cool. i’m downloading it now, will give it a whirl. i might be interested in helping supplement the code to support US specific things i’m mapping.

current JOSM requires java 7; the last java available direct from apple was java 6, so you’ll need a java 7 installer from Obstacle, er, Oracle to pull this off. but it worked just fine on my old (2007) macbook pro (OS X Lion) and it is now working fine on my new Macbook air (OS X Mavericks)

as near as i can tell, a lot of the early tiger stuff was hand drawn maps that was then entered in more-or-less the correct place without any reference to imagery. the stuff is topologically correct but off by large amounts in places. the worst i’ve seen is in WV which, of course, is part of Appalachia as jumbanho points out. best approach would be to use the tiger 2012/3 layers as reference for moving things to the right place. maybe we could find a way to load up maproulette with areas that have particularly bad correspondence?

i’ve seen stuff like this in WV. i think there was a lot of hand drawing of maps in the field followed by data entry without supporting aerial imagery in some areas. that would account for the good topology and bad localization.

aha got it. had to reload the page to get it to fetch hydrants

interesting. i’m looking at the Albany, New York area where i’ve entered lots of hydrants and they’re not showing up. any ideas?

and i just found the tutorial, so that helps a lot, but it took a bit of clicking around to locate the link to it.

i appreciate the ongoing effort; i have a copy on my nexus 7 and have played with it a bit. the main thing, though, is that i have found it a little difficult to follow along with the evolving UI. for example, right now i’m looking at a node representing a fire hydrant, and if i tap on it, i get “unlock to edit”. i am quite unable to figure out how to “unlock” a node. i think vespucci has a lot of promise but it needs better documentation going forward.

having thought about this a little more, instead of permissions how about an “externally linked” tag supported by the editors, with appropriate warnings about modification of objects carrying such a tag? probably a much easier sell than the notion of access controls in the OSM database.

i generally like the idea of using : id to break things out. to protect things against arbitrary editing, i have found that just sticking a README tag in (in all caps as most editors will sort that to the top of the tags list) works for getting mapper's attention. i generally use the text to indicate why i want their attention; for this use case something like "warning: this object participates in external links for , do not delete without first contacting " might work out. i mention this because i'll wager that getting a permission system in OSM may be a very difficult political sell.

i think a better approach to the behavior of ada_s would have been to notify both the DWG and the contest organizers, and let them deal with it. deleting all of his work is a little too close to engaging in an edit war for me to be comfortable with it.

posting this is fine as far as i’m concerned. i’m downloading it from the play store now to give it a try

the TIGER name expansion had the advantage of the tiger: fields with the base name info mostly still being in place, which allowed for a number of sanity checks. an automated expansion is pretty risky otherwise. i agree with Jimmy, maybe maproulette is a better way to go for this.

there is an ongoing project to improve borders in NY state. consider your fixes to have been added to our todo list.

working on cleaning up around the Capital District of New York, and have sent a note to talk-us to inspire the US community to help with the clean up.

path is a more general concept. by adding access tags to it, you can end up with cycleway or footway, so obviously there’s a conceptual overlap. so i use footway if it is primarily a foot path, cycleway if it’s primarily a path for bicyclists. here in the US, we have true multi-use paths that don’t emphasize walking over cycling (or vice versa) and for those i use path, and add appropriate access tags.