The the competition to host 2016 Summer Geolympiad is entering the voting phase.

Details may be found on the wiki Talk page:

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Talk:2016_Summer_Geolympiad

Voting is done by “wiki signature” (type “–~~~~” under the city name you want to vote for in the voting section).

You may change your vote during the voting phase. Everyone is encouraged to participate in the voting. Note that you need a wiki account (separate from the OGF “map edit” account) in order to vote - you may send a message to admin if you don’t have a wiki account.

Users who have made proposals are encouraged to continue improving their proposals and to lobby for their cities, with diary entries, “World News” articles, and in the comments section on the wiki.

Happy voting!

This is a reminder to all users that there is one week remaining to put together the best 2016 Summer Geolympiad Games proposal for your city.

Proposal submissions will close on July 1st. You may view the proposals or add your own at:

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Talk:2016_Summer_Geolympiad

To summarize, we currently have 6 cities bidding:

• Bengonia, Darcodia
• Oyonnax, Ataraxia
• Quentinsburgh, Freedemia
• Reback, Drevet
• Remiville, Belphenia
• Villa Constitución, Ardisphere

On July 1st, bid submissions will close and voting phase will begin.

Each user (not country) with a wiki account will be allowed to vote for their favorite proposal, in an open voting process.

Happy bidding!

Several people have raised the question of what admin_level values to use. There is no “right” way to use this tag, but it is worth your time to study the way that various countries use “admin_level” in the OpenStreetMap database.

Some conventions are that admin_level=1 is rarely used (it might be used for something like the EU or some other supranational group). Beyond this, there is a tendency mainly to use even numbers, thus in the United States, admin_level=2 is the national boundary, admin_level=4 is the states, admin_level=6 is counties, parishes or boroughs (depending on the state), and admin_level=8 is most independent town and city governments.

There is a very useful chart at the OSM wiki, here.

I decided to set up an experimental page in my user sandbox to see if there interest in creating a parallel for this OSM page for our OGF countries. You can access this experimental page here:

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

[edit: I’ve consolidated the above to a general “tags” page idea: http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/User:Luciano/Sandbox/tags#admin_level.3D.3F]

As a matter of personal observation, you may choose what admin_level you want to use for a specific node or relation based on how you want it to render on the map (in either “Standard” or “histor” style), but I don’t think that’s “best practice.” Let’s focus on making maps consistent with the OSM standard, and I think we can expect whatever rendering issues there are to “catch up” over time.

My personal experience is that if I take the time to correctly set up my administrative relations with all the appropriate data, it renders quite acceptably in the “Standard” layer.

Post comments, feedback or questions here or on the talk page there.

Happy mapping!

Thilo installed a wiki extension “News” that allows us to publish a “news feed” (Recent Changes log) filtered by category.

So our proposal is to move all the “in-world” news (like the highway and political news from Drevet, Vienna, Farax, etc.) to this wiki-based news feed.

To publish your article, just make a regular wiki article and at the bottom add:

[[Category:News]]

Here is an example I just made

2014 Costumbres Bridge Collapse

Following examples in wikipedia, most “news” and “current events” articles have the date (at least the year) in the title, as I did with my article.

With this category, we can make a “news window” (either embedded on our main wiki page or as a separate portal) which would be based on this test:

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

So… everybody! Make some news articles about your country in the wiki, and then maybe this weekend I will make a news window/portal.

Then we can keep these User diaries for “meta” (not “in-world”) discussion, like technical announcements, suggestions, questions about how to do things, announcements of new projects, collaborations, etc.

Later, people who like the “news” idea could also create their own news categories (for example, there could be a [[Category:KPBG]] news channel or a [[Category:WXFI]] channel), and country-specific or city-specific news portals could be created on the wiki, too.

Happy mapping

It wasn’t originally my intention to do this. But a comment that I made to a question on the wiki by user ernestpcosby and subsequent work in response to that comment by user zwinek inspired me to give it a shot.

Zwinek set up a proposal page in the wiki, which I have added to a little bit. Then I crafted a proposal for my city Villa Constitución to host the geolympics. In fact, I’m not worried about “winning” the proposal at this time… I set up the proposal mostly by way of example - I’m sure there are others who can do a great job with this too.

