I have the same issue and generally find the history view for an area pretty much useless as a result as the majority of the changes are outside the area.

I think limiting it on upload would cause issues for editors - they’d have to throw away work or carefully sort it out themselves - but the system could automatically split change sets into smaller change sets with spatial clustering.

Hey I'm glad people appreciates it!

I spent the best part of a day working on it - it always bothered me how bland the London parks look, so I think what there's now is a big improvement.

That said, it wasn't easy to do. If you don't know them, Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens do not generally have what I'd call 'woods' for the most part - the trees are fairly sparsely spaces in many areas. Even so, I've marked these as woods - I basically went from the aerial photos - if they looked fairly solid foliage from the air then I assumed they'd feel rather contained from the ground. At some point I'll pop down there and check on the ground for consistency.

The strong shadows on the trees were a mixed blessing - they make seeing the western edge of the woods hard, but they make seeing small individual trees easy!

There's also some areas that are full of small new trees (sound of the round pond), which I marked as wood. This was partly due to lazyness - I didn't want to mark every tree. Also, the intention there is clearly to create a wood, and given a few years I guess it will be one.

Anyway, glad it's appreciated - there's certainly a lot more trees that can be marked in London - both in the parks and in the streets. It's this kind of detail that raises OSM above the other maps available.

I was inspired to do this by Dulwich Park in South London, by the way :)

I've posted to your original post:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/rmw/diary/11605

I found this PDF that should, in theory tell you:

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/12321/response/31588/attach/3/PO%20Boxes%20A%20Z%202009.pdf

In practice though, your post box doesn't seem to be on it :(

I couldn't see any type that contained the word 'drive' in my quick search of it (i.e. drive-thru).

Going through all the post boxes in Rickmansworth, I couldn't find any that had a type that might match.

There's one 'Other', but that's at a golf club, and your picture doesn't look like a golf club to me!

http://www.wicks.org/pulp/part2.html has pictures of each letter box type, none match yours. Assuming the letters are assigned sequentially, yours must be type N or newer as type M is clearly older.

http://www.lbsg.org/ claim to be the letter box experts. Though they don't have a picture of your letter box.

If I trusted Doctor Who, I'd suspect your letter box is an alien in a rather poor disguise, as nobody has ever heard of it!

Welcome! Any questions - just ask :)

Welcome! Any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

Welcome!

Depending where you are, you should be able to do quite a lot even without a GPS - the Yahoo! imagery can be helpful.

Have fun and don't hesitate to ask for help!

I'd say that the system is almost an LRT system - it's basically a tram for all intents and purposes, at least while it's in the guideway. I'd say really it needs it's own tag, but that way it'll probably take forever for it to get rendered! Of course, we shouldn't be tagging for the renderer!

I wouldn't think students would have to agree, if the data was genuinely anonymous. If you can't see any paths that could identify an individual (i.e. a path going where only one of the people on the sample would go, like their home), it's not personally identifiable information. At least that's the law as I understand it here in the UK, and I'd imagine fairly similar elsewhere.

I'd almost say this was auto-generated spam....

Welcome! You'll find it pretty addictive here - just one more road - just one more POI! If you get stuck, just ask!

Here's a few ideas...

1: amenity=waste_disposal with waste=trash
2: I'm not sure - leisure=park is as close as I can see on the wiki, certainly not village_green - I doubt that should be used anywhere except the UK, unless other countries have a very similar meaning as the UK's... According to tagstat, landuse=grass is fairly commonly used, perhaps that?
3: I'd use highway=footway maybe with access=undefined

I added a bandstand here:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.504231&lon=-0.182826&zoom=18&layers=B000FTTT

Sadly that didn't render and I think I changed it to a monument, which still doesn't render. I've just changed it back!

My experience of these in London and other areas is that they're not consistent routes, at least not reliably. Often you'll follow one and then not see another sign and end up going completely the wrong way! Even so, it's certainly useful to have 'recommended routes' for cyclists marked, whether these should be on Open Street Map itself or a separate database based on OSM, I'm not sure?

I've used Surrey County Council's maps which show official routes and recommended routes, rated by what kind of bike is suitable for each, these include on road (mostly) and off-road routes and are really helpful. You can see these online (using a rather appalling map viewer) at http://tinyurl.com/surreycccyclemaps (click on one of the areas of the green map at the bottom). Something like this would be really useful across a larger area, perhaps it already exists?

Of course! Everyone's contributions are welcome, and you don't need to be very technical to get involved.

Have a look at this page: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_Guide for a beginner's guide, and feel free to ask questions if you're stuck!

Welcome! I hope you have a good time - ask on the newbie mailing list if you need help, and tell us what you get up to on the diaries :) OpenStreetMap along with Geocaching are great ways to give walking and cycling a point!

The general principle of OSM are that it's better to do something than do nothing - and http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features is your friend!

Welcome :) Seems to be a fair amount done in that area, but lots of minor roads and land use you could do (forests etc).

If you haven't seen it, you can get out-of-copyright maps you can trace over (or use to check completeness) on Potlatch. I believe Potlatch has better accuracy than other editors if you wish to trace these maps.

Good luck and have fun!

I think you'd be right about the map - anything not explicitly released from copyright should be considered to be copyrighted. Better safe than sorry!

I certainly envy you! I've visited the broads a couple of times to sail, and it's one of my favourite places. It was pretty busy when I visited, having it to yourself must be great!

The mapping looks pretty good as it is. If roads are missing names, they're worth adding, but again, that looks like it's pretty much done.

Points of Interest are certainly really useful, and you could spend however much time you have doing that, depending on the level of detail. You can, in theory, tag every shop there is! I'm not sure what the general policy is regarding this, though having this data available is obviously useful (and Google etc have it). Certainly restaurants, post offices, cafés are all useful.

If the urban areas are done, you could investigate parks (such as Forest Park to the west of the area you linked to) - adding more trails, paths, parking etc to these.

Beyond that, you can try mapping other areas (ideally ones you know) from the aerial photos (or from visiting them!). Even if you can't do everything, every little helps!

Have fun!