I am writing this because i am not sure who would be best to talk to. I map heavily in latin America and while looking around recently using the ITO maps I realized that a lot of edits had been made in a short amount of time in Guatemala and Honduras. (http://product.itoworld.com/map/129?lon=-88.44987&lat=15.72091&zoom=7)

It seemed like an import which I thought was unusual in Central America as there is usually not that much data to rely upon. Upon Closer look I realized that it was actually a huge mapping project with HOT OSM Like this one (http://tasks.hotosm.org/project/2461#).

But when I looked at the data I realized that the data is incredibly rough, incomplete with often times incorrect geometry and attributes. This area here (http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/15.6948/-90.3553) and here (http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/15.8144/-85.4953) help to illustrate the problem. Random sections of road are marked as high priority. Upon closer examination you will see that often times the geometry of these roads is also extremely rough, with many roads missing and the ones that are mapped seem to be have done at random.

On HOT osm the areas are almost completely marked finished with no reviews. as can be seen her on project 9, 10, 11, 12, 13.

I am wondering what can be done to rectify this situation, and what can be done to prevent this in the future. It is very confusing to have this much low quality data being imputed into the map in mass like this. And to have this much low quality data dumped into the map lowers the quality of the data overall.

What can we do to fix this?

So I have been going on a mapping spree lately mapping the outer banks of North Carolina, but What I have begun to notice is the national park boundaries are covering up all the detail out there. Many parts of islands are simply specifically their coastlines, are covered with these giant green blobs called National Parks. Here is an example at Portsmouth Island

What is even more frustrating, is this rendering issue has already been solved, when looking at lakes around borders of national parks, we see the green get covered by the water, with only a green shaded line remaining above the water to represent the border of the national park. Here is an example at Fontana Lake. Is there anyway we can fix this, It seems like a simple fix, just get national parks over oceans to render the same way as national parks over lakes.

Is there any reason this cant be done?

I have thought of a couple work arounds, like making the border of the national parks the islands, or putting an area of water over the area affected by the green blob issue, so it would be rendered correctly, but I realized that this would be mapping for the render which is a no no.

So how do we get this fixed?

Edit: I think I found the problem, For some reason many of the national parks are labeled with the tag leisure=park. the wiki page clearly says this is not the appropriate way to tag National parks. The solution seems to be to go through and remove the tag leisue=park, which will fix the rendering issue, as well as follow best practices.

So I have been working a lot in Eastern Guerrero along the border with Oaxxa and have been making a lot of progress, I have been working my way down south of Tlapa de Comonfort working between a major secondary road and the border with Oaxxa. Lately progress has slowed somewhat because I have been running into a lot of paths. They are everywhere and seem to be more well traveled than the ones I have run across in other locations in Guerrero. I have not run into this problem in Chiapas because Chiapas tends to be more heavily wooded which tends to hide paths if there are any. Any way progress is being made as I slowly march to the sea. Once I get to the ocean, I think I may reset to the Tlapa de Comonfort and work my way North. My long term plan is to map all is to work my way west across Guerrero making north south passes across the state. This could take a very long time though, and in all likely hood I may return to Chiapas at some point. I would also like to map more heavily in Oaxxa and Puebla it could take a while though. Just the progress I have made in Guerrero has taken 9 months or so, and while it is detailed, it is only a small portion of the eastern part of the state.

This is where i have been working for reference.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=10/17.2320/-98.2727

So I have completed all the steps required for the Iredell County Address Import, and I am now waiting to hear back form two users in the area that I contacted. As of now everything is go, I have even created the user account for the upload, NorthCarolinaAddressImport. I plan on continuing onto other counties in North Carolina and uploading address data for them as well which is why i made the name North Carolina address import, and not Iredell County Address import, because i did not want to have to deal with 100 different user profiles.

Any thoughts? Anything i have forgotten?

I feel like this upload is pretty simple as there is practically no address data in Iredell county right now, and the address points will be able to be uploaded independently of other data already in the map.

Edit: I have followed all the steps on the Import guidelines page to the best of my knowledge. Some people were bringing this up.

Hello I know this is a little off topic here, but i could not find another place to ask this question.

I stumbled across Open Historical Map (http://www.openhistoricalmap.org/) Which is basically OSM but for historical stuff. Super cool and totally what i am in to. The problem is when i tried to create my account i never received my confirmation email. Does anyone know who I talk to over there to get my confirmation email so I can start contributing to OHM?

Also here is the info page for OHM if anyone is interested

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Open_Historical_Map

Edit: I hit the resend button again just now and it finally sent me the email more than 12 hours later ohh well.

