Talk:WikiProject Belgium

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Conventions

I don't know if conventions is the correct word for this section. Does any one else has a nice word that summarizes what I mean :) -- Raskas 19:58, 19 July 2007 (BST)

It depends much on what you mean, of course :-) Convention has two meanings: a) something that everyone agree upon b) a meeting of people mainly to establish (a). I find the word more than perfect: in sense (a) for the main page and (b) for the discussion page. Who could ask for more? --Papou (talk) 11:04, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

Places

Link to the map features page where the values for the key place are listed: Map_features#Places

These values are obvious and I don't think here is any discussion needed:

  • continent: Europe
  • country: Belgium

We don't use these names in Belgium, they should be mapped against the name we use (gewest (nl)/ région(fr), provincie (nl)/ province (fr), ...):

We only have 2 distinctions for cities/towns/villages. There are gemeentes (nl)/ communes(fr) and some gemeentes (nl)/ communes (fr) are steden (nl)/ villes (fr).

On the map features page there is also the amount of inhabitants listed. Maybe we can check this value to choose the description of the place. This will give a better result on the rendered map. If we choose to only use gemeentes (nl) and steden (nl) there is no distinction between the size of the place (some steden (nl) are smaller than some gemeentes (nl)) -- Raskas 11:52, 27 July 2007 (BST)

Villages still exists, they have specific postcodes even if they are grouped under one town/city administration ... so the 3 values should remain. --PhilippeP 07:44, 30 July 2007 (BST)
Even if we don't have an official distinction between cities and towns, I would agree to comply with population numbers distinctions so the result on the map is good(added a table as proposal). --PhilippeP 22:19, 4 August 2007 (BST)
I would go for the complete list of villages and the amount of inhabitants instead of only the list of cities. You can also find the list of all Belgian villages and the amount of inhabitants on wikipedia. If someone founds the original and official list we should point to that page instead of the wikipedia page. -- Raskas 10:06, 19 August 2007 (BST)
I added a column to the table which is an alternative for the description column. I find the way of writing easier to read/understand (but still don't find it the ideal way of writing ;)). Off course the url mentioned above should be near the table. -- Raskas 10:06, 19 August 2007 (BST)
A village could have more than 10.000 inhabitants BUT could not considered as town/city because not officially a city.And that's why a complete list of all villages is not necessary, if it is not on the cities list, it's a village...
  • I didn't find the official list of cities on gov.site--PhilippeP 10:31, 19 August 2007 (BST)
  • All official cities are on the map now using my proposal(see below),downgraded some allready mapped.--PhilippeP 09:57, 19 October 2007 (BST)

How would deelgemeentes(nl)/entités?(fr) be represented? I don't think they really fit the description of hamlet, since they can usually be quite big. I propose the hamlet tag for gehuchten(nl)/hameaux?(fr). I've added my proposal to the table. --Gyrbo 12:47, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

See WikiProject_Belgium/Conventions#Places, it's unresolved yet what to do. For districts (like Deurne, Borgerhout etc in Antwerp), I'm tagging like they're their own municipalities, which means "town" for districts with > 10000 inhabitants. That way, the districts get proper font size on the map.
Deelgemeenten/entités are perhaps a bit more difficult since you get two entities which could have the same importance. No idea about that. I can only see it being solved by special tags. --Eimai 14:08, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
I think some for of consensus needs to be reached. Right now we have people using different conventions. This causes some ridiculous things like bigger places having a lower "ranking". If we need to introduce new tags, so be it. I'm willing to adhere to any guidelines, as long as we have some. Perhaps this should be voted on? Gyrbo 18:33, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
I've written a message to talk@openstreetmap.org. Unfortunately the only way I can see if being solved is by discarding city/town/village tags and use new municipality/part-municipality tags together with population tags... Let's see what they'll reply... --Eimai 22:43, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
I've read the thread on the mailing list, and I think the admin_level key is what we need. It's currently only proposed for areas, but I think it would also be useful for nodes if the exact boundary isn't known. Here's what I propose: All places are tagged using the method proposed by PhilippeP. Places that don't fall in the standard definitions could be tagged using place=suburb. In that case, a population tag should be used to indicate the size. The administrative status is added with admin_level tags. The exact values to use can be added on Talk:Key:boundary. This way, things should be rendered mostly correctly on the map and we have the correct definitions in case the renderers get updated. Gyrbo 14:29, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Tag Description (proposed by PhilippeP) Description (propesed by Raskas) Description (propesed by Gyrbo)
place=city Belgium official cities (fr/nl) with more than 100.000 habitants. inhabitants > 100.000 Belgium official cities
place=town Belgium official cities(fr/nl) with less than 100.000 habitants. inhabitants > 10.000 AND inhabitants < 100.000 gemeentes/communes
place=village The rest of Belgium communes (gemeente/commune). inhabitants < 10.000 deelgemeentes/entités
place=hamlent ? ? gehuchten/hameaux


