I am back from my travels, and will be mapping again. I also hope to do some work on developing a user “forum” environment for the wiki.

I visited friends and relatives in 5 US states in 2 weeks, including California, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Alaska. As is to be expected, all that traveling has got me thinking of some ideas for things to map. My time in my erstwhile home in Southeast Alaska, especially, has inspired me about Mahhal (which basically has its real-world origins in my time living there), so maybe I’ll be doing some work on that.

First step: I need to increase the fjord and lake and island density. A lot.

Here’s a nice lake and some mountains seen during a day-trip down to a Native American settlement:

Here’s the head of fjord where my uncle’s house is:

… See full entry

I did some good work on rural zones of Tárrases during October’s challenge, but compared to some other users’ work, I really didn’t do that much. Nevertheless, I’m pleased with how things are progressing. I placed some more of my “blue rice” (a fictional cold-climate rice cultivar) terraces and some greenhouses for trunk farms, and plenty of mountain roads and tracks.

Tárrases is currently fully covered in landuses and buildings, but I intend to expand the built-up areas over time with more historically-oriented growth. There are currently about 6800 named objects and over 30,000 building=* tags in the city state.

For the month of November, I will be offline for much of the time. I will be traveling internationally for the first time since my cancer two years ago. I will be in the U.S. visiting relatives and friends in California, Minnesota and Alaska.

So I decided to choose a challenge that is NOT something I want to work on. It’s time to work on coastlines, mappers! Start your editing tools…

Luciano’s Mapper’s Challenge #8 - November, 2016 - Après nous, le déluge

I think everyone needs to have basic coastline editing and maintenance skills, and frankly, even well-mapped countries often have pretty poorly done coastlines. People are afraid to work on coastlines because of the render issues (i.e. the “floods” that sometimes happen). But working on coastlines is a great way to build editing skills, and if lots of people develop these skills, our world will be better, and drier!

Coastlines need a lot of detail. Some fairly well mapped coastline areas in OGF include these locations:

Tropical Islands: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=11/16.1194/71.9374

Fjords: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=9/-64.2285/82.3137

Coastal Bays and Barrier Islands: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=12/-24.4395/124.2085

River Deltas: http://opengeofiction.net/#map=10/52.6335/70.4546

… See full entry

I actually gave up on my own last challenge, #6, after about a week. I completely quit, and decided not to do it.

I had several reasons.

• I’ve been really busy outside of OGF, which prevented me from focusing on the project. I still wanted to spend some of my free time editing, but I wanted to be more “free” to just do what occurred to me, and I felt constrained by my own project.
• I decided I wasn’t ready to make bus routes for Tárrases, because I want the bus routes to follow where people live, so I want to be closer to finished on where the inhabited areas and neighborhoods are first
• I also wasn’t ready technically, because I wanted to be able to make a nice multimaps bus-routes map, and I wasn’t ready to do the work to get my scripts working on my new Linux system

Anyway, I know several other users made great and interesting progress on this “public transport” challenge. I’ve seen some great work on the map and in the wiki. Post your results here or with your own diary entry or in the wiki.

Luciano’s Mapper’s Challenge #7 - October, 2016 - COUNTRY ROADS

It took me a while to decide what kind of challenge to make next. I always want to make a challenge that is something I want to work on too - even if I end up giving up on it, as happened last month.

I asked some other people for some brainstorms for good challenges, and this new challenge is one suggested by Thilo.

The main point is, most of us here at OGF are very focused on cities. So the idea, this month, is to avoid city work, and focus on countryside, villages, hamlets, and small towns.

In fact, I’ve already been doing this challenge a lot - a great deal of work in Ardisphere is countryside and small towns, and Tárrases too. But this month, I want to focus even more.

There are areas of OSM that are so well mapped, each farm has a name and every building in the rural area is mapped. Northern Spain’s Basque Country is a favorite example of mine - I’m sure there are many others.

… See full entry

For my challenge last month, “What’s in a name?” (August 2016), I added about 1600 names to my city state of Tárrases, advancing from about 2800 names to a current total of 4400.

