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"
IMPORTANT ground rule: never significantly alter or delete work without first making some effort to find out who made it (this is easy both on the map window and in JOSM, where you have the ability to query any object's history) and make sure they are OK with it. Many of the "messes" in the blue territories are made by users who are no longer active, in which case, no need to worry. But if you recognize a user name attached to some work, common courtesy is to contact that person and find out what idea they might have about that object.
ALSO IMPORTANT: This is NOT an invitation to imperialistically expand your own country's influence or culture. Instead, try to think of ways to give these blue countries THEIR OWN character, history, etc. If your home country uses English, maybe work in a blue spot that isn't English-using. If your home country is rich, try to do something poor or "developing." Challenge yourself, and push your boundaries.
I am going to attempt the "Medium" challenge. I will probably work hard to rationalize admin divisions in Mecyna and Rhododactylia (maybe making some multimaps for them). I may also work on collaboration pages for these countries. Lastly, I have an idea to develop the Annosimia state in Commonia, which I created some time ago but never did much work on. It would be a very poor region - I would model it on interior rainforest-bordering-savannah in South America, perhaps Bolivia or Paraguay. I also want to try to think of ways, ON THE MAP, to represent the supposed ongoing Commonian conflict: AN bases, military checkpoints, refugee camps, vast brownfields of abandoned or failed industry. Look at the brownfields of Grozny, Chechnya, or the orphanages and police-station zones of Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
Happy mapping.