So I am working in Puebla correcting features, and adding things, and i have noticed in some areas it is quite a mess. A lot of the mapping done in Puebla seems to have been done by mappers that did not have a full understanding of what they were doing. I have seen one way streets laid over top of one another in order to create a two way road, as well as more recently, someone who has drawn a ton of ways for the exclusive purpose of mapping bus routes.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/171830679#map=19/19.04544/-98.19009&layers=D

The ways are featureless except that they have been included in a route relation. They crisscross Puebla independent of any other features, and can get very jumbled in some areas.

The User who made them has gone inactive,

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/lebannen

My question is should I go ahead and start deleting all these miscellaneous bus routes? I estimate there to be about 10-20 of them and it would certainly clean up the map here. My impression is that the way this user mapped the bus routes is completely wrong and that right now they are just extraneous data.

So as I predicted, i was able to finish mapping all major roads in Chiapas Corner which I explained in my last post is what i have been calling this area

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=11/16.2440/-90.6509

I continued mapping for a little while in the Chiapas area, more to the west, and was able to add a significant amount of town names using the http://gaia.inegi.org.mx data. But as i expected, i started to get a little tired of mapping in Chiapas. After all i have done a lot there. So I have moved go Guerrero Mexico, where there is almost no mapping at all besides town names. Since I love mapping roads this is perfect. With a blank canvas I am going through and mapping major roads and am going to work my way down to smaller roads as time goes on.

As I have said in the past, I just let the flow of the mapping take me where i want to go, it helps to keep from getting tired. So for now it is Guerrero and the rural areas where there is almost no roads.

Cant wait to turn blank map into something full of data!!!

Sunfishtommy

Mapping las Margaritas can be very time consuming so I have moved back to the Backcountry of Chiapas. I estimate that I have mapped 95% of the roads in the lower right corner, not counting the tracks which are relatively unimportant and extremely numerous in the area. What I am calling the lower right corner of Chiapas is basically the flat lands that are to the south east of Parque Natural Montes Azules within Chiapas. I estimate that within the week I will finish mapping all major roads, and residential roads within this lower right corner of Chiapas. I have begun adding names to the towns using what I find in Google Maps, It seems to be trust worthy, as on more than one occasion the names have been supported by signage within Google Street-view. I also hope to finish adding all the names of these small towns in the lower right corner within the week.

So what is next?

I have already begun expanding into Guatemala. So far I have constrained myself to the obvious natural borders with the area, Río Chixoy(OSM)/Río Negro(Google Maps) has been my main constraint to the south Mapping here is practically finished with lower right corner Chiapas. My main constraint to the east has been Río Salinas(OSM)/Río Negro(Google Maps) to the East. This is actually the same river as Río Chixoy(OSM)/Río Negro(Google Maps) and I will need to do research to find the correct name. Río Salinas(OSM)/Río Negro(Google Maps) is the eastern border of Chiapas so for the most part this is finished as well.

The plan of action right now, is to see where the edits take me. But the plan is that I will continue to the north on MEX 301 and finish off the last bits of lower right corner to the north of Benemérito de las Américas, and finish the major highway editing within lower right corner!!! =D After that the I will probably move to 3 major areas. First East of Lower Right Corner in northern Guatemala where similar to Lower Right Corner’s condition a year ago there is virtually no basic highway data. A name personal name is pending for this area, but I will likely just keep calling it East of Lower Right Corner This area should go relatively quickly as the roads main roads are very strait, and with no guarantee on the accuracy of the of the satellite imagery as far as offset, accuracy of every 2˚ bend is not critical. The main constraining factor to this area is imagery as there is no imagery to east.

After this The next obvious place to map is the River Lands which is what i call the area to the west of Lower Right Corner in Chiapas. I plan to expand to the north and west in this area, until eventually mapping everything east of Las Margaritas. I am also working on adding basic highway data in the areas to the south of the River Lands in Guatemala. The main constraining factor here is again no satellite data to the south. The imagery is also somewhat dated as there has been recent construction of a new major highway in the area, this is the limiting factor tow the west in this area of Guatemala. in the River Lands only so much mapping can be done to the west, as the quality of the satellite imagery degrades, and there is a large number of clouds making mapping difficult. This means that once basic expansion has been done to the south and west, the obvious place to expand to is to the north where the satellite imagery is of relatively high quality.

This is all just a basic plan, and subject to change, but I have found in the past that working in areas where there is a clear direction to expand in is helpful in preventing exhaustion as when there are no constraints, such as in the campo areas of Puebla, it is easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of area to be mapped.

Well that is mostly it for now I will update as time goes on.

Got a little bored of mapping the back country of Chiapas so i began mapping Las Margaritas which i had started about a year ago but only placed a few of the many streets. I have now finished 2 out of the 4 main street quadrants. I am choosing to map it like this because the street names are divided into 4 quadrants. Once I complete the main streets within the city I plan to move to map the surrounding area and towns from Las Margaritas.

I may return to the Backcountry of Chiapas before I completely finish the Las Margaritas area. staying in one place too long can get boring.

Las Margaritas

Backcountry area of Chiapas I have been mapping