Too many icons

[matthijsmelissen]

Multiple people have mentioned that the style contains too many icons currently - however we don't have a central place to discuss this yet. As we still have more requests for adding icons coming in, this is something we should discuss.

For the people who think we currently have too many icons - could you tell us more about the reasons why you think currently there are too many icons?

[matthijsmelissen]

cc @pnorman

[polarbearing]

Does "too many icons" mean (1) too many objects cluttering the map, or (2) too many different symbols to remember?

For (1) the zoom level can be adjusted, and some effort was made e.g. to show dots instead of icons. For (2), there is ongoing effort to better group icons into colours, e.g. moving restaurant/food to a separate colour, and an ongoing discussion to separate transport from accommodation.

[pnorman]

Does "too many icons" mean (1) too many objects cluttering the map, or (2) too many different symbols to remember?

Both.

For (1) the zoom level can be adjusted, and some effort was made e.g. to show dots instead of icons.

We used to use more dots than we do now. I see dots as mainly helping with (2), not the too many symbols problem.

For (2), there is ongoing effort to better group icons into colours, e.g. moving restaurant/food to a separate colour, and an ongoing discussion to separate transport from accommodation.

But this won't reduce the number of icons, will it?

[Adamant36]

But this won't reduce the number of icons, will it?

You act as if its a given that the only option to deal with icon clutter is by reducing the number of icons. Its not a given though (otherwise, just do a PR that guts the icons and call it a day). Or is it more about making a statement against the direction of the style lately and getting rid of the icons is an easy means to that end?

As the person who implemented a lot of the icons that now supposedly clutter the map, I've only seen a few people complain about the icon issue and they were all maintainers who aren't really active in the development of the style anymore. It seems a little odd or something to not be involved in a project at all except to criticize a few choice decisions (especially considering the critics weren't involved in the discussions of if the icons should be implemented in the first place and only voiced their opinions after the fact). In my opinion it would set a bad precedence. Plus, its just a horrible policy to allow a few critical maintainers to get rid of things under those conditions.

I wonder where the opinions of those maintainers override the opinions of the many people, including a maintainer, that were involved in the original decisions to implement the icons. There's no point in participating in a project that doesn't have basic guidelines about how, when, and why things are removed from being rendered, or where a few maintainers opinions after the fact decide. "I don't like how it looks" defiantly shouldn't qualify as a valid reason for removal of a feature that's already been implemented. Even if it comes from a maintainer.

[kocio-pl]

@matthijsmelissen I wanted to discuss also "no new features" attitude, which is somewhat related, do you think this ticket could be made broader or it should be separate ticket?

[imagico]

A few observations here.

According to the wiki history of the map key page (which might not be completely accurate) there are now 250 point symbol classes in this style, about 80 of which have been added during the last year. This is a completely unsustainable trend and so far none of the developers adding symbols has presented any idea how to transit this into a sustainable development despite the problem having been pointed out on multiple occasions.

Likewise i have seen very little interest in actually doing maintenance on the POI rendering in this style overall despite there being plenty of problems with that. The most fundamental issue with that, which has been a pressing problem for many years, is probably that the symbol prioritization is not in sync with the starting zoom levels. I know solving that is out of reach currently for most of the developers here but it is none the less a bad idea to keep adding icons and not addressing the base issues.

There are also tons of other issues with POI rendering like bad symbol selection logic. IMO there is simply way too much lets add a symbol and then never look back attitude.

Also many of the newly added symbols are IMO not suited for this style because they are non-intuitive and often misleading to huge parts of the target audience. This is largely caused by the symbols being developed by people with an urban European/North American background and no serious consideration is given to the question how much sense this makes in other cultural and geographic contexts. I know this is hard to get right but approaching this with a lets choose the least bad of all the bad options we have from our urban perspective paradigm is not helping.

After all the critique i also need to say i understand that for developers starting symbol additions obviously appear to be a sensible starting point to with out too much technical difficulty achieve a feeling of success by adding something to the map. But i would encourage new developers not to let themselves be lured by that because at this stage with 250 symbols already being rendered that might still be correct from a purely technical perspective but from a design perspective making a good symbol addition is much harder than many of the bug fixes and design adjustments that would be important to make in this style.

Long story short - my suggestions:

• develop and discuss sustainable concepts for the future of POI symbol rendering in this style.
• focus on maintenance of existing POI symbol rendering - fixing problems instead of adding new ones.
• remove symbols that are unsuitable for this style because of the reasons mentioned.
• aim for better balance by focusing new symbol additions on rural areas and regions outside Europe and North America and feature types that are useful there.

