://www.itoworld.com/map/162?lon=-112.09148&lat=33.53444&zoom=11
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/attachments/20150323/fa1fbb2c/attachment.html>


More information about the Talk-us mailing list