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i've been a mapping nerd all my life but this is my first time on open street map. i've been looking hard but cannot find answers to my following questions:

  1. is it possible to work on all maps or only on the small scale ones? i find many mistakes and missing mapping in the large scale maps but these seem unaccessible. when it says: zoom further in in order to work on the map, does that mean, the larger map is off limits?
  2. i wonder if there is an agreed upon hyrarchy for the different scales because i often find mapping or info on large scale maps that should be only found on smaller scale ones.
  3. my largest issue is the spelling varieties for names of settlements within one map and transliterations from other languages into english. many contributors seem to spell just as it crosses their mind. are there conventions for spelling and transliterations? i would assume it should be the same as on wikipedia.

asked 19 Mar '19, 07:25

Sundar1's gravatar image

Sundar1
11223
accept rate: 0%


It is better to ask your questions one at a time, not all in one block.

OSM does not have a scale. You can edit everything, but it is the cartographer's decision what is shown on what scale and what isn't. If you edit OSM you are the surveyor and not the map maker. - Transliterations should not be mapped at all, unless they have the character of a name in its own right. Basically, if everyone agrees that the English name of a place is X then you can map it, but if X is only a transliteration of the original Cyrillic name then don't map it as it adds no information. Wikipedia conventions are not automatically valid here. See https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Names for some rules on naming.

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answered 19 Mar '19, 08:23

Frederik%20Ramm's gravatar image

Frederik Ramm ♦
82.5k927201273
accept rate: 23%

if you say i can edit everything, how does that work. i see a mistake in a map, but it says i have to zoom in to work on it. when i do this, the map totally changes it's appearance and i cannot see the item i wanted to edit. one example in nepal: on the larger scale maps, there are hardly any mapped settlements. there is a town called jiri of which the built-up area is mapped but it hadn't been given a name. in vain i tried to add the name jiri, but does not appear on the larger scale map - or on any scale map for that matter. i cannot imagine that to be so complicated. as to transliteration, most names in nepal are given in english and in many cases, instead of using an official transliteration, a sound-translation is done, e. g. teen instead of tin (the word for three). as a result, the same word appears in different spellings on the same map and you come across the most adventurous spellings. i've been able to do corrections on the smallest map scales -where editing is possible- but the mistakes persist in the larger scale maps (when you zoom out).

(19 Mar '19, 11:46) Sundar1
1

The map view in the editor is different from the map view on openstreetmap.org or elsewhere. A label visible on the map can be a polygon centrepoint or it can belong to a point placed in the middle of the city. Generally the lower-zoom map tiles can take longer to render, so maybe your modifications are in the database, just not yet rendered. Again, I advise you not to map transliterations. Also I noticed that you modified the name "Damauli" to "Vyas (Damauli)". I do not know local customs but depending on how much actual use and "official name" differ, we would often put the official name in a separate tag (official_name) and keep the actually-used-name in the "name" tag.

(19 Mar '19, 12:05) Frederik Ramm ♦
2

Changing name=दमक to name=Damak दमक (https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/575591611/history) also looks wrong. Please stop. Try to understand how OSM works before continuing to edit.

(19 Mar '19, 13:43) scai ♦
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question asked: 19 Mar '19, 07:25

question was seen: 1,435 times

last updated: 19 Mar '19, 13:43

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum