Open Street Map - editing & learning

[simonineaston]

Prompted by the fact that my local route into town closed today and is likely to remain closed for at least a year and that the closure is still not seen on open street map, it occured to me to learn how to make that edit myself. However, it obviously makes sense to rehearse the action, to which ends I signed in to the osm test edit area. Although useful, the specific goal of editing an existing feature - in this case a line - in order to mark it closed remains unclear to me.
My next inclination would be to find the user forum and imagining fondly that the users will be as knowledgable & communicative as you lot, dear readers, I set off to find it. But once found, I read that the UK users don't use it much. Anyone got any pointers??

[mattheus]

Good topic.

OSM seems like a bit of a black art - the people that have got into it devote their lives, avoiding the temptations of Google and other evil, often becoming much-venerated wizards.

I think if the learning curve was less steep, and more idiot-proof, more of us would help out with this amazing store of crowd-sourced information.

[Nearholmer]

Totally agree, although clearly that could lead to the Wikipedia problem of users waging combat by editing. I imagine one of those people who is really annoyed that there is a public right of way through their property at war with local walkers and cyclists to keep deleting and restoring the thing, or cases of militant cyclists converting footpaths to bridleways.

[mattheus]

Totally agree, although clearly that could lead to the Wikipedia problem of users waging combat by editing. I imagine one of those people who is really annoyed that there is a public right of way through their property at war with local walkers and cyclists to keep deleting and restoring the thing, or cases of militant cyclists converting footpaths to bridleways.

True. But the flip-side is that all the knowledge is contributed by IT wunder-kidz. If your village doesn't have one that cycles regularly, your local mapping is doomed to be hopeless.

Have you seen how many pages on Wikipedia are devoted to uninteresting archaic software packages?? What use is THAT to humanity?

[simonineaston]

OSM seems like a bit of a black art

That's my initial impression. I've had an account since 2014 and up till now, have done some very basic editing, like when I moved into a new build and the names of the then new local streets were misspelled. It was just changing text in the relevant tags, nothing special.
But the cycle path is different. I can see how to select it in the editor (see below) and have managed to choose a section of the path (the Concorde Way) and after checking on the OSM wiki, have edited the highway tag to construction, which is apparently the workaround for a section of thoroughfare not available to use. I read that there is no tag attribute for use suspended temporarily. Likewise I can find no tag such as status which might allow a suitable choice to indicate the section is closed.
Others (I'm thinking Richard F ) may know better.
The other problem is that the section I was able to select doesn't reflect the precise section that's closed - it's close but not accurate. I'm not clear how to change the selection to reflect the actual state of affairs on the ground...
Fortunately, there's an option to allow the editor to have their edit proof read before going live, which I've selected, so someone who does know what they're doing will mark my homework, as it were !
Over-all, having considerd the impact of my actions, I'm thinking that it'd be better to have a section marked as unusable, even if the section is very slightly wrong by a matter of 50 yards or so - the actual closure is marked with a blue line - than just to leave it as open.

screenshot of osm editor page

[Nearholmer]

True. But the flip-side is that all the knowledge is contributed by IT wunder-kidz. If your village doesn't have one that cycles regularly, your local mapping is doomed to be hopeless.

Yes, on balance I’d definitely like to see it doable by mere mortals.

[simonineaston]

Well, I'm just about as mere mortal as you can get!
I've found a tag called barrier. Editors can add a new line - in this instance, the new line might go across an existing line ie the line that represents The Concorde Way and then in the properties of that new line, add the tag barrier and also add other relevant properties like material: metal and height: 3 meters, etc. etc.
However I shan't be doing this until I've found some corroboration from experienced users that that's the way to go.

[matt_twam_asi]

Thanks for your update to OSM.

If you're changing the cycleway to highway=construction then it's good practice to add construction=cycleway. I'd also change the foot and bicycle keys from 'designated' to 'no', just to avoid any confusion about access.

I'll leave it to others to advise on splitting the way to increase the accuracy of the closure as I don't use iD (the default web-based editor).

[simonineaston]

Thanks, m_t_a - I've made the changes you suggested.

[Galactic]

Good to see you got the advice you needed. I'm often in the same position as you - I see something that needs changing or improving and have a go, but frequently end up scratching my head and giving up.

Often (but not always), it works just to leave a note at the right point (easily done in the online editor iD). Usually someone jumps in quite quickly. If nothing has happened after a week or so, I delete the note and add it in again and that bumps it up again and improves the chances of it getting sorted.

I do wish the editor was a little more intuitive. I've heard there's an app for phones and tablets that is easier to work with, but I can't remember the name of it - anyone tried that out?

[simonineaston]

I must say the way it all works does remind me of things I learnt, to do with database and webpage design, so I guess I've got a bit of a leg up...

[Richard Fairhurst]

Ultimately the problem is that map editing is hard. I think OSM could go some way to making it easier to add/update points of interest, which are fairly one-dimensional. But when it comes to maintaining a topological road/path network with incredibly rich metadata, there's only so far you can go in terms of making it immediately usable. That's kind of why the "notes" feature exists on openstreetmap.org; if you don't know how to edit it yourself, that's fine, just leave a note and someone else can do it.

(But that's a whole other topic...)

Changing a road to highway=construction is a good way to fix it for a reasonable length closure. OSM doesn't really record short-duration temporary changes anyway.

[Sweep]

Good topic.

OSM seems like a bit of a black art - the people that have got into it devote their lives, avoiding the temptations of Google and other evil, often becoming much-venerated wizards.

I think if the learning curve was less steep, and more idiot-proof, more of us would help out with this amazing store of crowd-sourced information.

yep I have often wanted to give back to it but despite being pretty tech-savvy, could never figure out how to add stuff.
Would maybe be a thankless task for volunteers but would be handy if there was some techies able to fine-tune inputs from self-identified non wizards before then adding stuff to the database.

ah - edit - I see that simon (and Richard) says there is just a feature.
where would I find this simon?
couldn't see it on your screenshot simon, but maybe being blind/stupid.

[al_yrpal]

Simple...I have corrected things in the past....

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editors

Al

[Sweep]

Simple...I have corrected things in the past....

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editors

Al

simple for you maybe al

will have another push at my studies when I have a mo and see if my head fries again.

you say you have "corrected" things in the past - isn't that simpler than putting new stuff in though? - Simon after all said he had corrected street name spellings.

The amount of detail in OSM continues to amaze me - have found many interesting things on my rides - would never have discovered/seen on an OS map even if they were marked.
Particularly good for things like memorials/historical stuff/water points.