Too many icons #3635
Comments
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cc @pnorman |
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Does "too many icons" mean (1) too many objects cluttering the map, or (2) too many different symbols to remember? For (1) the zoom level can be adjusted, and some effort was made e.g. to show dots instead of icons. For (2), there is ongoing effort to better group icons into colours, e.g. moving restaurant/food to a separate colour, and an ongoing discussion to separate transport from accommodation. |
Both.
We used to use more dots than we do now. I see dots as mainly helping with (2), not the too many symbols problem.
But this won't reduce the number of icons, will it? |
You act as if its a given that the only option to deal with icon clutter is by reducing the number of icons. Its not a given though (otherwise, just do a PR that guts the icons and call it a day). Or is it more about making a statement against the direction of the style lately and getting rid of the icons is an easy means to that end? As the person who implemented a lot of the icons that now supposedly clutter the map, I wonder where the opinions of those maintainers override the opinions of the many people, including a maintainer, that were involved in the original decisions to implement the icons. There's no point in participating in a project that doesn't have basic guidelines about how, when, and why things are removed from being rendered, or where a few maintainers opinions after the fact decide. "I don't like how it looks" defiantly shouldn't qualify as a valid reason for removal of a feature that's already been implemented. Even if it comes from a maintainer. |
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@matthijsmelissen I wanted to discuss also "no new features" attitude, which is somewhat related, do you think this ticket could be made broader or it should be separate ticket? |
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A few observations here. According to the wiki history of the map key page (which might not be completely accurate) there are now 250 point symbol classes in this style, about 80 of which have been added during the last year. This is a completely unsustainable trend and so far none of the developers adding symbols has presented any idea how to transit this into a sustainable development despite the problem having been pointed out on multiple occasions. Likewise i have seen very little interest in actually doing maintenance on the POI rendering in this style overall despite there being plenty of problems with that. The most fundamental issue with that, which has been a pressing problem for many years, is probably that the symbol prioritization is not in sync with the starting zoom levels. I know solving that is out of reach currently for most of the developers here but it is none the less a bad idea to keep adding icons and not addressing the base issues. There are also tons of other issues with POI rendering like bad symbol selection logic. IMO there is simply way too much lets add a symbol and then never look back attitude. Also many of the newly added symbols are IMO not suited for this style because they are non-intuitive and often misleading to huge parts of the target audience. This is largely caused by the symbols being developed by people with an urban European/North American background and no serious consideration is given to the question how much sense this makes in other cultural and geographic contexts. I know this is hard to get right but approaching this with a lets choose the least bad of all the bad options we have from our urban perspective paradigm is not helping. After all the critique i also need to say i understand that for developers starting symbol additions obviously appear to be a sensible starting point to with out too much technical difficulty achieve a feeling of success by adding something to the map. But i would encourage new developers not to let themselves be lured by that because at this stage with 250 symbols already being rendered that might still be correct from a purely technical perspective but from a design perspective making a good symbol addition is much harder than many of the bug fixes and design adjustments that would be important to make in this style. Long story short - my suggestions:
I would also be fine meanwhile with putting a cap on the number of symbols and allowing new ones only in a quid pro quo fashion when removing another. I don't particularly favor such an approach but if this is the only way i would support it. |
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I get straight into the propositions:
I agree that it's rewarding to add new icon for new developers and this is where it usually starts. But after some time and gaining more skills it just slows down. For example out of 20 open PRs only 2 of them are about adding icons. I don't see another new team emerging with urge to add 80 icons next year. It does not sustain this way and it happens without any extra effort.
This is what happens in parallel. When something needs improvements in POI rendering, it's being fixed, and if something is missing, it's being added. I don't agree that adding objects means adding problems - it might happen, but it's not implication. There is a need expressed in tickets that lack of something is a problem and adding them is fixing this problem. The invisible number of "tagging (cheating) for rendering" gets lower then.
