This started off as a response to Yuanls’ recent diary (which I agree with wholeheartedly), but figured it was worth making a separate post.

Mapping improvement of any serious scale, especially for existing mapping is generally contingent on willingness to accept tips and feedback. I think a lot of the mappers who have been here for a while, including myself, are sometimes tempted to just blame new mappers for conflicts and a lack of receptiveness, but to be honest, in most cases, a lot of this is really contingent on how they’re approached. While I 100% agree with Yuanls that we need to focus on fixing the front end in the expectations of new mappers, I also personally think all more-experienced mappers active in giving advice to newer mappers need to become much better at constructive criticism so that we’re able to properly encourage newer mappers to improve rather than to fight us or to want to leave the site.

To be completely honest, the average critiquing style on OGF can often come across really toxic and condescending at times, which only grows the issue. Frankly, in addition to tweaks on the new mappers side, an “OGF:How to Give Constructive Respectful Feedback and Advice” page is probably in order for the older/more senior mappers here.

I’ve discovered even myself just these last couple months that a lot of newer mappers that can seem standoffish if confronted in an antagonistic manner are more than willing to take advice and tips if given directly, kindly, and with encouragement, acknowledgment of areas with potential, and respect. If our response to newer mappers is basically “your mapping is crap and you should feel bad”, of course their response will be a defensive one rather than receptive. We don’t want that. The spirit of the OGF experiment is one of collaboration and respect- and that spirit won’t thrive, or frankly, survive, if we don’t know how to approach mappers respectfully when giving feedback or advice.

After the previous diary post, I have decided to compile my thoughts and ideas on interface changes that may help to better introduce and inform new OGF users.

Problem 1: The way OGF presents itself

When a new user visits the OGF site for the first time, a box appears. This box introduces OGF at a conceptual level, but no deeper.

OpenGeofiction is a map of an imaginary world, created by a community of worldbuilders. You can take part in this project too.

You are then presented with two options: to ‘start mapping’ and immediately sign up and begin, or to ‘learn more’ and read the FAQ page. The FAQ page, I will address later.

… See full entry

I have invited 1 person this month and they’ve edited randomly even though I told them to edit in the blue nations in OGF: Territories, I want to know how to introduce people to OGF without them vandalizing a country as soon as they join.

Almost done mapping most features

I read all the FAQ and haven’t gotten a reply yet. How long do these take to process? I had a previous territory which expired so I’m not new to OGF and use the JOSM to edit most of my new stuff. I apologize if I don’t understand something or taking some of your time.

So… What are your plans on OGF now that everyone has got more time on their (washed!) hands? I plan to keep myself busy with loads of detailing on the island I’ve worked on, maybe rearrange some parts a bit. Add details like trees, benches, mailboxes, stores and facilities, take a good luck at the road network and if any logic mistakes like wrong directioned one-way streets happened. Gonna see if I get to do any real progress now. Maybe lay out some rough sketch of history/placenames etc. aswell. And you?

Stay safe folks!

There’s a straight line road going through Oketia. When I zoom in in ID it won’t actually show up to be deleted, just in the background. It’s been there for weeks so certainly not an update delayed. How on earth am I supposed to delete this eyesore if I can’t select it.

Hey everyone,

Hope you are all doing well in this crazy time. I just had a fun idea for a game someone could make with our world map. This link has a fun clickable map quiz of the real world. I was just wondering how feasible it would be to make one of the OGF world. Any ideas?

Hi!

After a four-month absence, I am pleased to return to OGF.

Last time I mapped, I was working on an airport as a side project to a lake. However, I may just want to start over in a different part of Commonia.

I hope in the coming days, I will be able to download JOSM on a new computer, and work hard on some countryside in order to, after almost a year and a half on this site, claim a territory. (I’m thinking any green or maybe yellow ones in this area.

During my hiatus, I have been able to draw a few paper maps during my spare time, and perhaps I would use some of them in my work on OGF.

Thanks for reading!