I fell far short of my revised objective of 10000 names. I feel sad because of that, but… I was very busy outside of OGF, with “real life,” so that’s my excuse. I will continue working on it.

This challenge did not seem to be very popular. I guess for a lot of people, names are not an important part of their geofictional undertakings. Certainly the popularity of maps with unnamed streets and other features in our world indicates that for many, names are an afterthought.

I know a few people worked on it, though. Feel free to post your results in the comments, below, or with your own diary.

Thinking about Public Transportation

One of my main interests in geofiction is in the area of public transportation infrastructure: trains, subways, buses, etc. It has always been fascinating to me. But after a few efforts in that direction with my metropolis at Villa Constitución, I have mostly been intentionally avoiding placing public transportation infrastructure, because I feel like to do it correctly, it needs to be built “in response to” the pre-existing geography. It doesn’t make sense to make a detailed, elaborate subway system, as I did in Villa Constitución, when the city itself is really just the skeleton of a city, without well-conceived history or neighborhoods or topography, etc.

From a technical standpoint, I’m very proud of my RUTA-VC multimap and other work (like the Green Line wiki article) done for that city’s subway system. Here is a screenshot from last year.

… See full entry

A somewhat different topic than usual.

If anyone is looking for mapping inspiration, or just out of curiosity, there is a twitter account called @unchartedatlas. It is a “bot” which produces imaginary maps “randomly” - obviously the design of the algorithm is probably pretty complex - the creator discusses it here. Some of the maps aren’t very realistic, but others are remarkable.

Happy mapping.

Tárrases is open for business!

The tiny city-state, in an ambiguous relationship with its giant, undemocratic neighbor Mahhal, has a history of laissez-faire capitalism and open borders. Because of this, it is a popular place for international brands seeking to get a foothold in Mahhal, and in any event there are almost no barriers to entry to the small domestic market for any international brand, manufacturer, franchise or retail chain.

The country’s surprisingly well-educated, cosmopolitan workforce typically receives below-market wages due to the country’s isolated location, uncertain political future, and cold, damp antarctic climate, with 20-hour-long winter nights. This is a capitalist paradise!

OOC

I have completed my landuse and landcover relations for Tárrases, and so I’m ready to get down to the business of business.

If you want to place your retail or manufacturing business in Tárrases, here’s how to do it. I want to make it easy.

… See full entry

I have followed up with some additional thought about this challenge in my bliki.

For my challenge last month, “Let’s do something blue,” I think I did pretty well. Mostly, I’m proud of the Irhoborin Refugee Settlement, in Duvar, Commonia. I also did some work on administrative divisions in various blue countries, and I laid down a first draft for the Kshang Native Lands Area in Rhododactylia - but that last still needs a LOT of work.

How did you do? I saw some people doing some great stuff in blue areas this past month.

Actually, the main thing I worked on this past month has been my little city-state of Tárrases. I will post about that separately, at some point.

Thinking about names

I wasn’t sure what to make as a challenge this month. So I decided to just think about what I would be working on.

For me, names on a map are important. Nothing is more disappointing for me than to see an area that looks well-mapped, realistic, and interesting, only to zoom in and find that most of the streets and other objects have no names attached to them. It detracts from the realism of the map, and makes the whole thing feel more like a kind abstract art that happens to be map-like. I know names are not interesting to everyone - if names are not your thing, then this challenge is not for you.

I try very hard to name things on my maps as I build them, but I’m certainly not perfect in this respect. Sometimes my names can become repetitive or unimaginative - but sometimes names in the real-world are repetitive and unimaginative, too. How many places bear the name “Washington” in the US? 100s if not 1000s. How many places bear the name “Santa María” in Latin America? How many places bear the name “Gwangju” in Korea?

Anyway, the challenge this month is to try to increase the number of names on your map, and improve the quality, consistency and “story” behind your naming schemes, whether based on real-world languages or your own invented language.

“Name Density” - toward an objective measure of map quality

… See full entry

I have posted a rant on my Bliki.