I would also be fine meanwhile with putting a cap on the number of symbols and allowing new ones only in a quid pro quo fashion when removing another. I don't particularly favor such an approach but if this is the only way i would support it.

[kocio-pl]

I get straight into the propositions:

develop and discuss sustainable concepts for the future of POI symbol rendering in this style.

I agree that it's rewarding to add new icon for new developers and this is where it usually starts. But after some time and gaining more skills it just slows down. For example out of 20 open PRs only 2 of them are about adding icons. I don't see another new team emerging with urge to add 80 icons next year. It does not sustain this way and it happens without any extra effort.

focus on maintenance of existing POI symbol rendering - fixing problems instead of adding new ones.

This is what happens in parallel. When something needs improvements in POI rendering, it's being fixed, and if something is missing, it's being added.

I don't agree that adding objects means adding problems - it might happen, but it's not implication. There is a need expressed in tickets that lack of something is a problem and adding them is fixing this problem. The invisible number of "tagging (cheating) for rendering" gets lower then.

remove symbols that are unsuitable for this style because of the reasons mentioned.

Not being enough culturally diversed? Which ones do you mean?

aim for better balance by focusing new symbol additions on rural areas and regions outside Europe and North America and feature types that are useful there.

Why not, but there's very practical problem - I'm aware only about pumps/wells that would be needed there probably and it's close to being PR-ready, if I remember, but that's it. Could you give more examples? I believe @jeisenbe could be the best to tell what is needed in Asia for example.

[matthijsmelissen]

Does "too many icons" mean (1) too many objects cluttering the map, or (2) too many different symbols to remember?

Both.

@pnorman Could you describe in more detail why you think these are problems? I think to resolve this issue, we must understand it better first.

Are you saying that there are currently user tasks that are hard to execute? Like, users can't find a major church (or even roads) on the map because all shop icons attract attention away from that? Or, people will be wondering what the perfumery icon is because they don't recognize it? Does your reasoning go along these lines? If so, could you give examples of tasks that you think are currently too hard?

More general - and this is a question for everyone: what do you think is the purpose of icons on the map?

It seems a little odd or something to not be involved in a project at all except to criticize a few choice decisions (especially considering the critics weren't involved in the discussions of if the icons should be implemented in the first place and only voiced their opinions after the fact).

@Adamant36 @pnorman and the other maintainers who voiced this critic have a lot of experience with map design, so we should be very glad that they are willing to give their input - and I'm convinced that their advice will help us in creating a better map.

@matthijsmelissen I wanted to discuss also "no new features" attitude, which is somewhat related, do you think this ticket could be made broader or it should be separate ticket?

@kocio-pl I think it's a very similar discussion, I think we could discuss it here as well?

remove symbols that are unsuitable for this style because of the reasons mentioned.

@imagico Do you have any concrete suggestions?

[kocio-pl]

I've only seen a few people complain about the icon issue and they were all maintainers who aren't really active in the development of the style anymore.

As much as I don't like to make it personal problem, it strikes me that I don't remember hearing "there's too many icons" or "I can't recognize them" from anyone else from the whole OSM community. For example the most common problem I hear is about colors being "washed out" and more contrast wanted. And the next group of problems is... you guessed, lack of rendering something. Not a single time I remember that anybody else mentioned problems with too many icons (or other features). It's also my impression that last release, which was more feature rich than usual, brought also more happy voices from the community.

I don't know how to explain this, especially how big the contrast is. I find it very unfortunate however, for multiple of - personal and practical - reasons.

[jeisenbe]

I don't remember hearing "there's too many icons" or "I can't recognize them" from ... the OSM community

This may not be good evidence. People are usually more likely to comment or complain about a specific problem that personally interests them. But the overall number of icons increases slowly, and isn’t one obvious thing.

By analogy, when a bus operator in the USA wants to remove bus stops (which are usually spaced 200m apart!), there are always people that complained that they have to walk 100m farther, but the vast majority of bus riders who will get a faster and more reliable ride do not have a personal reason to comment. On Sat, Jan 12, 2019 at 8:02 AM kocio-pl notifications@github.com wrote:

I've only seen a few people complain about the icon issue and they were all maintainers who aren't really active in the development of the style anymore.

As much as I don't like to make it personal problem, it strikes me that I don't remember hearing "there's too many icons" or "I can't recognize them" from anyone else from the whole OSM community. For example the most common problem I hear is about colors being "washed out" and more contrast wanted. And the next group of problems is... you guessed, lack of rendering something. Not a single time I remember that anybody else mentioned problems with too many icons (or other features). It's also my impression that last release, which was more feature rich than usual, brought also more happy voices from the community.

