No. panoramax.mapcomplete.org is the instance where all images are uploaded to that are made with MapComplete. This welcomes images from all over the world.
panoramax.xyz is an instance which queries all known instances and will thus also show the mapcomplete images. Please refer to the wiki, I’m updating the list of instances there
Hi all,
I’ve created a script that uploads the MapComplete images which are hosted on Imgur to the panoramax.mapcomplete.org - instance. A small example changeset of about 100 items is here:
I will be applying this, in small batches, starting in Belgium in a few days unless people have issues with it.
What is the intended way to view these images? I tried following the instructions at the wiki for a POI from your changeset and wasn’t able to view it.
According to the wiki, I should be able to go to
https://api.panoramax.xyz/#focus=pic&pic=07fc01da-2fdc-47e2-a343-1ce346a621e5
and view it, but it doesn’t work for me.
The mapcomplete server isn’t properly federated yet. We are working on fixing this Edit: This is fixed
Then please, wait with edits until link work.
Someone also mentioned that “it is unnecessary to remove the IMGUR-links after the change”.
I’d rather remove them, as to:
Are there any other arguments pro or con?
One thing that came to mind for me is the relative levels of support for the image tag vs. the panoramax one. Are there any (non-editor) apps out there that will actually display these images to users?
It would be a bit unfortunate if all previously uploaded images “go dark”, in the sense that people won’t actually see them anymore.
Would it make sense to dual-tag the images by putting Panoramax URLs in the image tag, in addition to setting the panoramax one?
(…sorry just realised this isn’t about Imgur per-se, but more about the generic image tag vs. provider-specific ones.)
It would be a bit unfortunate if all previously uploaded images “go dark”, in the sense that people won’t actually see them anymore.
This is true; but at the same time, viewers who do support both will show the same image twice.
Furthermore, we don’t tag for the renderer. Applications should learn to support ‘panoramax’, we should not duplicate data points to support some software.
I understand the pragmatism of your argument, but it will muddy the waters later on - especially because, if we don’t remove them now, we won’t know later on which images are the same.
Since the panoramax.xyz links work now I see no issue with removing the imgur links - in the event of a catastrophic failure of panaoramax infrastructure or link rot, the older links will be preserved in the object history.
I think there really needs to be wider discussion about this before mass removing image tags and breaking existing applications.
Just proposing a mechanical edit in an existing thread and waiting a few days to see if anyone objects is not enough in my opinion.
Note that I agree with the move to panoramax, and I appreciate the enthousiasm, but we must at the very least give applications time to update.
I would personally vote for an inbetween solution, like the proposed image= link to panoramax. This can easily be removed later or ignored by applications that do support both.
I know it is BY NO MEANS a full list. But if you look at taginfo, there isn’t actually that many projects using the image tag.
OpenAEDmap added panoramax support last night through a handful lines of code.
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/image#projects
The main ones from that list are vespucci (who are working on it iirc) and osmand.
All MapComplete-created images have been moved by now. See Pieter Vander Vennet's Diary | Moving pictures from IMGUR to Panoramax: some thoughts and little facts | OpenStreetMap
With the script in hand, I could also move the resting images. The problem is that those don’t have a license… Would it be acceptable to assume a CC-BY-SA license and attribute them using the OSM-username which linked the image?
Depending on how the application described “contributing images to OSM” at the time, a case could be made for them already being under the ODbL.
But if no terms at all were stated, it’s questionable to assume any licence.
out of curiosity i parsed all current uses of imgur urls according to taginfo, to see who exactly were the people that added them to osm (not just last edit on each object but the actual user who caused the change where the url was added).
and it seems like 12.4% of users (38 users out of 413) account for 80% of all changes. imgur-link-occurances
From that list, Natura and rodolfovargas have 800 images between them, both have edits within this week. Seems like just asking some people would have good chances of recovering a few more.
cc @Natura (i assume that’s you?)
no
for start, it is not safe to assume they were authors - they could for example upload what they found on internet, screeshots from GSV or prefer different license
Before I start, I want to stress that:
Having said that, it was a bit of an ugly surprise to find some of my own - not added trough MapComplete - images broken/removed. I’ve only seen this more recent parts of the discussion, development and the announcement at a distance, as my “OSM” time was limited as of late. So as I said, unpleasant surprise.
POI’s that had a nice picture with it in OsmAnd, now show “no image available”, while I went trough the effort of going there, taking a picture, uploading it somewhere*, and adding it by hand. That’s just my example and experience, I’m pretty sure others are seeing the same elsewhere.
Screenshot of OsmAnd showing no more image at a POI that used to have one, and now only has a Panoramax ID. I agree with the sentiment of the message: 
*) Somewhere being imgur because based on discussions on Matrix, "it would be automatically included in our backup - even if imgur would delete them. So it seemed the right place to put them for now. I regret now not choosing another hosting-platform.
