Mastodawn

Terence Eden

@pietervdvn heya. That's a great essay.
One small point. I run @openbenches. We wouldn't ever try to fork the OSM dataset. And we're not trying to build a separate mapping community.

Indeed, we did try contributing data back to OSM but were told there was no interest.
Our data is deliberately licenced so that it can be pushed into OSM if it is useful.

Happy to chat to see if there's a way to collaborate and make our data more suitable.

@Edent Hi! Sure, I had a look already into this.

I specifically updated https://mapcomplete.osm.be/benches so that it allows to add an inscription, mark it as a memorial and/or mark that it has an integrated artwork.

I also had a look to your data, but it would be really helpful if a 'created_at' or 'last_modified_at' date would be included. Data of >5 years old often needs to be checked again, whereas <1yo might be easier to copy-paste.

Benches

A map of benches

@Edent BTW: OpenStreetMap has evolved a lot in the past few years; the amount of detail we map on objects has grown as well; so I don't see any problems of tagging something as both a bench and a memorial.

@Edent Case in point: tagging the inscription is officially documented now.

Terence Eden Mar 24, 2023

@pietervdvn excellent!
I'll look at adding that data to the API this weekend.

Would it be helpful for us to push the data via an API - or is it better to be manually copied?

We only have 27k data points :-)

@Edent 27K points is a lot - and I suspect quite some of them will need to be conflated with OSM or rechecked. I'll copy this with JOSM into OSM as appropriate or setup a maproulette task or something. In other words: the 'download all data'button is already plenty ;)

Terence Eden Mar 24, 2023

@pietervdvn sweet!
I'll add the date to the data this weekend and will ping you when done.

Terence Eden Mar 24, 2023

@pietervdvn OK, I've added "created_at" with an ISO8601 timestamp.
Let me know if I can do anything else to help.

@Edent That's great! I'm quite busy at the moment, so it'll take a few weeks before I'll really start working into it. However, I'm already starting the job that takes the longest amount of time, namely: informing the community ;)

@Edent And: there is another formality that needs to be done. The website states that the data is available under 'CC-BY', thus that attribution is required.

There are a few pragmatic ways we can deliver this attribution requirement:

1. We mention openbenches.org on https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contributors
2. We include a `source`-tag on the bench (which'll won't be shown by most -if not all- apps)
3. We include a source in the metadata of the changeset, making it clear where the data came from.

Contributors - OpenStreetMap Wiki

@Edent Is option 1 sufficient for you? I'll also do my best to make option 2 or maybe option 3 happen, but these are harder to do.

Terence Eden Mar 28, 2023

@pietervdvn that all sounds brilliant.
Please let me know if I can help in any way.
I'd prefer option 2 if that's possible. But I don't know what's "normal" for OSM 🙂

Would it help if I linked each bench page to, for example, https://mapcomplete.osm.be/benches?z=18&lat=51.48906&lon=0.130307 ?

Benches

A map of benches

@Edent Great!

Some of the others requested that you'd fill out a waiver form... The full explanation is here: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2017/03/17/use-of-cc-by-data/, or you can just fill this out: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3PN5zfbzThqeTdWR1l3SzJVcTg/view?resourcekey=0-PzVtHArfxvbYidpW2-AVTg

Use of CC BY 4.0 licensed data in OpenStreetMap | OpenStreetMap Blog

@Edent Please, send it to [email protected] and I'll forward it to the right people then.

Feel free to link to MapComplete. Feel free to embed it somewhere, but for now, it won't show up the openbenches.org benches _yet_. And a global overview is not available yet as well (i.e. that you see where all the benches are at global level, but I'm working on that as well, but is gonna take a few months).

However, I _might_ also make a variation on the benches map that shows only memorial benches.

Luc May 27, 2025

@pietervdvn Has this maproulette task been made or did anything else come out of this?

CC @Edent