I will be travelling for a longer time.

Since I will have rarely access to computer and internet I announce a pause in my OSM activities. I assume I will map now and then but not as much as I did until now.

What I will stop to do:

Daily edits – mostly in Saxony and Germany, partly in the whole world
Daily check of streets the [street list ticker](http://regio-osm.de/listofstreets/ticker?area=&hiddenletzte=letzte) announces as deleted and regarding edits and communication with mappers and partly the administration of villages or towns. It seems I am the only one who picked this task. I'd be glad if there would be a successor.
Bothering Dietmar Seifert with bugs and enhancements for his [street list comparison](http://regio-osm.de)
Reviewing and a little contributing to the Wochennotiz and partly the OSM Weekly
Organising and attending OSM booths in Glauchau and Cologne but mainly at the Chemnitzer Linuxtage (already handed over that task)
Taking care of the OSM Affiliate Account at Amazon Germany (handed over to Frederik Ramm as the treasurer of the FOSSGIS e.V.)
Reporting bugs and asking for enhancements in JOSM (nearly 200) and other programs on various platforms like github or launchpad.
Enhancing translations mainly of JOSM and iD. (Some time ago I was the translator of MapOSMatic and (not OSM-related) until now of Claws-Mail)

During the last eight years I made about 11.600 edits in OSM – right from the start with JOSM since I was unable to handle Potlatch 1. (RTFM – what’s that? :) )

After some time my region was quite completely mapped and I added quality assurance (QA) to contributing new data. The most mappers I came in contact with were friendly, helpful and thankful colleagues. Felt 0,1 of the mappers who replied to my communications meant that I should hold my breath and a perfect OSM world would never exist. Assumedly because of this one should not even try to each this and stop QA? Messages and changeset discussions I started got replies to about 50%.

Until now working for, with and at OSM was mainly a pleasure. But with more work at QA it twindled a little. When one fixes errors of other mappers for several days it is easy to get the impression that all OSM data is a big mess. One interesting case was a mapper who came to my attention by deleting several pedestrian areas. I looked at some of his changesets where I saw that he wasn’t a real vandal but repeatedly deleted objects which exist in reality. Thus I checked all of his changesets, undid every deletion and checked every object restored. In total he had deleted

at least 140 housenumbers
a lot of highway=service
several bus stops with name and being Members of public transport relations
most of the pedestrian areas of a city
the very detailed main railway station of a city
several squares with name
several inhabited places (place=)
benches
picnic sites
several bridges
several traffix signs and grit bins

Asked for the reason of his deletions he said something like: “Well, I thought that OSM doesn’t need to be that detailed. But I will refrain from further deletions.”

The neighbour town Freiberg donated in 2014 a list of housenumbers to OSM after a mapper worked hard to get it. With other mappers I collected and mapped a lot of housenumbers. Regrettably we still haven’t found all. After comparing with the more recent data from 2015 about 260 housenumbers are still amiss.

Most of the problems a buildings which still exist but don’t have a visible number attached. Often these are uninhabited buildings like abandonded houses, morgurs, chapels, churches and also some commercial buildings. There one has to research – but often I prefer to look for housenumbers more easy to find.
One potential problem when working on housenumber lists is to miss new buildings with new housenumbers – since they are not on the list. :)

In my (former) town from 2213 housenumbers about 500 are still missing.

With HOT tasks it happens all the time to me that I start to work on one of its parts but always end up fixing the data other mappers created.

An overview of what I did on OSM you can find on hdyc, some related accounts I linked on my user page I think now and then there will be a sign of live at my blog or twitter. It may happen that I will have some logs and Edits for OSM and some pictures for Mapillary.

Hoping that the mappers who feel supressed or opressed by me will use the chance and flourish by creating more changesets than forum entries –

Miropafshim! malenki – Thomas