I’m looking forward to seeing lots of proposals!

Here is the wiki proposal page:

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Talk:2016_Summer_Geolympics

Post your questions here or in comments on that page.

Update 2015-04-26 8:48 AM KST

isleño correctly mentioned serious copyright concerns with the Olympic logo and name. So from here forward, our competition is called “2016 Summer Geolympiad” and alternate logos are being considered. The format of these diary entries means that I think it’s easier if we keep discussion of that issue in the wiki, so see there:

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Talk:2016_Summer_Geolympiad

I have been experimenting with making tables of “all the communities in X” for the wiki, using scripts run on data from OGF. It’s going well. I am willing to try for other user’s countries.

See my posting in my sandbox to read more about it:

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

I have created a collaboration talk page in the OGF wiki for my country, the Ardisphere:

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Talk:Portal:Ardisphere

Rather than summarize again here, please visit that page. Then, if you are interested, don’t hesitate to contact me.

I just spent over 2 hours researching and removing dozens of unauthorized edits in my country Mahhal, including 100s of railroads, streets, docks, canals, and other features, by two different users. It seems likely that I will locate other edits or features that were not authorized.

I know that Mahhal looks “stagnant” and not much progress is being made. That is for three reasons:

• 1) I am trying to build the country “in order” - coastlines -> water features -> contours and mountains -> vegetation -> etc.
• 2) I have a lot of offline (paper) maps that I’m working from - these tell me where things like roads, rails and canals will eventually be placed
• 3) I’m currently mostly focused on my other country, Ardisphere, which is a more free-form project which I plan ultimately to open to collaboration

So these unauthorized edits don’t “fit” with the detailed plan for Mahhal. Your improvements are not welcome.

Furthermore, it shows a fundamental disrespect. When you join OGF, you are agreeing to respect other users’ territories. Take a minute and actually READ the ABOUT and FAQ pages, please. Then, ask yourself, is this territory where I am editing a territory I am allowed to edit? Open territories are blue on the overview map. If you have trouble differentiating “blue” from other colors, please see an ophthamologist, or take the time to identify the territories by using the list below the map, where they are labeled “community”.

I have temporarily suspended my own “admin” privilege to prevent myself from banning users and deleting their other work out of anger or frustration.

Moving forward, everyone, please show some respect and some basic intelligence in how and where you edit in our shared world. Commonia and the other community territories are quite large, and I would be happy to provide advice or assistance in deciding where or what to map, to anyone who politely requests.

Thank you.

“Luciano”

Cross-posted from my “Bliki.”

This morning, as I was working on my transit system RUTA-VC, adding stations to the many lines I’ve projected, I realized that I had crossed a milestone of sorts: RUTA-VC now has more than 1000 rail stations, including Subway, Elevated, Commuter Rail and Trams.

This seems like too many. But I’m not sure. The source-model for RUTA-VC is probably Seoul, since I know it best, with aspects of Mexico City and Chicago thrown in. Seoul is a city much larger than my current concept of VC, but it has an integrated subway/commuter rail network including about 600 stations. Many of the stations I’ve been building lately are tram stations, which Seoul doesn’t have. I like trams and wanted VC to have all the trams that a large world city would have if it had never undergone the “busification” that happened in so many cities in the 1940s-1960s. Cities like Los Angeles, Tokyo and even Mexico City once had vast tram networks. So I think adding all those tram stations creates a seemingly unrealistic number of “rail” stations, but they’re just tram platforms, every 500m or so. If I subtract the tram-only stations, I get 681 rail stations for the whole RUTA-VC network. And… currently projected routes are not finished at all. So… Still probably too many rail stations. The Ardisphere is obviously a rail-mad country.

Or… maybe VC is bigger than I thought? Here is wikipedia, on rail transit in Tokyo: “Public transport within Greater Tokyo is dominated by the world’s most extensive urban rail network (as of May 2014, the article Tokyo rail list lists 158 lines, 48 operators, 4,714.5 km of operational track and 2,210 stations…” At my current rate of rail-network building, VC is destined to reach those figures.

… See full entry

Also see previous diary entries. Feedback welcome.