I don't know how to explain this, especially how big the contrast is. I find it very unfortunate however, for multiple of - personal and practical

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[kocio-pl]

overall number of icons increases slowly, and isn’t one obvious thing.

Well, "color washing" is also slow, general shift, but still it bugs people the most. Not that I claim anything measured in a scientific way and it might be just weak evidence as you suggest, but maybe there is some hidden key to understand and - hopefully - resolve the tension? I don't know, so I'll get back to more detailed question:

More general - and this is a question for everyone: what do you think is the purpose of icons on the map?

For me they are just a part of cartography (nothing special, better nor worse) which works the best for smaller objects, when area coloring/outlining and line patterns would be too general or not applicable, especially on nodes.

[imagico]

More general - and this is a question for everyone: what do you think is the purpose of icons on the map?

The purpose of point symbol rendering is (or more precisely: should be) the same as for all other things rendered in the map - fulfillment of the cartographic goals we have.

Doing so is IMO for point symbols much harder because the static symbol with no adjustment to its context as it is traditionally common in this map is very noisy, takes a lot of space for usually transporting very little substantial information, often covers other important information and is prone to being non-intuitive and culture specific. It is the bulldozer of cartographic design. Many are eager to ride the bulldozer but you can do a lot of damage and you can't do any delicate work with it.

remove symbols that are unsuitable for this style because of the reasons mentioned.

@imagico Do you have any concrete suggestions?

Yes, of course. But at this point i think discussing specific symbols would unproductively sidestep the discussion. My point is that the addition of symbols without an open ended assessment of the suitability of the symbol (that is no predetermined decision of adding the symbol in form of the least bad variant having been suggested) is counterproductive to the cartographic quality of this style. And where this happened in the past it therefore should IMO be re-evaluated.

The core idea for me is to move from a primacy of feature additions to a primacy of fixing existing problems and improving the map in its existing feature set (which is more than hard enough).

[kocio-pl]

To make it short for a start - when it comes to new features, I have no problem with this core idea, the problem is how to move there. As long as the fixing just increased a lot and become primal this way, that's OK for me.

However ban on adding new features would be bad for me. I think they both can coexist (no matter what the proportion is). The only moment when I think of a "feature freeze" is a temporary ban before release to avoid release problems, but most of the time don't see we have a problem with releases.

I also think that while one can make the difference between fixing bugs and adding features for example to make bugfix release simple (that is when a feature freeze is good), in general adding missing feature is also fixing bug. (And we can disagree what a bug is and what resolves them, of course.)

[Hufkratzer]

aim for better balance by focusing new symbol additions on rural areas and regions outside Europe and North America and feature types that are useful there.

Why not, but there's very practical problem - I'm aware only about pumps/wells that would be needed there probably and it's close to being PR-ready, if I remember, but that's it. Could you give more examples?

In rural areas: leisure=horse_riding (https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/2344)

[wilmaed]

aim for better balance by focusing new symbol additions on rural areas and regions outside Europe and North America and feature types that are useful there.

man_made=water_well

1224

Regardless, if the water is drinkable: in some parts of the world any source of water is used, even for drinking :( But you can boil or filter it ...

What shall I map in Niger? "Needs for mapping are water wells, ..." https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Niger

[Adamant36]

For icons there's amenity=feeding_place for farm animals is the only thing I can think of. Its got 1,510 uses. I noticed there's also amenity=watering_place with 5,979 uses. Both of those would be cool additions for rural people. Along the same lines is amenity=game_feeding, with 2,312 uses. The current sport icon PR would be good also.

Specific rendering for ford=stepping_stones maybe. Or different icons for normals fords versus ones that can be crossed on foot (almost 3000 of them have the foot=* tag. 2473 have the depth tag. That might be useful also).

On the landuse side would be improving the rendering of farmyards and meadows to make them more obviously a part of Agriculture infastructure. Along with more specific pattern rendering for different types of crops. Salt pond rendering. Shooting/archery ranges (I think icons are proposed in the sports PR).

Better rendering of paths and surfaces.

I dont know. I'm sure there's a lot more things out there for rural areas. It would be a good meta issue.

@imagico, btw do you have any thoughts about if having different icons depending on the zoom level constitutes map clutter or over complication? I've seen it brought up a few times as a solution to icon issues and supposedly the HOT map does it, but I'm unsure if its a good idea or not.