I’m not going to work on blue countries for a while.

Like clockwork, on July first, the monsoon began here in the Korean Peninsula. It has rained for two days straight.

Regarding the June challenge: I didn’t do great, but I will consider that I did the best I could. You can read my updates at my “bliki.”

I’d love to see results of other people’s work on this challenge - post a comment, a diary entry, or get creative in the wiki to show your progress.

Luciano’s Mapper’s Challenge #4 - July, 2016 - LET’S DO SOMETHING BLUE

This challenge is based on a suggestion from Ūdilugbulgidħū.

Some of our “blue,” free-to-map, community territories are doing pretty well. Gobrassanya is an excellent example. On the other hand, many of the “blue” territories are depressingly messed up.

It would be great to see some focused effort on the part of LOTS OF COMPETENT USERS to add something to a community territory, or to help clean up badly conceived objects or “newbie-messes.” This can take many forms. Some suggestions:

• adding some new administrative division, town or neighborhood
• cleaning up some specific feature across a broader area (rivers, roads, railroads, admin divisions, natural landcovers, etc.)
• setting up wiki articles or wiki Talk: pages to help the community more easily collaborate on community territories - the Gobras City collaboration page is an excellent example of a “blue” territory collaboration page.

The mapper’s challenge:

• Easy - spend 25% of your July OGF time in somewhere “blue”
• Medium - spend 50% of your July OGF time in somewhere “blue”
• Hard - spend 100% of your July OGF time in somewhere “blue”

… See full entry

I have been experimenting with an extension to the wiki for about a month now, and I’m ready to present some results.

This extension makes it possible to show tabular information in the wiki which is sourced DIRECTLY from the OGF database. If you set things up correctly, you don’t ever have to maintain a seperate wiki table of objects in the OGF database - you can add objects on the map, “enroll” them in the correct collection, then they will simply “appear” in the table in the wiki.

If you set up the “collection” relation (discussed HERE), and copy the manner of enrolling locations in the collection, with appropriate tags on the locations, you can list locations of any business, organization or agency you want.

It’s quite complicated, and not really for beginners. However, if you’re feeling brave, I welcome people to try it out. I present Ardisphere’s international discount retailing chain Martímart as a working example, HERE.

You can open the wiki page for edit and study the wikicode. You can download a few of the Martímart locations and study them. Please try not to break anything - just look at how it’s put together, but don’t edit them until you’re sure you understand. But then you can copy the way it is all set up and make your own.

One note: for it to work properly, no tags included in the table list are optional - thus in the Martímart example, in order for my “ldata:note” to work and show up in the table, I have to provide a value for each tag for each location. Hence “¡Discuentos impossibles!” as a note at each location.

Oh, and by the way… If you want to add Martímart locations to your country, PLEASE DO - NO PERMISSION NEEDED. Let’s see if we can watch the chain grow without ever having to edit the wiki.

Happy mapping.

This diary entry started as comment on Yuanls’s recent Commonia diary entry, but I decided to give it its own diary spot, to see what kind of comments it attracts. I think the conversation on that diary entry is very productive and valuable, but I wanted to approach the issues raised there in a slightly different way.

The point of entry for this discussion is: how can we better support new users in a way that leads to higher-quality mapping and less inadvertent vandalism? Just this morning, I had to send admin messages to two new users who clearly did not understand where it is OK to start mapping.

Anyway, I think the thing we need to remember is that not all new users are the same. Some have a vision clear in their minds, and the blank spaces in Commonia are what they need - a place to try to realize their vision. With time, they can learn the tools and do a great job creating a new place out of whole cloth, while a place like Gobrassanya feels restrictive. Other new mappers, however, clearly prefer or need a more detailed framework.

When I arrived at OGF, the blue territories existed but there was no waiting period for a new territory. Thus my first mapping was in my first territory. If forced to, I would have contribued first not to Gobrassanya but in trying to build a completely new town in a “blank” place such as Commonia.