Happy Lunar New Year / Feliz Año Nuevo Lunar / 새해 복 많이 받으세요

Hi everyone,

I didn’t forget about the new Main Page I was working on. I am hoping for a higher level of consensus before porting it to the “real” main page.

I am happy to do so. However, I have only received participation or comment for about 6 users so far. Thilo and histor have endorsed it (they are our two active admins, I guess). BMSOUZA, isleño and tom_m7 also endorsed it. I’d like at least 5 additional endorsements (and no major dissents) before I take it “live” - I’m hoping for consensus.

I have the impression I can port the page code myself - it doesn’t seem there are any admin restrictions to editing the main page - is this correct?

I will probably be spending a lot of time with OGF for the next 6 days or so - it’s Korean Lunar New Year, so we have some holiday time. Hopefully before I go to back work next Monday I can make the new main page live, pending everyone’s approval.

We can work out feature maintainance over time. It’s not that hard: I have been updating my Ardisphere Portal almost daily now and it only takes me 15 minutes to do the actual updates, not counting separate time creating new articles worth updating to, which obviously wouldn’t apply to our main page features anyway.

• Luciano

I would like to propose adopting a new “main page” for the wiki. I have created a proof-of-concept here.

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

The main challenge will be that to keep it “interesting” there will have to be people willing to do the editorial work of making new “featured maps” and new “featured articles.” Currently, I am not very busy and don’t mind doing this. However, over the long term we would need other people to do this too.

I have posted this note at the wiki talk page too.

I am making a wiki portal for my country, the Ardisphere. I like the idea a lot, and it is progressing well. Let me know what you think, and if you have any suggestions, ideas, or criticisms.

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Portal:Ardisphere

Happy mapping.

In the spirit of creating more interesting international organizations, I have created:

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/Sibling_Cities_of_the_World

To start things off, I have created a “sibling city” relationship between my two “Second Cities” - Cerro y Casa in Ardisphere and Askendom in Mahhal.

I think this could be a really great way to create all kinds of interlinkages between all our cities, and create a more interconnected wiki, and encourage all of us to communicate more and collaborate, like with embassies but on a city-by-city level. We can even partner up “smaller” cities in interesting ways, creating interesting interconnections.

As an incentive bonus, for the first four distinct users with cities with named mayors (with supporting wiki articles), those mayors receive board seats.

[update 2015-02-06 10:22 AM KST] I am hoping to create some sibling cities with “smaller cities” (less than 100,000 population). I don’t see many people developing wiki articles for smaller cities, but I have actually been really enjoying creating various smaller cities, as it provides a kind of opportunity to try out different ideas in a less ambitious way.

Currently I have articles for Palacio de Maíz, DL, Nudae-si, CC, and Sarangdo, CC, with a few more towns in progress. I have added them (as well as some larger cities) to the chart on the Sibling Cities of the World wiki page without siblings, showing availability. Hopefully this will work out - if you want to make a sibling relationship, you can see who is seeking siblings, and just volunteer by adding your city’s name to the appropriate place in the table. CAVEAT: I would like to focus the creation of sibling cities to cities that have articles on the wiki, as that would make for more interesting browsing.

I was inspired with what Tamarindia did with the Sixth International to create this international organization:

http://opengeofiction.net/wiki/index.php/World_Organization_for_Research_in_Physics

I will offer first 5 countries to sign up to have status as founding members and committee seats. I also would love to see if anyone else is making facilities - linear or circular accelerators They can make interesting map objects. The group also needs a logo - I’ll let others more talented in graphic design develop something. Feel free to add to or edit the article - it’s an international organization!

It has been almost exactly one year since I first signed up for OGF - I found the website in January last year, and I joined and got the email confirming my ownership of AR025 at the start of February, 2014. At that time, there were only two countries available. All the other countries were taken. The OGF world seemed very crowded, but since then, Thilo has weeded the garden substantially. At first I thought I would have preferred a larger country and felt I was late to the party, but in retrospect, even a tiny country is a huge project.