[wilmaed]

there's a lot more things out there for rural areas

man_made=adit man_made=mineshaft

[jeisenbe]

specific pattern rendering for different types of crops.

+1

Especially for orchards (bananas, oil palms) and bush crops like berries, coffee, and tea, and some crops like rice - these are grown constantly in the same place for many years. On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 11:26 PM wilmaed notifications@github.com wrote:

there's a lot more things out there for rural areas

man_made=adit man_made=mineshaft

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[boothym]

As others have pointed out, some examples would be good to visualise problem areas.

Looking around at z15 and 16 the only new icons I can see are for masts/towers and castles. At z17 the amenity/office/shop icons are now dots though there are new icons for tourist info, artwork/statues and subtypes, internet cafes, amusements/10pin etc. Plenty of the icons added have more uses than other icons already on the map.

Wonder if it would be possible to draw up a list of icons added in say, the last 6-12 months? Maybe a list of all icons and their number of uses would be interesting as well... (can that be done on the wiki?)

[kocio-pl]

Australian asked about lacking features outside Europe told about lack of boundary=protected_area (just resolved #603) and landcover=* (closed #2548):

https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=734674#p734674

[nevw]

Though any particular amenities or facilities are usually absent I would like an icon for windsurfing/kitesurfing/standup-paddleboarding as these are places where enthusiasts usually gather at particular suitable spots and interest spectators.

[kocio-pl]

What are tags schemes for them (if any)?

[nevw]

sport=windsurfing|kitesurfing|sup tag and place as icon on the beach would be sufficient. Can share the one blue windsurfer icon.

[Adamant36]

Icons for sports are being worked on. The original issue for them is #844 if your interested. Its still being worked on. Unfortunately there's a lot more popular sports being the queue at this point. They can be added to the list though. If you want to create icons for them in the mean time though they can be added to the original issue. I plan to do a PR for the top sports here soon and see if those get added to the map or not. Then go from there based on usage numbers. So it might be a while, unless someone does it in the meantime.

On second glance, I don't even think they are addable at this point. sport=windsurfing only has 80 uses and no wiki page. Whereas sport=kitesurfing only has 197 uses. That's way to low. sport=surfing only has 445 uses itself. So even it is probably not addable at this point.

[matkoniecz]

For the people who think we currently have too many icons - could you tell us more about the reasons why you think currently there are too many icons?

We are trying to render too many objects what requires using icons that are cryptic and hard to understand.

For example instead of using single icon for shops we are using many of them + dots. In cases where icons are readable (for some none of them are, for some all, for some part) it ads useful information.

But generic shop icon is better than a confusing shop icon.

Note that whatever icon is useful or confusing and more generic (or even not attempting to show some information) would be better varies from person to person.

And I am pretty sure that we reached point where adding more icons is frequently not improving map for a typical person and in some cases makes it worse. For example I see no chance of implementing #3632 without adding highly confusing icon (and it is one of reasons why I closed it - and closing issues that request adding unreadable icons is the best way to reduce increasing/introducing this problem).

Also, adding icon for one objects encourages to add icon for all objects that are at least as important - that is why I think that rendering amenity=waste_basket and amenity=bench was a mistake.

Note that I am not proposing ban on adding new icons, but I would encourage careful considering whatever new icon is clear for a typical person who has no hint what it is supposed to represent.

"I can't recognize them" from anyone else from the whole OSM community

Is there some existing tool for full text search of OSM mailing lists? Either my memory is faulty or Google and DuckDuckGo is unable to find mail that I remember well.

I run (really limited) test among random people (typically outside OSM community) asking some time ago to guess meaning of symbols on the map. The success rate was really surprisingly low - lower than my any expectations.

Also, mapping patterns of most people is that they map their favorite subject - and they typically want it rendered. While I think that typical person will not start complaining because they have no idea what some symbols are supposed to mean.

[Adamant36]

I run (really limited) test among random people (typically outside OSM community) asking some time ago to guess meaning of symbols on the map. The success rate was really surprisingly low - lower than my any expectations.

@matkoniecz, I'm not trying to argue against anything you have said because I believe a lot of it is probably true, but it seems based on the idea that since people outside the OSM community don't understand something that it should it be changed to cater to them and I keep hearing different opinions who the target market for website is.

Although I think things should be as friendly possible to the average internet user, people like @woodpeck, along with others, are pretty insistent that they don't matter. Its hard to say if something should or shouldn't changed based on some judgement about the target market though if you don't have any idea who the market actually is. So is there anywhere that actually says who is being catered to on the website? It's been on my mind for a while now and I think its something that needs to be figured out if issues like this one are going to be resolved.

