OHM & social media - what could/should we be doing & anyone want to help?

jeffmeyer · November 29, 2023, 8:58pm

Hi all -

Not sure of what your thoughts are about social media, but it’s definitely a way to spread the word about what we’re up to. And… I’m doing a pretty poor job of it.

So, do any of you have any interest in helping out or spreading the word about OHM when you’re not busy mapping?

Our primary platform of choice is Mastodon, but our followership there is much lower than it was on Twitter. Still building up.

We have some limited, loose guidelines about what to post, but the right person would be able to define strategy and help define our presence through online communications.

So, let us know what you think, how we could improve, and especially - who might be good at helping out!

Kind regards,
Jeff

AndrewS_OHM · December 19, 2023, 8:04am

Hi Jeff,
I just made a comment on the github issue around start dates that is relevant - Change the default start date in the time slider to something farther back in time! · Issue #647 · OpenHistoricalMap/issues · GitHub

This doesn’t address your question of how/who to spread the word on social media, more to do with why I don’t.

In summary the time slider could be made simpler so as not to scare off casual users, but also, as most social media is done via phones, the usability of the OHM interface is not very friendly on a phone. The time slider control takes up way too much of the screen. I am reluctant to share my work this way because I know it won’t be a great experience.

Andrew

Benjamin_K · March 30, 2024, 3:29pm

Some ideas for promotion of OHM on the Internet:

Reddit:

r/MapPorn

Historical Map Showcase Post of OpenHistoricalMap/Quick OHM Map Links - OpenStreetMap Wiki with a Source to OpenHistoricalMap

r/History

Introduction Post: What is OpenHistoricalMap?, How Can You Get Involved? (FAQ)
Historical Map Showcase Post: Screenshots or links to interesting historical mapping projects

r/Maps:

Historical Map Showcase Post: Screenshots or links to interesting historical mapping projects

r/DigitalHumanities

Introduction Post: What is OpenHistoricalMap?, How Can You Get Involved? How can it be used fo Digital Humanities? (FAQ)

r/openstreetmap

Introduction Post: What is OpenHistoricalMap?, How Can You Get Involved? (FAQ)
Historical Map Showcase Post: Screenshots or links to interesting historical mapping projects

r/Archaeology

Introduction Post: What is OpenHistoricalMap?, How Can You Get Involved? How could it be used fo Archaeology? (FAQ)

Facebook Groups:

Historical Maps

Introduction Post: What is OpenHistoricalMap?, How Can You Get Involved? (FAQ)
Historical Map Showcase Post: Screenshots or links to interesting historical mapping projects

Forums:

Historum

Introduction Post: What is OpenHistoricalMap?, How Can You Get Involved? (FAQ)
Historical Map Showcase Post: Screenshots or links to interesting historical mapping projects

History Stack Exchange

Introduction Post: What is OpenHistoricalMap?, How Can You Get Involved? (FAQ)
Historical Map Showcase Post: Screenshots or links to interesting historical mapping projects

OpenStreetMap Forums (https://www.openstreetmap.org/communities)

jeffmeyer · April 6, 2024, 9:23pm

@Benjamin_K - first of all - welcome to the Forum & thanks both for your comment here as well as in the chat.

I love these ideas. I’ve been limiting myself to a few posts here and there, typically responding with a) a preemptive apology for spamming about a personal project, and then b) showing how whatever map is in the original post can be depicted on OHM. Examples on Facebook, Twitter… wait… I’m embarrassed to say that I couldn’t find any good examples there. I did find this post, which reminds me that I have to finish a doc, but I digress…

While we could do what I suggest above, I think your approach is more direct and would be more helpful.

Any interest in taking a lead on these, or know anyone else who might be?

Benjamin_K · April 7, 2024, 10:26pm

I think your post on Twitter is good and interesting. I just wanted to emphasize that we could use more different platforms to target a broader audience. Like specificaly map related or history related communties.

Benjamin_K · April 10, 2024, 6:55pm

@jeffmeyer For a start i thought of we could make a post to r/Digital History? A rather niche subreddit. However the interests might be the same? I started drafting something like:

" Are you fascinated by history and eager to explore free online resources? OpenHistoricalMap (OHM) might just be the perfect discovery for you!

OHM is a collaborative open-source project built upon OpenStreetMap (OSM), featuring a unique time slider tool. This feature allows users to seamlessly explore the evolution of history over time in an interactive manner.

Whether you’re a history enthusiast, a researcher, or simply curious about the past, OHM is an opportunity to digitize your findings, contributing to the preservation and accessibility of history.

Visit our Wiki Site to discover how you can contribute to the project, regardless of your expertise level!

[Explore OHM Now!] (Link to OHM Wiki)

Not sure where to begin? Explore our ongoing projects and start historical mapping!

Questions? Learn more about OHM on our FAQ page.

Eager to connect with fellow history buffs or you want to contribute to the community?

Join our Discord and Forum and engage in discussions!

If you find OpenHistoricalMap fascinating and valuable, don’t hesitate to share it with others who might also be interested in exploring and contributing to the project!

Please be aware OpenHistoricalMap is under development, with ongoing improvements and updates being made to enhance the project. We are sending this message to support and strengthen the growing OpenHistoricalMap community. We sincerely appreciate everyone’s support and valuable contributions!"

Please let me know of improvements and if this is usable in any form?

Benjamin_K · April 10, 2024, 8:44pm

@jeffmeyer I made some memes!

OHM Meme GIS

Kovoschiz · April 10, 2024, 10:25pm

OHM doesn’t exactly have its own Discord community. Only a channel in OSM World.
@admins Is Discourse Chat Integration - plugin - Discourse Meta enabled? It can send messages over to Discord and Slack. (Oh fine, I misunderstood it. Doesn’t work in Discourse chat.)