I have frequently thought that returning to a “no waiting period” system might actually work out better. The reason the waiting period was adopted was because it was a lot of work for for admin to assign territories to users who by and large would map a few motorways-to-nowhere and then promptly disappear. But… if we could develop an automated system for assigning free territories… OK, I’m just daydreaming. But I’d like to encourage thinking “out of the box” about what I think of as the “newbie problem.”

… See full entry

This is just a short announcement. Last week I made a new “Power User’s Dashboard” on the wiki. I was trying to create an alternative homepage for “experienced users.” I have been very pleased with it. It’s now my home landing page for OGF when I log on.

Give it a try.

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/OGF:Dashboard

Let me know what you think. Is it useful? Any suggestions for additions or changes (keeping in mind what’s technically feasible)?

Regarding the May challenge: I believe I failed - mostly due to lack of time. Nevertheless, I feel much happier with Tárrases now than I felt before - I have a better idea how it will finally look. You can read my updates at my “bliki.”

Others have made better progress. Comment below or at your own diary entry or wiki sandbox (as Sarepava or BMSOUZA have done) about your results for May.

Luciano’s Mapper’s Challenge #3 - June, 2016

My new challenge is a focus on administrative divisions.

In fact, I’ve already done a lot of work on this, but I’d like to take it further, toward completion.

So first, an intro-level discussion of the administrative divisions of countries.

Most countries have administrative divisions - of many different names, levels, and functions. The list is very long: states, provinces, counties, municipalities, etc.

It’s best to think in terms of levels:

• 1st level: states (US, Mexico), provinces (Canada, South Korea), federal subjects (Russia)…
• 2nd level: counties/parishes/boroughs (US), municipalities (Mexico), counties/cities (South Korea) …
• 3rd level: cities/townships (US), districts and townships (South Korea) …

In the OSM tagging system, these are indicated by the admin_level tag. Each country uses the admin_level tag differently, both in the real world and in OGF (see here for the way some people have deployed admin_level in OGF).

The best practice is to set up relations for each administrative division. I have set up almost 500 administrative divisions in Mahhal for 1st and 2nd levels, and almost that number in the Ardisphere.

1st level divisions are complete in both countries, and not likely to change much. 2nd level divisions are mostly complete, too. What I really want to focus on is the 3rd level divisions, especially in the Ardisphere.

… See full entry

Hi Geoficticians!

I hope everyone is having a great Northern-Hemisphere-Spring-Southern-Hemisphere-Fall.

Last year, I created our wikipedia-style Main Page for our wiki, with its “featured” sections. At first, I updated each of the featured sections every week, and later I transitioned to doing so once a month.

Recently, I have been neglecting this aspect of my work on OGF, and I think it is time to say I would like to focus on other projects and priorities in OGF.

So I am hoping we can find one or more volunteers to take over the curatorial responsibility for the four “featured” sections of the Main Page. You don’t need “admin” privileges on the wiki to do this job - I created the new Main Page before I joined the admin team.

The main things that are needed are:

• 1) A basic-level understanding of the concepts behind markup (i.e. HTML and wiki-markup)
• 2) A willingness to learn how to do the updates - your first update might take a few hours, since you’ll be learning the process.
• 3) A willingness to commit about an hour of your time for each subsequent update - if you update once a month, that’s one hour a month.
• 4) A willingness to try to be diverse, fair and objective in choosing materials to feature
• 5) A desire to contribute to the OGF community and make a great “gateway” for new visitors
• 6) In the event that we have more than one volunteer, you need to be willing to work well with each other (i.e. share responsibilities, etc.)

I have already created some very detailed documentation for how to update the “Featured Article” section. I will try to add documentation for the other sections when I have time, but I think it is less necessary, since all the “featured” sections follow the same pattern as the “Featured Article” section - so once you understand how to update the “Featured Article,” understanding how to do the other sections is fairly easy.

Here is the documentation for how to update the “Featured Article.”

… See full entry

Sorry that this new challenge is a little bit late. I have been very busy offline, and have set a new record, this past week: I haven’t opened JOSM for 6 days straight. That seems like a record for me, since discovering OGF.