I think its telling that the style guidelines don't prioritize a single user group. It puts mappers and mapper feedback on the same on the same general level. Personally, id imagine there are way more mapping or cartography enthusiasts using the site, who would have no problem figuring out the icons, then there are just random people off the street that might be confused. Id assume random people off the street are using apps to access OSM. Id like to see data on it though if there is any.

Is the style a cartographic Swiss Army Knife or is it suppose to be a beautiful, concise representation of an online map? Personally, I think its a Swiss Army Knife. CartoCSS doesn't seem to be a good medium for amazing looking maps but its a good Utilitarian mapping feedback tool. Although this style has still worked good for everything I've seen it used in so far. Even with the extra icons (except maybe the new hospital rendering. Which is being worked on).

[imagico]

I run (really limited) test among random people (typically outside OSM community) asking some time ago to guess meaning of symbols on the map. The success rate was really surprisingly low - lower than my any expectations.

Also, mapping patterns of most people is that they map their favorite subject - and they typically want it rendered. While I think that typical person will not start complaining because they have no idea what some symbols are supposed to mean.

Indeed. This is a case of perception bias. People confused, mislead or alienated by the map are relatively unlikely to complain - and even if they do they might not specifically complain about those things that are responsible for their dislike.

This also means the issue tracker has a significant over-representation of issues about lack of features compared to issues about the way features are shown or about features that should not be shown. See also https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/1975#issuecomment-387319609.

Talking to people unfamiliar with the style and maybe with OSM in general about how they perceive the map can be an eye opening experience.

Regarding the target user of this style - this is fairly well documented in the cartographic guidelines:

https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/blob/master/CARTOGRAPHY.md

[Adamant36]

This also means the issue tracker has a significant over-representation of issues about lack of features compared to issues about the way features are shown

According to the milestone tracker that's clearly not the case. It says there's 52 open and 249 closed issues for new features. Whereas, for bugs and improvements its 258 open and 692 closed. So the vast majority of issues are about bugs and improvements. Unless issues are being miss-labeled, but even then more then half of them would have to be for it to even be close. Which I highly doubt is the case.

There was a few months recently where a big chunk of new issues where about adding new features, but it still wasn't "a significant over-representation of issues." Unless its all your focusing on. Personally, I think its a combination of confirmation bias and the availability heuristic.

Issues having to do with adding new features just appear more prominent on the issue tracker for some reason and are easier to remember (more emotional/cognitive investment perhaps) . Plus, people tend to request them in "chunks." Then it dies down. Unlike with issues about bugs. Which tend to trickle out. So it seems like new features are the vast majority of requests. When in reality they aren't. As backed up by the milestone tracker. Its a 3/1 ratio in favor of bugs and improvements. Which seems reasonable to me.

[imagico]

To avoid misunderstandings - when i talk about new features i am talking about categories a1 and a2 according to https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/1630#issuecomment-154371089 - which is unrelated to any github labeling.

And over-representation is of course meant relative to the gravity of design problems for the goals of the style. Theoretically there would be millions of potential feature additions that could be suggested to implement in this style but the vast majority of them would be counterproductive for the goals we have.

[matthijsmelissen]

when i talk about new features i am talking about categories a1 and a2 according to #1630 (comment)

I think that should match the Github labelling.

[imagico]

Right now it does not, see for example #3592, #3594, #3591, #3527, #3398, #3244, #3155, #3124.

[kocio-pl]

Feel free to add and improve issue ticket tagging if you (or anybody else) wish to.

[woodpeck]

Although I think things should be as friendly possible to the average internet user, people like @woodpeck, along with others, are pretty insistent that they don't matter.

The term "people like $NAME" is always a bit impolite because it robs the person of its status as an individual, and instead treats the person as a generic representative of a class of people. You could have said "Many people, including @woodpeck", or "@woodpeck and others".

Also I haven't insisted that average internet users don't matter, just that they're not the target group of the OSM web site.

I'm in two minds about this.

On the one hand, the fact that openstreetmap.org doesn't intend to be an end-user web site like Google Maps is generally agreed in OSM. I'm not sure if it is actually written somewhere but I'm happy to write it down for you if that gives it more authority. From this, you could logically deduce that since the main user group is mappers, you'd want a map that gives the best possible feedback to mappers. That would likely include rendering more, not less detail, and would push cartographic considerations to the back. For ideal mapper feedback, it would be good to have one symbol for amenity=bank and a slightly different one for amenity=bank with atm=yes. And different street rendering depending on the surface tag. And all that. Someone who says that openstreetmap.org is mainly for mappers should likely welcome such development; of course this would be a cartographic nightmare that lets the Osmarender style look like fine art in comparison.

