Working Group Minutes/EWG 2011-10-24

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

Attendees

IRC nick Real name
apmon Kai Krueger
pnorman Paul Norman
TomH Tom Hughes
zere Matt Amos

Summary

  • Documentation of various database schemas started at [1], and there's plenty of room for improvement.
  • TomH and apmon have fixed several issues with the rails3 branch and work continues.
  • There was discussion of whether IRC was the appropriate place to reference from a blocked tile client.
    • There have been many instances of this, which may be beginning to tax the patience of those in #osm.
    • Possibly a better solution would be to send people via an info page first, so that the same information doesn't have to be repeated ad nauseam in IRC.
    • Punt to OWG as a suggestion.
  • There was discussion of recognition / award schemes for development work, but no clear consensus emerged.

IRC Log

18:00 < zere> minutes of the last meeting: http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Working_Group_Minutes/EWG_2011-10-17
18:00 < zere> as always, let me know if i got something wrong, or they're in any way objectionable.
18:02 < zere> apmon sent his apologies, and pnorman said he hasn't had the opportunity to look at the osmosis stuff.
18:03 < zere> i've started on a list of database schemas here http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_Database_Schemas
18:03 < zere> and i'd be glad of any feedback as to the usefulness or otherwise of that list
18:03 < TomH> apmon did look at the rails3 stuff and I've fixed some stuff he found
18:04 < zere> (it's not very long at the moment, but i'll add more)
18:04 < TomH> and I've had a contribution!
18:04 < TomH> some code cleanup 
18:04 < zere> TomH: great! is it only the osmosis work needed now before we can go to rails3?
18:04 < TomH> just got an updated version today following a review I did last week
18:04 < TomH> zere: I think there is one outstanding bug that apmon found
18:05 < zere> is it on github?
18:06 < TomH> what? the patch?
18:06 < zere> the outstanding bug
18:06 < TomH> oh right
18:06 < TomH> not
18:07 < zere> just in case anyone wanted to help with it
18:07 < TomH> bascailly setting an openid url on an existing user fails
18:07 < TomH> something in the callback chain is killing the session I think
18:07 < TomH> probably a CSRF check faiure
18:08 < TomH> https://github.com/pdgtips/openstreetmap-website/tree/refactor_bbox_rev_1 is the submission I've been reviewing
18:09 < pnorman> zere: list lookslike a good start. 
18:12 < zere> pnorman: thanks :-)
18:12 < zere> TomH: yeah, that looks like it'll be complicated given the scaled / unscaled handling of coords across the code...
18:12 < pnorman> Might want to include some scale of import speed (hours/days/weeks)
18:13 < TomH> zere: it's in pretty good shape actually (that is the second cut at it)
18:13 < zere> yeah, so i was wondering whether it would be better to put more information on the page. and, if so, whether to break it out of the table and into more useful prose sections below.
18:15 < apmon> I didn't get around to doing the library wiki page yet
18:16 -!- apmon [~kai@ucb-np2-237.colorado.edu] has left #osm-ewg []
18:16 < zere> i didn't get around to tidying up the mapnik / build your own tile server wiki pages either. :-( 
18:16 < zere> soon...
18:16 < pnorman> I believe there are also some other schemas. Whatev Nominatium uses, what overpass uses, what imposm does, and something with mongos
18:17 < zere> yes, and i hope to include all of those on that page. i tried to ensure i didn't use postgres/postgis specific language anywhere ;-)
18:18 < zere> and, of course, if you want to contribute to that page then you'd be extremely welcome!
18:19 < zere> i don't think we had anything outstanding from the last meeting...
18:19 < zere> so does anyone have anything they'd like to discuss?
18:21 < pnorman> I don't think its an ewg matter, but can we refer the question if irc.openstreetmap.org is the best first point of contact for blocked tiles to someone?
18:22 < zere> hmm.. yes, it's probably not. but we can talk about it anyway. do you think it would be more appropriate to go somewhere else?
18:23 < pnorman> a new page,  maybe blocked.osm.org
18:23 < zere> i think the rationale behind it was that at least someone is (almost) always in #osm and can explain what's going on. since the people who get the message are often users of software, not the developers.
18:25 < zere> and, as a side effect, i guess we find out what the software is. since they're not always using real User-Agent strings.
18:25 < pnorman> true
18:26 < TomH> that was how it started - we wanted to find out what something was
18:26 < zere> but i can see the benefit of providing much of the information up-front on a web/wiki page. means it doesn't have to get explained over and over in #osm.
18:26 < TomH> so we served that tile and waited for somebody to appear and tell us
18:27 < zere> worth discussing at the next OWG meeting, i guess?
18:28 < pnorman> maybe a differeent tile for known and unknown blocked apps? I just see people in #osm getting shorter and shorter with people coming in after getting the tile, for understandable reasons
18:30 < zere> yes, that is a good point. no use in being short with the users - it's generally not their fault.
18:32 < zere> one thing i wanted to discuss is recognition. it seems the lolcat of awesomeness is still fairly active, but i wondered if it might be good to have a dev-specific award for bug fixes, contributions, etc...?
18:33 < zere> what do you think?
18:36 < pnorman> last lolcat was in april
18:36 < zere> yeah
18:36 < zere> and traditionally the lolcat has been for anything OSM-related. not sure who (if anyone) is still looking after that.
18:37 < zere> i wondered if we couldn't do a roughly monthly award, with a blog post and possibly some sort of tangible prize
18:37 < pnorman> oh, last was aug, one before was april
18:37 < TomH> don't think anybody has ever ben in charge of he lolcat
18:37 < TomH> people just award it when they think it's merited
18:38 < pnorman> looking at the past awards, it looks like 60-70% are for dev related stuff
18:40 < zere> yes, but possibly because 70% of them were awarded in 2008 or before...
18:42 < zere> if we could get a small budget for prizes - maybe t-shirts or something (?) - do you think that would be a good use of time, money and effort to reward people?
18:45 < TomH> maybe
18:50 < zere> hmmm... ok. i guess the idea needs more thought.
18:50 < zere> anything else to discuss tonight?
18:55 < zere> ok. thanks to everyone for coming!
18:55 < zere> i won't be able to make the next scheduled meeting (31st Oct). does anyone want to volunteer to take over?
19:01 < zere> i guess that's a 'no'. see you on the 7th november :-)
19:02 < TomH> ;-)