Check out the forum post, info page, and feel free to send ideas to admin.

Mappers who wish to report flooded continents may now do so at OGF:Report flooding.

Please be advised that future flood posts in User Diaries may be removed.

Ever since the beginning of this website, people have been tracking down and redirecting new users mapping in the wrong areas.

Now there’s a space where we can share who we’ve contacted and when we contacted them. This will help us reduce the amount of contacts we make, not only by eliminating duplicated contacts, but also by encouraging others to join the effort.

If you’re an experienced mapper and you’d like to help make OGF a better place, check out OGF:New user patrol to find out more.

Many thanks!

For those of you hoping to change your wiki password, it appears to be possible again. Please let us know if you encounter any difficulty.

OGF (including the wiki) will be offline for maintenance on Saturday, September 2, starting at 14:00 UTC, for several hours (4-6 presumably).

Copying/pasting others’ mapping, without their permission, has always been against the spirit of our site rules, “Be original” and “Be respectful.”

From today forward, copying other users’ mapping is also explicitly against the rules: “No copying others’ mapping, without their permission.”

If our multilingual users can take a moment to add this to the translations of the rules, under the “Be original” header, it would be much appreciated.

Announcing OGF:Photo resources, where you can find photos from other mappers to use in your wiki articles, and you can share your photos for others to use in their wiki articles.

Just read the important guidelines for photos, then set up a photo collection on any photo sharing site, and then link to it on the OGF:Photo resources page. Easy!

(Photos above from Sarepava, Isleño, & Stjur)

Thilo has created a new version of his handy scale tool:

http://tile.opengeofiction.net/util/map_scale.html?map=13/20.73/86.72&map2=x/38.89/-77.04&pxpt=0.277

It’s a split screen with the OGF world on one side and the real world on the other, shown at the same scale. Each side can be moved around independently, so you can compare anywhere in OGF with anywhere in the real world. By switching layers on the right, you can also compare any two places in OGF. Comparisons can be shared with other mappers by copy/pasting the URL.

As in the previous version, zooming by mouse wheel or double-click is disabled, but there is a zoom control (& measuring tool) in the upper left corner. You can also set the zoom by entering a value into the “Zoom” or “Scale” input fields and hitting “Enter.” If you want the number in the “Scale” field to be accurate, the “pxpt=_____” part of the URL must be adjusted for the pixel pitch of your monitor.

OGF will be offline for maintenance on Saturday, April 22, starting at 12:00 pm UTC, for several hours (at least 4, probably).

Just a friendly reminder that any person using more than one OpenGeofiction account may be immediately and permanently banned. Please consider yourself warned. Thanks!

# Community-owned vs. privately-owned collaboratives

From this point forward, we wish to introduce some collaboratives that are community-owned, where ‘admin’ is listed as the owner and will appoint a user (or users) to serve as the territory’s coordinator(s).

A coordinator for a community-owned collaborative:

• must develop the territory for the benefit of the community, working as a team with other active mappers there;
• cannot make the territory private, closed, etc;
• should find ways to include any well-qualified mappers who wish to participate;
• will consult with admin before any major changes (decisions can be vetoed by admin); and
• may be replaced by admin if necessary.

Official vs. unofficial collaboratives

In addition to distinguishing between community-owned and privately-owned collaboratives, we will also distinguish between official and unofficial collaboratives.

In a community of limited size, there’s only a limited amount of collaborative ‘energy’ available. So if there are too many projects advertised as collaborative, then that energy may be dispersed to such an extent that most such countries are simply inactive, and true collaborative experiences (multiple active users working closely together) can become hard to find.

Therefore, although anyone may unilaterally declare their country to be ‘collaborative’ and invite others to map there; only a limited number of collaboratives will be recognized as official, i.e. marked purple on the overview map and territory list, and included in the collaboration directory.

Official collaborations must:

• have a basic wiki article that describes the country for collaborators to understand;
• have a wiki talk page for collaboration;
• have an owner or coordinator who is actively engaged in the project; and
• receive approval from the admin team.

Official collaborations are not meant for:

• inactive users trying to get help from active users;
• users trying to get help when they’ve chosen a country too big to handle;
• other overwhelmed users trying to get help;
• lazy users trying to maintain control of a country without having to map very much;
• absent users putting a country ‘on hold’ while they take a break; or
• users trying to avoid responsibility for a country when they don’t want to map it anymore.

All community-owned collaborations will be official. Privately-owned collaborations may or may not be officially recognized, depending on their merits.

Look for these changes coming soon. Any questions, feel free to ask below.

Recently we have had several instances where text posted to the wiki has been clearly just cut-and-paste from Wikipedia. This is already clearly against the rules (see About page). Notably, there is also the ongoing problem of people who ignore notices from admin or other users about copyright issues related to images.

Let’s reiterate the rule in question:

“All wiki images — photos and artwork — must be free to use, and must contain a link to source and/or copyright info. All wiki text must be your own writing.”