In other posts I have complained about the complexity of openstreetmap-carto; not primarily how many icons there are, but about how it's meanwhile hard to contribute to the style or modify it for your own purposes because you need to understand the huge code base first (or you're doomed to making minor tweaks without having a feel for the whole). I said recently that for most of my purposes, openstreetmap-carto was good enough years ago, and I stand by that. The changes that have been made in the past few years were improvements, but with diminishing returns, and not without cost either.

I do agree that while these two lines of reasoning aren't directly opposed, they're not orthogonal either; making the best possible map for mappers will bring some complexities with it, though these often stem from trying to avoid the cartographic nightmare. A pure "mapper feedback" map that looks ugly would probably be much easier to do.

Anyway, for what it's worth, in my commercial life I often deal with people who don't like openstreetmap-carto and who ask for "something less cluttered", "something a bit more like Google Maps", or - and this was only this morning and I found it a bit insulting - "something that doesn't look like a 1980s city map".

As a mapper, my main usability issue with the map is the unreliable and unpredictable icon placement. You look at the map at a scale that displays restaurant icons, you browse to an area you know, you find a restaurant missing, you fire up the editor to add it, and you see: It is already there, it just fell off the map because of conflict avoidance. And the matter becomes worse when this leads to different decisions on different zoom levels. Certainly not a new problem for you, and certainly difficult to solve, but as long as whether a certain POI displayed or not is essentially a matter of luck, I can't care much for how precisely the icon tells me what kind of POI it is.

Lastly, the OpenStreetMap web site and openstreetmap-carto aren't the same; even if the OSM web site had a certain set of goals, openstreetmap-carto could still define their own, different, goals. If they stray too far from what the OSM web site wants, the OSM web site could choose a different style to display prominently. Of course openstreetmap-carto could also definie it as their goal to be "the main style on the OSM web site". But it's not a given.

[kocio-pl]

More on topic - it's hard for me to find the core of the problem, there are just different pieces against more features/more icons/more shop icons (these problems are quite mixed). So I will try to also offer partial responses here:

Talking to people unfamiliar with the style and maybe with OSM in general about how they perceive the map can be an eye opening experience.

My (very limited) personal experience is they are happy with it. I can't imagine how to collect more such voices, but that could be good and useful.

People confused, mislead or alienated by the map are relatively unlikely to complain - and even if they do they might not specifically complain about those things that are responsible for their dislike

And how do you know how many confused people did not get there to tell they don't like something lacking? Maybe their needs are seriously underrepresented? The tracker currently gives us at least some feedback from the outside world until we find anything more (see the reply above).

And over-representation is of course meant relative to the gravity of design problems for the goals of the style.

Adding features fits all general purposes very close IMO - as a feedback, as an example of what database offers, it helps to include many different items (not just for one specific use), and it really shows the face of OSM as growing project (not static).

For specific goals, like feature rich, adding is of course beneficial. But not only to that, we have added different diversity features for example (outdoor, industrial, leisure...). When it comes to maintainability, road code and SQL layers are the worst parts probably and tuning can even make it worse. On the other hand adding multiple shop icons does not pose a problem even similar in scale - which is easy to observe, since new developers start with it as the easy task. It also helps maintainability in the long run, since there are more people involved and experienced with touching code.

Its a 3/1 ratio in favor of bugs and improvements. Which seems reasonable to me.

I don't see "gravity" connected directly to adding or fixing anything. I believe both are important and I do both. But if one wants to make more fixes to make this ratio 10:1, I have nothing against it - please do. I just don't agree with making it x:0 for reasons other than pure lack of people willing to add features (which is not the case currently).

in my commercial life I often deal with people who don't like openstreetmap-carto and who ask for "something less cluttered"

Commercial world has all the tools to achieve it, so I don't feel their complaints are targeted at the right aim. See the Facebook maps using OSM data for example. There are multiple simple styles and they can afford to deploy their own servers, including vector maps or layers they need, they can also hire people to do whatever they want. OSM Carto might be good for them or not, but they have a lot of possibilities with OSM.

As a mapper, my main usability issue with the map is the unreliable and unpredictable icon placement.