Kovoschiz · April 10, 2024, 10:28pm

I suppose the official website is still more or less similar to OSM, mainly for user debugging. End products can be visualized from the data, or simply make your own “timelapse” animation by screenshot or screencap.

Minh_Nguyen · April 11, 2024, 8:58pm

That’s how I personally think of the site, but mainly because it’s early days and users have no choice but to tolerate rough edges. Others understandably desire more user-friendliness, since there’s currently no alternative frontend to point a layperson to. In time, who knows whether there will be a vibrant ecosystem of data consumers like with OSM, or whether the main OHM website will become more of a destination site, similar to Wikipedia. Either way, we have a lot of room for improvement even just to meet the day-to-day needs of mappers.

Kovoschiz · April 12, 2024, 4:45am

In the much ignored “share” button on the right, I noticed there is the same “Only the standard layer can be exported as an image” indication as in OSM. While it might be broken or underused in OSM, I hope it can become a start for a simple SVG export in OHM. It’s something that can’t be done by a user screenshot. In turns, built-in screenshot and screencap functionality can be built up there.

Minh_Nguyen · April 12, 2024, 4:56am

Actually, it’s worse than that, since the Standard layer requires a custom OSM service that isn’t part of the Rails port and therefore isn’t available on openhistoricalmap.org:

github.com/OpenHistoricalMap/issues

Only the standard layer can be exported as an image, but it cannot be either

opened 07:44PM - 23 Aug 22 UTC

1ec5

The Share panel’s Image option does not work when any layer is selected. ## P…roblem The Image option is only enabled if you have OpenStreetMap’s Standard layer selected. Otherwise, if you use another layer such as the Historical layer, this message appears: > Only the standard layer can be exported as an image But if you switch to the Standard layer and try to share it, it fails with a server error: > Missing or invalid token ## Diagnosis In openstreetmap-website, the image sharing feature is limited to the Standard style because openstreetmap.org is only set up to run Mapnik locally against the openstreetmap-carto style; the other styles are hotlinked from other servers: openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website#1141. ohm-website doesn’t have the openstreetmap-carto style to work with, so the option should be disabled for the Standard layer. On the other hand, the Historical and Woodblock style are rendered on the client side from vector tiles, so in principle it should be possible for site JavaScript to “export” an image without contacting the server. [When setting up GL JS](https://github.com/OpenHistoricalMap/ohm-website/blob/6a279be9df074ce2d26d9f7ee23a44796e681c10/app/assets/javascripts/leaflet.map.js#L28-L50), we can set the [`preserveDrawingBuffer`](https://docs.mapbox.com/mapbox-gl-js/api/map/#map-parameters) option and get the map canvas as PNG data when sharing. The option is disabled by default for performance reasons, but maybe we could reinitialize the map when sharing. The [mapbox-gl-export](https://github.com/watergis/mapbox-gl-export/) plugin claims to support JPEG, SVG, and PDF in addition to PNG. However, it doesn’t support runtime styling: https://github.com/watergis/maplibre-gl-export/issues/16#issuecomment-1143378467. [leaflet-ohm-timeslider-v2](https://github.com/OpenHistoricalMap/leaflet-ohm-timeslider-v2/blob/b75b078f16355a739fe6321f04d94e9d58913b72/leaflet-ohm-timeslider.js#L532) relies on runtime styling to filter the tiles by date, so we might need to forego these formats in favor of getting the PNG to look right. But it might be possible to cobble together an animated GIF or APNG that runs through the times specified by the time slider. A timelapse image would really differentiate OHM from OSM. ## Impact Enabling this feature for the Historical and Woodblock styles would make it much easier for a user to share their contributions on social media or tease OpenHistoricalMap’s potential when reaching out to a local historical society by e-mail.

I think an animated GIF or APNG export would be quite feasible:

github.com/OpenHistoricalMap/issues

Export animated timelapse of the map

opened 05:00PM - 12 Jul 23 UTC

1ec5

enhance

#433 tracks reenabling the basic image export functionality so that people can s…hare their work in social media and e-mail or save it as a souvenir. But a static screenshot is of limited use in visualizing time series data. Creating an animation from every frame can be time-consuming, but if OHM handles that for the user, I think that would help set OHM apart from non-historical maps like OSM. Building off the approach in https://github.com/OpenHistoricalMap/issues/issues/433#issuecomment-1631679205, we’d need to animating the time slider as fast as possible: as soon as the map goes `idle`, take another screenshot and increment the slider immediately instead of waiting for the set interval. [UPNG.js](https://github.com/photopea/UPNG.js/) looks useful for assembling the screenshots into an APNG. Libraries for encoding animated GIFs include [gif.js](https://jnordberg.github.io/gif.js/) and [gifshot](https://yahoo.github.io/gifshot/).

And I agree, this functionality would be quite relevant to any social media strategy for the project.

Benjamin_K · April 13, 2024, 6:29pm

Mapping example for Hotel Esplanade in Berlin.
Could we post similiar microhistory content to Social Media?

I used the so called Straubeplan (TMS) (CC0) to trace the first geometry. For the second geometry I used a Floor Plan from the Architekturmuseum of the TU Berlin (CC0). Through the PicLayer Extension i was able to lay the floor plan over the Straubeplan. Getting the time infos for the Building extension here. After that i added the start_date and end_date tags and added both relations to a chronology relation.

Hotel Esplanade (1908 - 1912)

Link to Hotel Esplanade in 1909, 1912

Following some context to Hotel Esplanade:

The hotel was built from 1907 to 1908 after the plans of the architect Otto Rehnig. The hotel was one of the famoust in Berlin during the roaring 20s. During World War II it became a bombed-out ruin. Some ruins where later transferred/incorporated into the so called Sony Center. See here.