Inventor

I have put a high density of towns and villages south of Marvin and hope to do the same for all rivers and lakes, and slightly less dense for the rest of the country. We need dense countryside seeing as our population is 23,000,000 in such a tiny country.

This is a country idea that I feel like I’m not going to be able to create for a while because I have another country idea that I like a bit more that I want to develop before this one, and you can’t really have two territories without developing the first one.

I still want to write this down because I still want to see it happen, and I may either use it later or hopefully inspire somebody to make it if they don’t really have any ideas.

Dedos Piedra

Dedos Piedra is a group of small five islands initially colonized when that was the cool thing for a country to do. The Island had very little worth as either a plantation or a port, since the soil didn’t grow much on the primarily rocky islands and it was very isolated.

… See full entry

Given that Gobrassanya is mainly influenced by Asian and European characteristics, would a town based similarly off Macau (mostly the old areas) fit into Gobrassanya?

Hello everyone. I have this idea for beginners in OpenGeofiction that when they first create their account, they get shown a tutorial. This shows them a few rules, a little info, and a map with the blue territories in them. I hope this makes it clear for them on how OGF works without having to click on the wiki which they probably don’t know too much of. I hope this reduces the risk of out-of-the-blue mapping and reduces i-don’t-know beginners.

This video/gif shows how I would imagine doing such a thing. I hope it proves much help. I’m up for creating it.

User donnamaw posted something to their sandbox recently:

https://wiki.opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Donnamaw/Sandbox/Tamarindia_OOC

It’s about the origins of their mapping - an OOC discussion of how their geofiction came to be.

It inspired me, and I got quite carried away. I have posted my own documentation of my geofictions over at my blog:

http://blog.geofictician.net/?p=234

I developed a suburb called Honsho. What is your feedback?

The first international airport I finished mapping, Yu Hing Shiu Yi International Airport. Comments are welcome.

Hey all,

For those of you that don’t know, I recently acquired UL022h, now known as Eshemi. I have created a rough sketch of the capital city, Laenjän, which is somewhat modeled after Tallinn and Cluj-Napoca in terms of size. For those of you with well-developed, European-esque cities, how did you develop your city blocks? What is the best way to “fill the space”? Feel free to look in the edit view here to see what I’m talking about. Thanks in advance!

Hi, the following territories are currently marked as reserved in Archanta and I would like to invite expressions of interest in them (individually). This could be a single advanced user, a group of users or an experienced user looking to coordinate a collaborative.

• AR043 (Deodeca) - western neighbour of four states of the Federal States, language would be predominately Castellanese/Spanish with Latin American theme
• AR056g - landlocked, surrounded mainly by Deodeca, Federal States and Ardencia (plus AR056a, AR056c); primary theme would be a majority Native Archantan (Amerindian / Native American) population
• AR063 (Xsegunis) - southern South Archanta, to the west of Ardencia; primary theme would be a majority Native Archantan (Amerindian / Native American) population, with consistency with Ardencia
• AR067 - landlocked territory in North Archanta, with Commonwealth of Central Archanta to the west and Commonia to the north. Southern African theme (e.g. Namibia, Botswana, and Malawi), tying in with the Commonwealth. Some flexibility on the borders.

If any of these interest you then please forward on a more detailed plan for the respective territory to the admin inbox, being sure to put the territory ID in the subject.

Thanks/L

I think it would be great if the direction actually worked. It would be cool to see our roads working for directions.

While initially my plans for Kalijamite were to make it a Yosemite-like national park, some new considerations made me reconsider this plan (particularly inspired by some suggestions by Alessa).

Notably, the fact that a large impact like this often has some very interesting effects on the local area’s ore deposits. Take for example the Sudbury Basin, where large amounts of ores were ejected out from below the earth. This has made Sudbury one of the world’s largest mining centers.

I feel like this would allow for a lot more expansion on the area itself, since mining towns could erupt around the coastal mountain range. This could be a very economically important area.

I’m not sure what to do, but I’ll give this more thought. Suggestions are welcome.