To an extend, I can support the position that “MapComplete get’s to remove uploaded images they uploaded themselves” (though one could even argue that is against the CC0-spirit), but forcing the same on images that were neither uploaded, nor added to the map by or trough MapComplete, is overreaching and could even be considered a form of vandalism.
I’ve added those images to make the map more visual and helpful to both myself and people I know. That is now broken, while there was no need to (the links weren’t dead yet). I think that is a bigger problem then “viewers who do support both will show the same image twice.” (source).
I also see that this has brought up and discussed:
The arguments have already been given, the community is clearly devided on this, and a solution has been provided as well:
As for your own arguments:
- avoid duplicate images in client software
I’ve already addressed this above.
- our own Panoramax instance is not supposed to do tracking (but IMGUR probably is), so privacy is better
But this was always the case, so while it is an improvement and mentioning such is justified, this was was not the reason for considering and eventually initiating moving Panoramax, not communicated before as such in - for instance - your gihub issue, the announcement on the community forum, you’re diary, etc.
At best, it’s an extra benefit, an extra argument, and a reason to never use imgur in the first place, perhaps. So let’s not pretend otherwise. Therefore, it also should not be a reason for rushing things trough and break the end user experience.
- IMGUR might delete the images at one point in the future
At which point it would be justified to remove them. There’s lot’s of scripts running, fixing http to https and removing dead websites, this could have been similarly solved.
So here’s my question:
Why not add Panoramax first, and after a grace period, in which most apps support it properly, run a separate script to then remove the imgur-image-tags. Again: I’d rather see duplicate content then no content at all.
The way this has been pushed trough based on a personal preference (not liking duplicate images and being of the opinion that this is somehow worse then no image at all) without at least some community consent or all arguments considered, seems just as inconsiderate as when I would now decide to - based on my preference, and without much further discussion - revert your changesets because I disagree with deleting the imgur-link’s.
Tthough I would actually empathise and support if the DWG would decide so, because the mass/automatic-edit doesn’t meet the criteria as it didn’t didn’t have consent in this discussion and some key objections were put aside / remained unanswered).
So again, why no grace period? I’d actually be in favour of restoring those imgur links until at least all major platform support the Panoramax-version of images.
I don’t fully understand the relevance of this list, but it seems to be incomplete, as I don’t see (ctrl-f) myself there, and I’ve added more than one imgur-image in the past.
Hi Roeland,
Yes, I understand this is a bit of a surprise - especially for pictures that were not made with MapComplete. If those pictures however mimicked the attribution format that MapComplete uses, they are indistinguishable from “real” MapComplete images for the script that I used. I also checked for the “CC0”-keyword in the description, which caused a few more pictures to be moved, including yours.
One of the main arguments is that people might remove duplicate images “because they are duplicate”, especially if they are not aware of the underlying implementation. Then, they might randomly delete either the imgur (getting in the current situation) or the panoramax (permanently breaking the image in the future).
I’d also like to mention the core OSM-pragma “Don’t tag for the renderer”. I’m not gonna make the data and the process more complicated (and it complicates a lot) because your prefered rendering solution (OsmAnd) doesn’t yet support panoramax.
With respect to “grace period”: how long should this grace period be?
Until major apps have panoramax support? What is a “major app”? What if a major app decides to not implement it? How much of the major apps should support this? We did the effort to reach out to some of them (including osmand and OpenAED-map).
At last, I am indeed forcing the hand of the other developers by also removing the images. I’m aware of that and I would like to apologize for the stress and inconvenience that this causes them. However, by making this move, there are suddenly 35K objects with a panoramax-tag. This is a good incentive for app developers to support it. At the end of september, there were less then 2K such objects. As app developer, I don’t want to put in effort for tags that are under 10K objects. (And no, this isn’t an argument for removing the image tags, I know this)
Also: it is a fun part of psychology that one complains about moving the pictures, but not about the new pictures that are available exclusively through panoramax. If panoramax would have been around 4 years ago and MapComplete used this right from the start, we wouldn’t have this discussion.
About the “community consent”: I’ve had exactly 3 people complaining about “removed images”. One of them was complaining that OpenAED-map didn’t show images anymore; after opening an issue documenting how images could be shown, they added this feature in less then 24 hours (!).
A similar complaint about aedmap.nl, whom we also reached out to.
An now this third complaint about OsmAnd, see Panoramax street-imagery plugin · Issue #20555 · osmandapp/OsmAnd · GitHub for the issue.
I did however get way more encouragements and “thank-you”-messages then this. Everyone recognizes that this is a necessary move. And indeed, there is always a tradeoff to be made on how this is handled, how much communication is done to the community, what grace period to use, what time I have available, the risk of IMGUR blocking us of completely…