Luciano’s Mapper’s Challenge #2 - May, 2016

Some mappers are very good at focusing on a specific area and mapping it to an extremely complete level of detail. This challenge will probably be useless for those kinds of mappers. But for me, and I know for many others, it can be hard to find “focus” and hard to really, truly complete a given area. It’s too easy to flit around the map, working on various things, and never really reach a sense of completion with a given area.

Arguably, the ONLY time I’ve really, truly completed an area is with my little Ardispherian exclave of Sarangdo. And that was more than a year ago, now, and further, it still could use more work.

So the challenge for the month of May is to try to concentrate on mapping on a single area. I would say maybe a maximum of 100km²(which is the size of a compact city)

The challenge has two levels.

• Advanced Challenge: for the month of May, ONLY map in your chosen, focused area. There is always more to map. If streets feel complete, work on buildings. If land covers feel complete, work on naming things. If building outlines are complete, work on putting detailed information about shops, banks, schools, etc. You can go into micromapping, adding housenumbers or sidewalks or traffic lights and turn lanes.
• Easy Challenge: for the month of May, chose some smallish area that you consider well-mapped and more-or-less complete in a way that you like, and try to reach that same level of completeness for your working area.

… See full entry

Well, I’m a little bit late closing this out. I ended up extremely busy this past weekend, and spent a new record minimum amount of time on my OGF hobby - less than an hour.

Let’s hear the results!

I know BMSOUZA kept a record of his challenge progress here - a very inspiring idea:

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:BMSOUZA/Sandbox/Mapper_Challenge

Seeing his idea, I “blikied” my work on the challenge here:

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Luciano/Bliki

I achieved the advanced challenge, I think, with only two “highway” tags the whole month, and both were “highway=pedestrian” so I don’t feel too guilty.

Everyone else, post your results, thoughts, achievements, etc., in comments.

Coming soon: May challenge!

A draft of contours for my city-state of Tárrases (off the coast of Mahhal) has gone “live.” There are some small artefacts of the conversion process, but overall the result is quite pleasing. More contours for Mahhal coming soon!

http://opengeofiction.net/#map=12/-64.0216/98.3949&layers=T

Happy mapping.

Several users have asked about contours, and there have been discussions before.

I have made a “contours discussion” page in my sandbox, which users may consult.

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Luciano/Sandbox/Contours

For a while now, I have had this idea of creating a “Monthly Mapper’s Challenge.” I think it could be a way to challenge ourselves and develop our map-making skills in OGF.

So I have decided to give a try at creating one.

Luciano’s Mapper’s Challenge #1 - April, 2016

Many people would agree, OGF has too many roads. I don’t mean in absolute terms - clearly, the real world, as seen in OSM, has even more roads than OGF. What I mean is that the proportion of roads to other objects is too high. Much of our world has almost ONLY roads. So I decided to make my first OGF mapping challenge about roads - or rather, anti-roads.

The challenge is simple. For the month of April, try to concentrate on mapping things other than roads.

By roads, I mean any use of the “highway” tag, (except perhaps highway=pedestrian, highway=path, highway=footway, or other non-automotive uses of the tag).

The challenge has three levels.

• Advanced Challenge: for the month of April, create NO new roads in your territory; focus on other objects: rivers, lakes, coastlines, land cover, building, schools, churches, anything you want.
• Medium Challenge: for the month of April, for each road you create, also create some other non-road object. You don’t have to keep exact count, just try to emphasize other objects.
• Easy Challenge: for the month of April, create at least one interesting feature for your territory that has no roads; examples could be a nature reserve or conservation area, an island or neighborhood that bans automobiles, a botanic garden or zoo, etc.

This challenge is on the “honor system” - no one is going to check the accuracy of your claim. If you are interested in trying this challenge, just leave a note below, in the next few days. At the end of the month, we can make another diary post to see how poeple did. If there is a lot of interest, we could do “challenges” every month, and maybe make a wiki page to record results.

… See full entry