
Meet Your Mappers: A tool to find OpenStreetMap contributors near you - mvexel
https://ma.rtijn.org/2018/07/08/meet-your-mappers.html
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peterburkimsher
A few years ago I wrote a fast parser for OSM data. I know that using parsed
data would soon become out of date, but I guess mvexel's server could handle
it better. If you want me to export the whole world's contributors as CSV or
SQLite, I'd be happy to help.

The tool is interesting for me because I'm looking for a job in
NZ/Australia/Canada. I've had more success contacting people rather than
sending job applications - most job listings require me to already have a
visa. I think that collaborating on open-source projects is a good way to make
industry contacts, demonstrate my skills, and also benefit the community.

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mvexel
If you're looking for something OSM related, be sure to join the OSM US Slack
channel and join #jobs there. It's formally for OSM US but people hang out
there from all over. Join here: [https://osmus-
slack.herokuapp.com/](https://osmus-slack.herokuapp.com/)

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SEJeff
I'm getting "data processing failed" after following the instructions from
arctux on how to find my relation ID.

HN hug of death perhaps?

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mvexel
Probably not the same cause but the disk ran out of space just now because I
neglected to properly purge temp files.

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SEJeff
It seems to work now, thanks!

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jotaen
I’m curious about this and would love to explore it, but since I rarely use
OpenStreetMap I couldn’t figure out what an OSM relation id is and how I
retrieve one. Can anyone provide more explanation on this?

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mvexel
Sure, author here.

The OSM data model does not have a concept of areas, or polygons. A line
feature ('way' in OSM parlance) that shares the same point ('node') for its
start and end is usually considered to be an area. This works well for simple
area features like, say, a building.

More complex area features, like ones with holes, large areas, or ones that
share edges with other features, are commonly modeled using relations. A
relation in OSM is an ordered list of nodes, ways and other relations, or any
combination of those.

[https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/198770](https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/198770)
is an example of a boundary relation consisting of several ways. The tagging
type=boundary and admin_level=6 define the relation as an administrative
boundary, and set its level in the administrative hierarchy.

You can find any administrative boundary relation by going to osm.org,
entering its name into the search box, and clicking on the relevant result.
The info box should say something like "Relation: Salt Lake City (198770)".
The integer in brackets is the relation ID. Note that some places are only
defined as points in OSM, they won't work in this tool, since it queries for
data that lies fully inside the boundary.

There has to be a way to make this easier, but in the time I was prepared to
spend on this, I couldn't come up with one.

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fireattack
Suggestion to the website: when pressing "enter" in relation textbox, it
should trigger "Go".

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Kagerjay
I was digging through openstreet map and I only found 3 mappers in my area 50
miles out. I live in a pretty busy city so I was kind of surprised the numbers
were so low

Only 10-20% of major landmarks were mapped in my city

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ris
Sounds like you've got some work to do, then.

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mattlondon
I couldn't get it to work for the three towns I tried near me ("no relation
found with that ID").

I am assuming it is US only.

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arctux
It seems to be somewhat particular about relation IDs. I have it working for
Palo Alto, with relation ID 1544955. If you want to try this for your city, I
recommend zooming in the city on openstreetmap.org, clicking the "Query
features" button on the right side of the map (it's the cursor with a question
mark icon), and clicking within the boundaries of you city. On the left side,
a list of features will appear. Scroll down to enclosing features, and click
on the appropriate entry. A relation name and number will be displayed at the
top, with the OSM data below.

I hope this stays within the Overpass API server's usage limits. Processing
Palo Alto caused the page to download ~85 MB from overpass-api.de, which asks
users to stay below 10k queries and 5 GB per day. The OSM wiki lists other
servers, some of which allow heavier usage.[0]

[0]:
[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_API](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Overpass_API)

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incompatible
My city boundaries were not available, only a state level, which was too big
for this tool.

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mockingbirdy
Works like a charm, thanks! Maybe I buy some of the local contributors a beer.

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sbarg
Took a bit of poking around but I got this working. Sweet little project!

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tomkinson
Cool tnx

