2023 quarterly projects ideas and feedback

Mapping graveyards as part of places of worship would be interesting.

If this extended to mapping blocks and rows of burial plots, that would help volunteers fulfill requests from people all over the world to have someone get a photo of their ancestor's grave, like these:

https://www.findagrave.com/photo-request/location/current/51.5046521/-0.3220686?sortBy=memorialName&searchRadius=5

I nearly volunteered once but found that the council only had maps to the block level and that rows weren't sequentially numbered, so gave up. But there is a name index so it would be possible to infer the row numbers from a few identifiable graves.

What makes 'notathons' a good idea is that people only leave notes on things they're interested in - it's a strong signal that something interesting is missing from the map. We could attach some competitions for extra motivation, eg who resolved the oldest note, who resolved the note that's furthest from any place point, what's the funniest and the weirdest note anyone has found etc.

Mapping graves is an interesting idea.

One slight niggle is that the wiki at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag%3Acemetery%3Dgrave states "please map only significant and notable graves", my question here is why? Finding a grave is far easier if all are mapped so you know it is y rows up and x graves along.

Bit late to the party probably but I run the British Pilgrimage Trust, and Harry Wood directed me to this conversation, particularly around places of worship. We define 'pilgrim places' more broadly than just places of worship, including all these: ancient tree, ancient/prehistoric monument, mosque, synagogue, temple, war memorial, parish church, chapel, cathedral, labyrinth, hermitage, cave, grave, holy well, waterfall, source, or mouth of, a river, island and hilltop. Is there capacity to include these other categories as well? Even with the places of worship it'd be great for walking/cycling pilgrims to know if they are open or closed during the day for people to walk into; whether they have loos or kitchens; bit of history including date of origin; vital stories, any famous gravestones; most important features; etc

Hi Guy,

These project topics help direct attention on a particular focus, but can encompass a great deal. The things you have listed, in my opinion, are just as valid.

"Places of Worship & Cemeteries" is listed as the Quarter 4 project in 2023, starting in October.

I've only recently started the wiki page detailing what the project is about and giving information on data sources and examples of the kinds of things to map. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/UK_Quarterly_Project/2023/2023_Q4_Project:_Places_of_Worship_and_Cemeteries

The examples you've summarised above would be useful to capture!

This is great to hear and just what we need!

Ancient trees are already mapped on Woodland Trust's 'Ancient Tree Inventory' https://ati.woodlandtrust.org.uk/

Megalithic.co.uk has loads of prehistoric sites on it

https://labyrinthsinbritain.uk/ has labyrinths mapped

There is a Holy Wells facebook group with mapped holy wells in the documents section of the group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/244060782427611/files/files

Hope that helps!

Ancient trees are already mapped on Woodland Trust's 'Ancient Tree Inventory' https://ati.woodlandtrust.org.uk/

Are you involved with this one? Do we have permission to use this data in OSM?

I called Tom Reed this morning, who says this is good timing as they are creating a subset of "Heritage/Named" Ancient Trees data points which could be applied to the OSM base layer map. He says email him on [email protected]

@trigpoint the point about only mapping significant and notable graves is something that's been kept from the original version of that wiki page - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Tag:cemetery%3Dgrave&oldid=1144148

I imagine it is due to concerns about the resources that micro mapping can take up (as outlined here - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Micromapping). Personally, I think the global value of micro mapping outweighs the technical challenges of hosting extra data (and the need to handle extra data isn't going away as more and more of the world is mapped), so long as the micro mapping is of high quality I personally think it's worth it.

Quarterly Projects of 2023

In case you missed it, the quarterly projects for 2023 are as follows:

• 2023 Q1: Fixmes and Notes - Focus on fixme's and notes on the map.

• 2023 Q2: EV Charging Infrastructure - Where are the chargers? What are their capabilities?

• 2023 Q3: Buses and Transit - Bus station, transit stops. Better use of NaPTAN?

• 2023 Q4: Places of Worship and Cemeteries - Add places of worship and cemetery/graveyard use. Add denominations to places of worship.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/UK_Quarterly_Project/2023

I will try and write up my experience of trying to improve mapping of Places of Worship in Wales. I tried to do obvious ones whilst adding roof top solar. There are quite good resources in terms of open data and old maps/documents, but they do need to used together. UPRNs can be useful for identifying chapels which have been converted into flats for instance.

I also did a tiny bit of grave mapping in a Welsh churchyard where my uncle (who died of Spina Bifida long before I was born) and my Great-grandmother are buried. Last time I visited I couldn't find the former grave and had to give up because my Dad couldn't cope with the rain, so I'd like to able to locate it quickly in the future. Unfortunately I only took close-up photos on my last visit which was prior to owning a GPS. (Note the Church of England are engaged in some graveyard mapping as well).

Hello, I am the founder and editor of the Megalithic Portal ancient sites web resource.

I am strongly opposed to adding megalithic sites to OSM as ‘places of worship’. That would be adding way too much subjective interpretation. They should be added as archaeological sites, nothing more, nothing less. 

To a lesser or greater extent the same applies to sites such as labyrinth, hermitage, cave, grave, holy well, waterfall, source, or mouth of, a river, island or hilltop etc.

They should be added as what they are, not as someone’s subjective interpretation of what they are.

Andy

Is there another way these ancient (and natural) sites could be added to the OSM base map by the community on this forum, if they are not categorised as 'places of worship'? I don't think it is inaccurate to say that some of the behaviour of people around these site categories is what many would call 'worship', but I appreciate Andy's more neutral definition is less controversial.

I also think the world would benefit from a broader definition of 'place of worship', as the demographic of 'Spiritual but not Religious' continues to grow, and now represents a larger proportion of the UK population than identifying as 'Christian'.

The British Pilgrimage Trust promotes all the different types of sites equally (human-built and natural), but recognise that for some people, some storied ancient trees and holy wells and springs are more 'Places of Worship' than churches and cathedrals, due to them being seen as more connected with nature. It depends on your outlook and so we say: 'Bring Your Own Beliefs'.

But if the site categories listed by me above end up being categorised as something apart from 'Places of Worship', does it mean we would have to wait potentially years beyond Q4 2023 before they are added to the OSM base map? Or is there another way of expediting their inclusion on the map?

I agree with Megalithic that archeological sites should not be interpreted on OSM. The form of the site can be important without giving undue interpretation.

Not sure how in fact to notate Guy Haywards Pilgrimage site - but see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago and https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:pilgrimage which tag routes/ways. There some tags for shrine - maybe the concept could be extended - however I do not have any firm view on an appropriate word to use - a word that is acceptable to all needs to be used.

But if the site categories listed by me above end up being categorised as something apart from 'Places of Worship', does it mean we would have to wait potentially years beyond Q4 2023 before they are added to the OSM base map?

Step 1 is to agree what tags we will use. That is done by us, the community. At that point anyone can add these sites to the map database.

There are many visualisations of the map database (what most people would simply call "maps") and it's down to the maintainers if each to decide which tagged features to show on their "map". By "base map" I assume you mean the default one shown on OSM.org. It can take a while for that to start showing a new tag but we shouldn't worry about that. We can easily make our own visualisations.

Yeah, we aren't recommanding that these literally tagged `amenity=place_of_worship`, just that they are covered in the "Places of Worship" Quarterly Project. Historic is probably a better key for some of the data discussed.