"Too many icons" in the sense of "there are too dense areas"? There are, of course, and I see no general solution for that, because it's the reality and how well people added it to the database. We made gastronomy less aggressive at z17 exactly to help with this problem.

It's a long tail distribution - just a few old and well established icons do that, while adding multiple more new does not. If you take any "bread and butter" map with gastronomy icons, you will get the same unpredictability:

https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/51.51754/-0.12462&layers=H https://www.maptiler.com/maps/#streets//raster/17/-0.134142/51.514167

But generic shop icon is better than a confusing shop icon.

As long as we have specific color for shops, I don't agree. You don't have to know specific shape to know that it's a shop, so it's not worse, and when you do, it's better.

I don't know all the wetlands for example and I'm not interested in them, but as long as I see blue lines, it's enough for me to know it's kind of wetland, no matter what pattern is beyond that.

[Fizzie41]

In regard to what map users may think / want / need, I recently had a conversation on another forum, with a lady who lives in a somewhat remote area of Australia & who commented that OSM, via Osmand, is fairly useless, as all it shows in her area is a blank map.

I brought this up for discussion on the Au list here: https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/2019-January/012325.html

Since then, another person on that forum has said:

"just tried osmand.. searched for my workplace and no results lol"

When I've asked them for the address, so I could check why it couldn't be found, their response was:

"I shouldn't have to search by address.. I searched for the business name and only 2 places came up in south east qld. There should be 8 businesses. If it cant be reliable for basic search results then there is no way it could be used as an alternative to the usual navigation apps."

I then explained: "_Have the others actually been entered? OSM is not like Google that buys info – everything on the map has been entered by somebody looking at it & saying "Oh, such & such business isn't marked – I'll put it in now", just like I did with about 30 yesterday :-)

Did it work by searching via address?

Have a look at the map https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=12/-28.0517/153.3971 & check your various locations to see if your business is marked.

Work in progress being done by volunteers / interested people. If everybody logged on, fixed their home block, the block they work on & their route between the two, it would be superb!"_, but so far, there's been no further response.

So, there are some thoughts / views about using OSM from 2 random people on the street / internet.

The problem (I assume) of things not being mapped, is, as I said, a work in progress & always will be :-(, but I don't know how to fix the problem of the map only showing blankness?

Do we simply lie by upgrading villages / hamlets to towns, & upping all the roads by 1 or 2 levels eg mark the main (dirt) road as highway=primary, then others as secondary instead of =unclassified etc?

Is there some technical way of changing what is rendered based on the number of items that "should" be visible on screen? eg Default so that "100" items are visible on the screen at any time, so if your looking at a city's inner CBD, https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/-27.46958/153.02666, you would only see street names, but as you drill into smaller zooms, you see building names appear, then bus stops, followed by shop names etc, but if you're looking at a more sparsely mapped country area https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=11/-17.2208/144.7254, then all the towns (that map actually "shows" 6 areas of habitation!), roads etc would all be shown right away?

[matkoniecz]

Is there some technical way of changing what is rendered based on the number of items that "should" be visible on screen?

See #1957

[jeisenbe]

upping all the roads by 1 or 2 levels eg mark the main (dirt) road as highway=primary, then others as secondary instead of =unclassified etc?

You might want to look at how roads are tagged in Scotland, Wales and northern England, where the highway tags were first designed.

In Britain, “trunk” is used for any main road linking 2 towns or a town and city, even if it is only 2 lanes wide (1 each way) and highway=primary is used for the main road linking most villages to the nearest town (though some villages only have a highway=secondary). Hamlets are usually connected to a village by a highway=secondary or at least a highway=tertiary, while =unclassified is only used for narrow rural lanes, usually only a few meters wide.

Unfortunately, mappers in most other countries decided to limit highway=trunk for “expressways” or at least dual-carriage way roads, and many mappers are reluctant to tag an unpaved road as highway=secondary or =tertiary, even when it is the only way to access a hamlet or neighborhood.

This leads to the map being empty at low zoom levels in the western USA, Australia, Indonesia and many other countries. Even Poland looks odd at low zoom levels where only trunks and motorways are shown, and it is a densely populated, well-mapped country.

But if we started rendering highway=primary and =secondary sooner, this would lead to the map of Britain being absolutely overrun with small highways.

So it is quite difficult to design a single rendering style that is appropriate for all parts of the world.

Currently we do not have special rules for different countries or rural vs urban areas. While it would be a nice idea, implementation would be difficult and it could look odd at borders, and especially at the line between urban and rural areas, where roads would appear to change classification and icons would appear/disappear. On Mon, Jan 28, 2019 at 7:40 AM Mateusz Konieczny notifications@github.com wrote:

Is there some technical way of changing what is rendered based on the number of items that "should" be visible on screen?