Not being enough culturally diversed? Which ones do you mean?
Why not, but there's very practical problem - I'm aware only about pumps/wells that would be needed there probably and it's close to being PR-ready, if I remember, but that's it. Could you give more examples? I believe @jeisenbe could be the best to tell what is needed in Asia for example. |
@pnorman Could you describe in more detail why you think these are problems? I think to resolve this issue, we must understand it better first. Are you saying that there are currently user tasks that are hard to execute? Like, users can't find a major church (or even roads) on the map because all shop icons attract attention away from that? Or, people will be wondering what the perfumery icon is because they don't recognize it? Does your reasoning go along these lines? If so, could you give examples of tasks that you think are currently too hard? More general - and this is a question for everyone: what do you think is the purpose of icons on the map?
@Adamant36 @pnorman and the other maintainers who voiced this critic have a lot of experience with map design, so we should be very glad that they are willing to give their input - and I'm convinced that their advice will help us in creating a better map.
@kocio-pl I think it's a very similar discussion, I think we could discuss it here as well?
@imagico Do you have any concrete suggestions? |
As much as I don't like to make it personal problem, it strikes me that I don't remember hearing "there's too many icons" or "I can't recognize them" from anyone else from the whole OSM community. For example the most common problem I hear is about colors being "washed out" and more contrast wanted. And the next group of problems is... you guessed, lack of rendering something. Not a single time I remember that anybody else mentioned problems with too many icons (or other features). It's also my impression that last release, which was more feature rich than usual, brought also more happy voices from the community. I don't know how to explain this, especially how big the contrast is. I find it very unfortunate however, for multiple of - personal and practical - reasons. |
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I don't remember hearing "there's too many icons" or "I can't recognize
them" from ... the OSM community
This may not be good evidence. People are usually more likely to comment or
complain about a specific problem that personally interests them. But the
overall number of icons increases slowly, and isn’t one obvious thing.
By analogy, when a bus operator in the USA wants to remove bus stops (which
are usually spaced 200m apart!), there are always people that complained
that they have to walk 100m farther, but the vast majority of bus riders
who will get a faster and more reliable ride do not have a personal reason
to comment.
…On Sat, Jan 12, 2019 at 8:02 AM kocio-pl ***@***.***> wrote:
I've only seen a few people complain about the icon issue and they were
all maintainers who aren't really active in the development of the style
anymore.
As much as I don't like to make it personal problem, it strikes me that I
don't remember hearing "there's too many icons" or "I can't recognize them"
from anyone else from the whole OSM community. For example the most common
problem I hear is about colors being "washed out" and more contrast wanted.
And the next group of problems is... you guessed, lack of rendering
something. Not a single time I remember that anybody else mentioned
problems with too many icons (or other features). It's also my impression
that last release, which was more feature rich than usual, brought also
more happy voices from the community.
I don't know how to explain this, especially how big the contrast is. I
find it very unfortunate however, for multiple of - personal and practical
- reasons.
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Well, "color washing" is also slow, general shift, but still it bugs people the most. Not that I claim anything measured in a scientific way and it might be just weak evidence as you suggest, but maybe there is some hidden key to understand and - hopefully - resolve the tension? I don't know, so I'll get back to more detailed question:
For me they are just a part of cartography (nothing special, better nor worse) which works the best for smaller objects, when area coloring/outlining and line patterns would be too general or not applicable, especially on nodes. |
The purpose of point symbol rendering is (or more precisely: should be) the same as for all other things rendered in the map - fulfillment of the cartographic goals we have. Doing so is IMO for point symbols much harder because the static symbol with no adjustment to its context as it is traditionally common in this map is very noisy, takes a lot of space for usually transporting very little substantial information, often covers other important information and is prone to being non-intuitive and culture specific. It is the bulldozer of cartographic design. Many are eager to ride the bulldozer but you can do a lot of damage and you can't do any delicate work with it.