My intention had been to use AR025, which I named Ardisphere after a fictional country I once mentioned in a short story I never finished writing, as a kind of experimental place to perfect my mapping skills and learn the tools. Then I intended to apply what I had learned to focus on my “main” country, Mahhal (AN160). Mahhal is a country I invented in my childhood and has a lot of well-developed background. I want to use OGF to try to recreate a complex “atlas” of Mahhal that I had made on paper which I later lost, but which I recall vividly.

I still intend to build Mahhal, but I am taking it very slowly. I am approaching it perfectionistically and, mostly, “historically” - meaning I want to build the country “in order”: first building the coasts, hydrology and topography, then ecology and plant cover, then agriculture, then hamlets, then cowpaths, then roads, then markets, then towns, then highways, factories, railroads. . . you get the picture. In trying to follow this historical order, however, things go slowly. I have already broken my own “rules” in many cases, e.g. when I went on an airport-building binge, or my detailed work on the capital, Rewk Mahhal.

Anyway, in fact… I have ended up spending about 90% of my time on the Ardisphere. The project took on a life of its own, and despite my disorganized approach, it has ended up pleasingly organic in growth and conception. I have developed a kind “cartographer-crush” on it.

… See full entry

Some time ago user “NE2” created a set of relations that are useful for monitoring and maintaining coastline information, which helps everyone prevent “rendering floods.” Essentially, he made giant “island” relations (in fact, there is a place=continent tag that seems ideal for this type of thing) which encompass all the coastlines of a given continent.

Once I realized his excellent, plan I have been monitoring the relation for the Archanta continent and have several times repaired minor leaks and continuity issues for the continent. This helps prevent “floods.”

These “continent” relations are a pretty huge and cumbersome to work with, but in JOSM you can download and manipulate individual relations separately so it works quite well. The relation ID for Archanta is #7664. It had over 200 individual members, constituting the entire coastline for the Archanta continent.

As far as I can tell from the history (http://opengeofiction.net/relation/7664/history), about one hour ago a user named “polo” apparently deleted all but a few members of this relation (it looks like Changeset #41731). This will be quite difficult to repair unless we can revert this change.

Is there an admin ability to revert a single edit at this level? Re-adding all the individual coastline members would be quite an undertaking, I think.

UPDATE! I think I’m getting a great education on the powers of JOSM. I am in the process of learning how to use the “reverter” plugin. I will see if I can fix this myself, and I am exchaning messages with user “polo.” If I make a mistake, please forgive me in advance…

I have decided to change my username, because it creates some confusion to have my username be the same as one of my countries (Ardisphere). I have contacted admin about changing on the wiki, too. I am now known as Luciano.

Sorry for confusing anyone, and thank you for your patience and thank you to all (especially admins Thilo and Histor) for all their work building this fun site and community.

~ Luciano AKA Ardisphere

This is cross-posted from the Talk page to my new article on Embassies in the Ardisphere on the wiki:

I decided to make the establishment of embassies collaborative. If you want to locate an embassy in Villa Constitución, please look through the list below and choose an unoccupied embassy (marked “Embassy for Sale”). You can link through to the map to see the location (some locations are better developed than others).

Once you choose your location, you have 2 choices: 1) contact me and I will rename the embassy lot for you and edit this wiki page; 2) you are allowed to go and edit the map within the lot boundaries yourself - it becomes your sovereign territory, after all. Just please be careful about surrounding neighborhoods. Also you may update this wiki page yourself. If you don’t like the locations available, you may send me a note requesting location (specify street intersection or metro/tram station), and tell me approximate lot size (square meters). I will try to accommodate your embassy’s needs.

I noticed the expected backup file (ogf_140919_1200.osm.pbf) did not appear. Is there a problem? I have been grabbing this file every day as a habit, since I began to do all my JOSM edits “offline” and using the “osmconvert” program to get my extracts (it’s much, much faster than downloading via connection in JOSM or Potlatch).

Speaking of backups, I wonder if backups are made of the wiki, too? If there aren’t, could we look into that? - people have invested a lot of energy and time in their wiki entries and it would be a good idea to keep backups. I’m not sure if this is the right forum for making that suggestion, but thought I would mention it.

(Update: nevermind. I see that updates are ocurring regularly, it was only one missed that happened to be the one I was looking for. )