See #1957 https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/1957

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[matkoniecz]

this would lead to the map of Britain being absolutely overrun with small

Note that displaying roads is quite unrelated to "too many icons" complaint. And it should be discussed in other issues.

[Adamant36]

Deciding to not render one icon type to reduce clutter isn't a sustainable decision in my opinion when its more a matter of an exponential increase in mapping of what's already being rendered. You can remove every icon except restaurants and the map will still be cluttered in areas where there's a bunch of restaurants mapped together. Things are going to inevitably going to mapped in greater and greater detail as technology improves. I don't see vector maps happening any time soon to improve things either.

The only solution I can think of is rendering down to z20 instead of z19 in the midterm. From research of maps that have rendering at that level it seems to be where things stop being rendered extremely close together. Things like restaurants etc will always naturally be a certain distance away form each other due to being in different buildings etc and I think z20 is good enough. I don't think the counter argument of "well, why not just render down to z21 or z22 then" could be made either (at least not for the foreseeable future) and it would give us some badly needed breathing room on what to render when. Plus, It seems to work well for maps that have it as an option and I can't think of any cons of doing it (although I'm no expert). There's no good solution to the "what features should and shouldn't be rendered" debate though. Its to contentious and to much up to interpretation. No two people will ever agree on it. The whole "render based on population or whatever" thing is a none starter also IMHO. So we need to look at other solutions.

The only other thing I can think of is putting way more time and effort as a team into getting vector maps off the ground, but I don't see that happening in the near future, if at all. Even if it did though, this style will be developed along side it for a longtime anyway. So things still need to be worked out either way.

[dktue]

I think this discussion will lead to having zoomlevel 20.

[meased]

I think this discussion will lead to having zoomlevel 20.

I wouldn't get too exited about this. It would put a lot more load on the servers. I'm not sure openstreetmap.org could take it... Would be nice though.

[matkoniecz]

Given that problem is mostly not with to high density of icons (and even z25 would not solve multilevel shopping malls) but with icons getting unrecognisable z20 would not solve that.

[Adamant36]

"Given the problem is mostly not with to high density of icons, but with icons getting unrecongnisable."

Last I checked it both. More so though the density issue though probably. At least in this issue as its called "to many icons." I haven't actually seen any "I can't tell what this icon is" issues. If that were the problem, id think there would be a bunch of them and we'd be revising icons instead of focusing mainly on improving landuse colors like we have been.

[Adamant36]

It would put a lot more load on the servers.

@meased, load as in the extra tiles taking up server space or load as in slower rendering?

[kocio-pl]

Space would be a problem for sure. See how filled are the servers currently - like 85-90%:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Servers/tile https://munin.openstreetmap.org/openstreetmap.org/orm.openstreetmap.org/df.html

In theory there would be 4x more tiles to render than on the previous zoom level. In practice above some level only some part of them are actually rendered, but we have no current data how much and it seems that this percentage grows over the years:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tile_disk_usage

[Adamant36]

Hhhmmm interesting. I hadn't thought about how the size would exponentially increase like that based on the zoom level, but it makes sense. It would be interesting to see what the latest % stored on tile server numbers are. I see its hosted by University College London. Do you know if that means its their hardware or is it supplied by OSM and they just maintain it?

[Fizzie41]

See how filled are the servers currently - like 85-90%

Which would go a long way to explaining why I'm seeing more & more messages recently, when trying to save changes, that there's too many people using the site? :-(

[Adamant36]

Maybe. A few slow hard drives and a proccessor from 2010 that they seem to be running the server on probably doesn't help either.

94gb of ram also, but only 1066 DDR3.

Although the loading problems might be on the site and not the style. I think they are on different servers.

[kocio-pl]

Which would go a long way to explaining why I'm seeing more & more messages recently, when trying to save changes, that there's too many people using the site? :-(

We're talking about tile rendering servers, not main database, OSM is decentralized project.

[kocio-pl]

I see its hosted by University College London. Do you know if that means its their hardware or is it supplied by OSM and they just maintain it?

There are 5 different rendering servers - look at the first link. They are probably in different locations, but I gave the link to just one as an illustration. I'm not sure if they are donated/bought for OSMF or just used by OSM.

It would be interesting to see what the latest % stored on tile server numbers are.

I asked about it, once in a few years it could be good to see the change:

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Tile_disk_usage#2019_update.3F