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Way overdue. OpenStreetMap's website at openstreetmap.org is its calling card, and for the past few years the default style shown (called Carto) has all but sta

Way overdue. OpenStreetMap's website at openstreetmap.org is its calling card, and for the past few years the default style shown (called Carto) has all but stagnated in development. Accepted features like highway=busway (introduced three years ago) are not rendered there because the maintainers can no longer be bothered, or dislike the tag personally despite broad community backing. What worries me for this new effort is that Paul Norman is one of the two remaining Carto sometimes-active maintainers who refuse to merge contributed PRs or even provide alternative minimal support for features like highway=busway, leading to awkward gaps on the baseline map shown on openstreetmap.org. I would love to be surprised in a positive way about this new effort, but I'm not holding my hopes up. Thankfully OpenStreetMap can be thoroughly useful in apps like OsmAnd and OrganicMaps, and the tile-based Tracestrack Topo layer on openstreetmap.org is getting quite decent: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#layers=P https://www.openstreetmap.org/#layers=P

RicoElectrico 3y ago
Apparently even Paul Norman is tired of contributing at openstreetmap-carto. Honestly of the maintainers imagico is the one I'd say is impossible to reason with.
- Freak_NL 3y ago
  Oh absolutely. I have given up on engaging with him, it is pointless (I am jdhoek on GitHub, and have contributed various commits to Carto in the past). While I can understand that being a maintainer for a project like Carto can be taxing due to the high amount of feature requests which are often not suitable for the general purpose map, lack usage, or are otherwise unclear in their definition, I find that the way Carto has been maintained for the past few years has been harmful to the OpenStreetMap project in general. I think Christopher Hormann (imagico), despite his contributions in the past, is actively harming OpenStreetMap with his maintainership and (lack of) actions. Although to be fair the OpenStreetMap Foundation shares some of the blame here by shrugging 'not our problem' when the state of the default layer on openstreetmap.org is, repeatedly, pointed out, and letting this state of affairs persist. The typical response of 'Oh, OpenStreetMap is a do-ocracy, haha, if you want to change this, just create your own layer!' does not befit a project which has achieved so much as OpenStreetMap.
  - elaus 3y ago
    I know nothing about the specific issues here, but as you mentioned do-ocracy: Would it be viable to fork carto and merge the good stuff that has been originally rejected, then asking openstreetmap.org to change their map renderer to the fork? If it's objectively better and has broad community support, that should be in the best interest of OSM. (once again: very little knowledge of OSM, so maybe that's overly naive)
    - Freak_NL 3y ago
      Possibly, but in reality, not really. Without buy-in from the OSMF (the foundation) this could result in a lot of effort and time ultimately wasted due to overlapping roles of people concerned in the Operations Working Group. Most people with the knowledge and capacity to do this have spent their energy on other initiatives not hosted directly on openstreetmap.org instead (like OpenStreetMap Americana destined for the US chapter's OSM website), or contributing to OsmAnd or OrganicMaps.
    - Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
      Absolutely doable but not really worthwhile right now. Vector tiles open up many more possibilities for custom cartography and I have every confidence Paul’s work will live up to this promise. osm-carto is essentially a dead end cartographically and technically.
  - stereo 3y ago
    OSMF chairperson here. I share your frustration. This is us doing something about it!
eisa01 3y ago
Yes, it would be quite important to improve the website if the idea of having it added to Firefox' start page comes through [1]. Polish is important for first impressions :) Anyone from Mozilla/Firefox here? [1] https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/idea-ask-mozilla-for-osm-org-in-firefox-new-tab-page/108875 https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/idea-ask-mozilla-for-o...
deleted 3y ago
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RicoElectrico 3y ago

Apparently even Paul Norman is tired of contributing at openstreetmap-carto. Honestly of the maintainers imagico is the one I'd say is impossible to reason with.

Freak_NL 3y ago
Oh absolutely. I have given up on engaging with him, it is pointless (I am jdhoek on GitHub, and have contributed various commits to Carto in the past). While I can understand that being a maintainer for a project like Carto can be taxing due to the high amount of feature requests which are often not suitable for the general purpose map, lack usage, or are otherwise unclear in their definition, I find that the way Carto has been maintained for the past few years has been harmful to the OpenStreetMap project in general. I think Christopher Hormann (imagico), despite his contributions in the past, is actively harming OpenStreetMap with his maintainership and (lack of) actions. Although to be fair the OpenStreetMap Foundation shares some of the blame here by shrugging 'not our problem' when the state of the default layer on openstreetmap.org is, repeatedly, pointed out, and letting this state of affairs persist. The typical response of 'Oh, OpenStreetMap is a do-ocracy, haha, if you want to change this, just create your own layer!' does not befit a project which has achieved so much as OpenStreetMap.
- elaus 3y ago
  I know nothing about the specific issues here, but as you mentioned do-ocracy: Would it be viable to fork carto and merge the good stuff that has been originally rejected, then asking openstreetmap.org to change their map renderer to the fork? If it's objectively better and has broad community support, that should be in the best interest of OSM. (once again: very little knowledge of OSM, so maybe that's overly naive)
  - Freak_NL 3y ago
    Possibly, but in reality, not really. Without buy-in from the OSMF (the foundation) this could result in a lot of effort and time ultimately wasted due to overlapping roles of people concerned in the Operations Working Group. Most people with the knowledge and capacity to do this have spent their energy on other initiatives not hosted directly on openstreetmap.org instead (like OpenStreetMap Americana destined for the US chapter's OSM website), or contributing to OsmAnd or OrganicMaps.
  - Doctor_Fegg 3y ago
    Absolutely doable but not really worthwhile right now. Vector tiles open up many more possibilities for custom cartography and I have every confidence Paul’s work will live up to this promise. osm-carto is essentially a dead end cartographically and technically.
- stereo 3y ago
  OSMF chairperson here. I share your frustration. This is us doing something about it!

eisa01 3y ago

Yes, it would be quite important to improve the website if the idea of having it added to Firefox' start page comes through [1]. Polish is important for first impressions :) Anyone from Mozilla/Firefox here? [1] https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/idea-ask-mozilla-for-osm-org-in-firefox-new-tab-page/108875 https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/idea-ask-mozilla-for-o...

deleted 3y ago

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