We have decided to pursue a new, stonger policy, in this respect. Users who are found to have copied text from other sources into the OGF wiki, or who repeatedly disregard concerns expressed about possibly copyrighted uploaded images, may have their wiki privileges suspended, without notice.

Thank you for understanding, and happy mapping.

The OGF Admin Team

After a few recent confusions caused by people having multiple OpenGeofiction accounts, we’re adding one of our unwritten rules to the written rules: “No sockpuppets. Only one account per user.” So…

ANYONE USING MORE THAN ONE OGF ACCOUNT, PLEASE SEND A MESSAGE TO ADMIN IMMEDIATELY.

And no, we don’t care about that account you made a few years ago, only used a couple times, and haven’t touched since. The people we need to hear from are those who are actively editing with more than one account, or those who use more than one account to control more than one territory. If this describes you, and you fail to promptly contact admin, please be warned that all of your accounts may soon be deleted from OGF.

Thanks for understanding. Happy mapping to all.

Two minor additions to the OpenGeofiction rules have just been posted:

• “No real world companies or organizations.” So if you have real companies or organizations in your mapping, please change them to something original. This is to encourage originality and also to avoid companies/organizations getting upset about their names being used without permission. For more info see the User Diaries discussion here.
• “No sockpuppets. Only one account per user.” This has always been an unwritten rule, but we’re adding it to the written rules. More info soon in a separate post.

So, anyone with translation skills, please take a moment to add these to the translated versions of the rules. (We’ve also added a question about multiple accounts to the FAQ.)

Many thanks!

A year ago, the OGF community helped produce translations of our About page into German, Spanish, French, Dutch and Polish.

Since that time, we’ve made some big changes to the English version, in an effort to make the rules of OGF clearer and the steps for new users easier to follow.

So if anyone could help update the translations of the About page to match the current English version (or produce a good translation for another widely spoken language) we’d appreciate your efforts enormously. With all the formatting involved, it’s probably easiest to simply copy/paste the entire wiki code from the English page, and start from there.

If you’re interested, feel free to comment below or jump right in. Many thanks for your help!

Imports of OSM data are problematic for a number of reasons:

First, it’s against Openstreetmap’s licensing terms to use their data without attribution.

Second, I think it’s rather uncreative. That’s not what Opengeofiction is about.

We discussed this issue a while ago among admin team members, and finally decided that we rather don’t want to have imported data at all. It’s an official rule now:

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

If you have imported significant amounts of OSM data, please be so kind to delete them yourself. Otherwise I’m afraid that the admin team will eventually have to do it.

Thilo

Thanks again to everyone who suggested names, and everyone who took the time to vote. Congratulations to those who contributed the winning suggestions!

The new ocean names are the Ardentic Ocean, the Hesperic Ocean, and the Asperic Ocean. The new continents are Orano, Ereva, Kartumia and Pelanesia.

It has been mentioned that Hesperic/Asperic may be too similar. What are your thoughts? How would you feel about changing to Hesperic/Asperian or Hesperian/Asperic, in order to differentiate them a bit more? Or is there another easy solution? Let us know what you think in the comments.

For anyone interested in the vote tallies and other details, we’ll be adding a wiki page soon with the number of votes received by each option, the list of voters, and a list of the name submissions that didn’t make it to the ballot. Some of the ideas would make great names for gulfs, seas, bays, rivers, lakes, countries, states, cities, etc, so we encourage the community to make good use of these names, and not let them go to waste.

Thanks again to all who participated. Again, if you have opinions on the Asperic/Hesperic issue, let us know in the comments, and we may modify one or the other of these.

The vote is ON for naming the oceans and new continents!

Visit our online voting booth to cast your ballot. To vote, you must enter a valid OGF user name, and you may only vote one time. When you hit the “Done” button, your vote will be locked in, so don’t click it until you are completely finished.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to submit name ideas. There were a huge number of great submissions and it was really hard to narrow down the choices for a somewhat manageable ballot. To make voting easier, you can vote for as many names as you like in each section. You don’t have to pick just one.

Voting will remain open until Thursday, November 26. If you have questions, feel free to ask below.

Again, the address to visit is: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/WJ8PV22

Happy voting!

Send your name ideas to admin by Tuesday, October 27! The admin team will then select our favorite suggestions for a community vote!

For more details, check out the original post here.

The admin team wants to hear your suggestions for naming our continents and oceans!

Submit your ideas by sending a message to admin by Tuesday, October 27. The admin team will then select our favorite suggestions for a community vote!

Tips:

• You can submit as many suggestions as you like, for each continent and each ocean.
• If you like, you can target your suggestions to a specific continent or ocean (using the letters A through G on the map above) or just submit general suggestions.
• If you like, you can include explanations for your suggestions. “It just sounds nice” is a perfectly fine explanation.
• Ideally we don’t want continent names that begin with A, T or U, since those letters already belong to the existing continents.
• Submit your suggestions via private message instead of posting them here.

Let us know if you have any questions. Thanks!