Hello, dear Thai community friends.
I’d like to ask you to do two things.
About the forests that disappeared from the map in the Laos region…
I noticed that the forests were not drawn correctly in the Laos region.
In a large area below this forest area, the forest is not drawn, I don’t know if it was accidentally erased by someone before or if it was never drawn in the first place.
It would be reasonable to ask the Lao community for a favor, but there doesn’t seem to be a Lao community within the OSM community, and it’s hard to find a Lao editor.
Maybe the Thai community members next door will be able to help, so I’m asking for a favor.
It would be nice to have a thread in the Thai community board where I can write short articles.
It would be nice to have a thread for one-off posts, such as simple questions or local reports related to mapping in Thailand that can be answered once and for all.
In the case of the Korea community, where I’m an active member, in addition to the OSM forum, we have a Telegram messenger for daily discussions and reports.
For the Thailand community, there is a Facebook group, but not many people seem to be active in it, and I’ve actually been told that I can expect more feedback on the official forums.
In the case of the Korea forum, I use it for one-off questions, reports, or news. - E.g.
P.S. Just out of curiosity, is there a reason why most of the posts in the Thai community are in English? As a foreigner, it’s easy for me to keep up with the posts, but I’m curious as to why I rarely see Thai posts.
Participating in an open and free mapping service and then communicating via a commercial and closed source service (Telegram) - exactly my kind of humor.
You are absolutely right, depending on how you get involved, it can all take up a lot of time. I can see that when I add or change something to the map.
What I wanted to say or suggest is that there are some free and open source messaging and (social) networking or publishing services.
But it probably doesn’t make much sense to try to relocate already established channels.
Here is an answer to one of your actual questions.
I’ve only been here on the Thailand forum for a short time, so I don’t really know why most of it is in English, but I suspect that’s because a significant number of Thailand mappers are Foreigners/Expats/Westerners and don’t speak Thai or can’t read the Thai alphabet.
Hi @adreamy, thanks for reaching out to the Thailand community!
Please create separate topics for each unrelated question OpenStreetMap is inherently complex, so you won’t get a single answer even for simple questions. Topics can be searched and referenced in the future, which is the purpose of the Discourse forum.
I think you are looking for a chat channel (e.g. Telegram) where you can get quick answers, unfortunately that won’t work (yet) in Thailand.
Thailand has a very small active community, and most members either have day jobs, studies or are enjoying their retirement. As a result, you might not get a quick answer. It’s not uncommon for some participants to respond weeks after a topic is posted.
Others can fill in, especially Thais and long-term members, but I think it’s because maps aren’t something most Thais are very familiar with or use regularly, though this is getting better. That’s why many contributors and most forum participants have been foreign expatriates, and few of them can write and read Thai. Posts in Thai are welcome, but they’ve been rare, and the regular Thai members are comfortable with English.
The best way to report data quality issues is to create an OpenStreetMap Note.
You’ll notice that in some areas like this one, there are notes that have been there for years and haven’t been resolved. If that bugs you, jump in and fix it yourself!
Thank you for your response.
Of course I could do it myself, but I think it would be possible if the satellite imagery has a high resolution or shows only flat buildings, but in a forested or low resolution area like this, it would likely be another crappy map without local knowledge.
I hope you understand that a mapper with local knowledge can make some inferences, but without local knowledge, even that is impossible.
And OSM notes often sit around for a long time and are of little use.
