As the Open Historical Map stabilizes into new hosting, there is finally time to breathe a little and look forward to improvements in the front-end.

Earlier this week, the data uploaded in Changeset 1430 about the Battle of Vimy Ridge was pushed into a map rendered by the WikiWar Guys and partially derived from data gathered from the Canadian Expeditionary Force Study Group.

I would like to see the OHM have a Linked Open Data aspect to it’s API to push out more data in a machine friendly way to make it easy to integrate with other data sources. That renderer project to have a time slide option for the tile server is still something that I would like to see realize.

Interestingly, the OWL-TIME standard is being worked on at the W3C which has some interesting ideas for us to look at in using time notations for objects.

Well, it appears that this project never really got of the ground! That is a real shame.

The editor’s need a lot of work. If this is a historical mapping project why in god’s name is there tag references to “malls”, “motels”, and other modern amenities and structures but nothing for something as obvious as a mill (wind, water, steam). These were around for hundreds of years, most of which have done with time, and no way to add them to the map properly.

There is no quick and easy “help” for using the site/project as a contributor. This I find is the case with these projects nowadays. Project developers assume everyone has a Phd. in computing technology and leave it all to guesswork by the end user. Some features simply do not work. Open the in-house editor, add a node (point of Interest [POI]) and try to save it using Ctrl s. Well, if the developers actually used the editor they would find out that Ctrl s is trapped by the browser first and tries to save the web page (html). Oops!

The person/people who set this up are either very lazy or have no clue how to do a project like this. How do I contact them to help fix the project tools? It would be more important to do that before plowing ahead with frustrating dead ends for the users/contributors!

I was thinking of reviewing all the BBC Time Team programs (~160) to catalogue all the sites they worked and their discoveries at each location. The results should be placed in a project like this. However, I would be very reluctant to do so if the project platform is not likely to survive.

Regards; Joe Rose

Proposing linked data tagging scheme:

Mapping the Past with Linked Data in OpenHistoricalMap

JOSM gives you the power to do OpenHistoricalMap mapping offline, use custom filters, use custom base maps without tools like Map Warper and much more.

Mapping the Past with OpenHistoricalMap and JOSM

I could not find any used solution for marking up information as hypothetical so I did it in my own way.

For dates OHM seams to use start_date/end_date(that’s at least what I have been seeing).

So when I decided on how I would mark up hypothetical information I wanted to be flexible. I started with ohm:hypothetical, then follows the tag/key that’s hypothetical. for example a hypothetical start_date would look like: ohm:hypothetical:start_date=yes this would also allow the value to be no for none hypothetical information.

The reason not to use ohm:hypothetical=<tag-name>" is that then you can’t have more then one ohm:hypothetical tag(OSM does not allow duplicate keys).

Example uses:

• ohm:hypothetical:name=yes
• ohm:hypothetical:start_date=yes
• ohm:hypothetical:end_date=no
• ohm:hypothetical:landuse=yes
• …

For marking up a hypothetical location I can see two approaches one is to just have ohm:hypothetical:ohm:location=yes another is go with ohm:hypothetical=yes.

Another approach to the problem would be to just append the hypothetical key with :hypothetical or :verifiable,

If it does exist a common solution I can replace my one, but I could not find one…

Anyone else that have been marking up any data as hypothetical? How did you do this?

Feedback on this?

The tags start_date/end_date should they be ohm:start_date/ohm:end_date? They are OHM specific as far as I know.

Who wants to work on a “getting started” guide for OHM? I’d love to collaborate and learn more about the platform.

So, I’m not sure how many people are on this website. I just made this account today. I was going to start working on a historical map of the Chicago “L” Train system based on year. Are we allowed to contribute to the building of the time/date slider?

OpenHistoricalMap.org is working again… well the website only at least