Yes, of course. But at this point i think discussing specific symbols would unproductively sidestep the discussion. My point is that the addition of symbols without an open ended assessment of the suitability of the symbol (that is no predetermined decision of adding the symbol in form of the least bad variant having been suggested) is counterproductive to the cartographic quality of this style. And where this happened in the past it therefore should IMO be re-evaluated. The core idea for me is to move from a primacy of feature additions to a primacy of fixing existing problems and improving the map in its existing feature set (which is more than hard enough). |
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To make it short for a start - when it comes to new features, I have no problem with this core idea, the problem is how to move there. As long as the fixing just increased a lot and become primal this way, that's OK for me. However ban on adding new features would be bad for me. I think they both can coexist (no matter what the proportion is). The only moment when I think of a "feature freeze" is a temporary ban before release to avoid release problems, but most of the time don't see we have a problem with releases. I also think that while one can make the difference between fixing bugs and adding features for example to make bugfix release simple (that is when a feature freeze is good), in general adding missing feature is also fixing bug. (And we can disagree what a bug is and what resolves them, of course.) |
In rural areas: leisure=horse_riding (#2344) |
man_made=water_well Regardless, if the water is drinkable: in some parts of the world any source of water is used, even for drinking :( What shall I map in Niger? |
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For icons there's amenity=feeding_place for farm animals is the only thing I can think of. Its got 1,510 uses. I noticed there's also amenity=watering_place with 5,979 uses. Both of those would be cool additions for rural people. Along the same lines is amenity=game_feeding, with 2,312 uses. The current sport icon PR would be good also. Specific rendering for ford=stepping_stones maybe. Or different icons for normals fords versus ones that can be crossed on foot (almost 3000 of them have the foot=* tag. 2473 have the depth tag. That might be useful also). On the landuse side would be improving the rendering of farmyards and meadows to make them more obviously a part of Agriculture infastructure. Along with more specific pattern rendering for different types of crops. Salt pond rendering. Shooting/archery ranges (I think icons are proposed in the sports PR). Better rendering of paths and surfaces. I dont know. I'm sure there's a lot more things out there for rural areas. It would be a good meta issue. @imagico, btw do you have any thoughts about if having different icons depending on the zoom level constitutes map clutter or over complication? I've seen it brought up a few times as a solution to icon issues and supposedly the HOT map does it, but I'm unsure if its a good idea or not. |
man_made=adit |
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specific pattern rendering for different types of crops.
+1
Especially for orchards (bananas, oil palms) and bush crops like berries,
coffee, and tea, and some crops like rice - these are grown constantly in
the same place for many years.
…On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 11:26 PM wilmaed ***@***.***> wrote:
there's a lot more things out there for rural areas
man_made=adit
man_made=mineshaft
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As others have pointed out, some examples would be good to visualise problem areas. Looking around at z15 and 16 the only new icons I can see are for masts/towers and castles. At z17 the amenity/office/shop icons are now dots though there are new icons for tourist info, artwork/statues and subtypes, internet cafes, amusements/10pin etc. Plenty of the icons added have more uses than other icons already on the map. Wonder if it would be possible to draw up a list of icons added in say, the last 6-12 months? Maybe a list of all icons and their number of uses would be interesting as well... (can that be done on the wiki?) |
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Australian asked about lacking features outside Europe told about lack of https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=734674#p734674 |
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Though any particular amenities or facilities are usually absent I would like an icon for windsurfing/kitesurfing/standup-paddleboarding as these are places where enthusiasts usually gather at particular suitable spots and interest spectators. |
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What are tags schemes for them (if any)? |
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sport=windsurfing|kitesurfing|sup tag and place as icon on the beach would be sufficient. Can share the one blue windsurfer icon. |
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Icons for sports are being worked on. The original issue for them is #844 if your interested. Its still being worked on. Unfortunately there's a lot more popular sports being the queue at this point. They can be added to the list though. If you want to create icons for them in the mean time though they can be added to the original issue. I plan to do a PR for the top sports here soon and see if those get added to the map or not. Then go from there based on usage numbers. So it might be a while, unless someone does it in the meantime. On second glance, I don't even think they are addable at this point. sport=windsurfing only has 80 uses and no wiki page. Whereas sport=kitesurfing only has 197 uses. That's way to low. sport=surfing only has 445 uses itself. So even it is probably not addable at this point. |
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Following up on #1603 (comment) Keep in mind that our goal is explicitly for the map to be intuitively understandable without a legend. I won't go into the details here on what the challenges are to produce a useful legend for an international map style (i.e. a multilingual legend) that is not outdated a few months after it has been produced. This is a project of a scale at least comparable to that of producing a map style. The fact that https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SymbolsTab is available so far only in two languages is testimony to that. Even the simpler idea of a basic translation between tags and symbology (which is what most projects in that direction focus on) is anything but trivial. @SomeoneElseOSM - my inquiry in #1603 (comment) regarding your opinion on #3635 (comment) was meant specifically regarding limits in the number of point symbol types this style can/should have. Since you maintain one of the few OSM based map styles that feature a larger number of static POI types than OSM-Carto i think your view on that would be of interest. |
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@imagico Sorry about the extremely late reply to your question here - I've just spotted it again and realised that I hadn't replied.
To address the "too many icons" issue I'd suggest:
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Thanks for the reply. I noticed though that you have not really answered my question though.
That seems to directly reflect what i wrote in #3635 (comment):
I agree that this would be highly beneficial. But it is - as mentioned - also hard, non-technical work and there are very few people with interest and ambition in that field here (#4317 for example is a case that is stalled by this).
Yes, i would agree that in case of POI types that are close in meaning and purpose for the target map user and have a well established and clearly defined distinction in their use by mappers this can be an option. It won't be that many symbols where this is the case i suspect but only a proper review under this light can tell.
There i would suggest caution because it is a very culture dependent matter and we already have a lot of cases where the name tag is abused as a classifier (see for example #4210). The whole point of classification in mapping in OSM is to have feature classes that are independent of language/culture specific categories so the map can, to some extent at least, be read across culture barriers. For features like embassies/consulates which tend to have lengthy formal names you could also argue the other way round and suggest dropping rendering of names (and therefore less noise and less real estate use in the map) in favor of a more granular symbology (which is of course difficult for embassies/consulates specifically unless you'd consider to render colored flag symbols - which i would not).
Well - i already commented that this is a very hard problem for an international, multilingual style like this. I think there are very good reasons for maintaining the goal for the map to be understandable without a map key (which by the way is something which you will very often find to be poorly achieved when you talk to people unfamiliar with OSM about reading the map - and the key problem is often the point symbols). |
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I can't believe there are people out there who would look at a worldwide mapping project and think, No, we need less icons. What could possibly be gained by limiting the information that could be displayed? |
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On Tue, Oct 10, 2023 at 5:09 PM Brad Baker ***@***.***> wrote:
I can't believe there are people out there who would look at a *worldwide
mapping project* and think, No, we need less icons. What could possibly
be gained by limiting the information that could be displayed?
The meaning of the icons can be less than clear, when there are too many of
them to remember. Also a lot of them are distinguished by subtle
differences of colour, many of which I cannot discriminate. (I'm
genetically deficient in that regard, but it can certainly be an
accessibility issue,)
I'm not necessarily advancing the idea that a more limited iconography
might be beneficial, just pointing out that life is full of tradeoffs.
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73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
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and others
Multiple people have mentioned that the style contains too many icons currently - however we don't have a central place to discuss this yet. As we still have more requests for adding icons coming in, this is something we should discuss.
For the people who think we currently have too many icons - could you tell us more about the reasons why you think currently there are too many icons?
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