I have a new proposal:

  • Keep the city/town/village tags as defined on maps features page: city > 100.000 inhabitants, town > 10.000 inhabitants, village < 10.000, but use the next rules for calculating the population.
  • tag the municipality with a city/town/village place tag according to the population in the entire municipality (so including deelgemeentes/entités).
  • for deelgemeenten which don't have the same name as the municipality (since the deelgemeente Antwerp in the municipality Antwerp for example doesn't need to get tagged twice): add a town/village place tag according to the population in that deelgemeente.
  • this last rule applies also to municipalities with combined names like Langemark-Poelkapelle: both Langemark and Poelkapelle get new place tags like that.
  • smaller divisions with no adminstrative meaning (wijken/suburbs, small settlements) get the suburb/hamlet tags.

To give examples for how I'm proposing it:

  • Langemark-Poelkapelle [1]: a village tag for Langemark-Poelkapelle (since it has less than 8000 inhabitants), a village tag for the deelgemeentes Langemark, Poelkapelle and Bikschote, hamlet tags for Madonna and Sint-Juliaan, which are small settlements in Langemark.
  • Ieper [2]: gets a town tag since it has 35000 inhabitants, it has 11 deelgemeentes which all get village tags, except Ieper itself (since no deelgemeente ahs over 10.000 population).
  • Haven't looked for a real example, but if place X has 12000 inhabitants and two deelgemeentes: it's main one (also called X) 8000 inhabitants, and Y with 4000, then place X gets tagged town (since it's the 12000 that counts for that, not the 8000), Y is a village.

It's actually a quite straight-forward way of tagging I think, and in my opinion it relfects best the situation on the map. Other opinions? --Eimai 17:39, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem I see with that is that you don't specify which ones are "deelgemeentes". I think this distinction is important. Other than that, I think your proposal is pretty good. --Gyrbo 23:57, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't really think the current tags allow that, we could introduce admin_level if necessary, or just use that with boundaries as was suggested on the mailing list (if someone finds a source to get municipality boundaries of course...). Anyway, looking at the rendering of Brussels with its extra long names because of the two languages they might need to diverge there a little... (Mapnik layer should be fine when it's rendered since it doesn't show names as big and has algorithms preventing collisions). But I think my proposal works for Flanders and Wallonia, but has to be tested out of course... --Eimai 01:27, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Indeed, the current tags don't allow it. The OSM system is fairly UK-centric, so there isn't a clean 1:1 match with other countries. That's one of the reasons you're allowed to "invent" your own tags. I know the NGI has maps in vector format of all the muncipalities. I doubt we could get them on a useful license, though. That's basically why I suggested using admin_level on the place node instead of the boundary. I'm willing to follow pretty much any guidelines as long as everyone is using the same ones :). --Gyrbo 08:39, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The discussion about places is moved to: WikiProject_Belgium/Conventions/Places

Multiple official languages

In Belgium we have 3 official languages: Dutch, French and German. Larger cities have multiple names in different languages even when they only speak one language in the region: e.g. Mons (in French) in the French speaking part is Bergen in Dutch. Brussels is officialy bilanguagal so both names (Bruxelles or Brussel) are equal.

So how do we solve this in Open Street Map and in the WIKI? Now the Belgian category is Belgique which is obviously in French. Do we make multiple versions in the WIKI or translate everything in English? Maybe we can create an English page and redirect the Dutch, French and German page to this English one?

Secondly, what name to give to a city in Open Street Map? Think we can use Dutch in the Dutch speaking part, French in the French speaking region and German in the German speaking region but what with Brussels? Use both names in the name tag?

I've tagged a few places in the Flemish part with their Flemish names. As a non Belgian, I'd expect the place names to be in the local language (which probably means Brussels in French, since that's what most people speak there) Gagravarr 16:52, 14 October 2006 (BST)
Brussels is an official bilingual city. A lot (if not most) people who work in Brussels or need to be in Brussels (and thus are potential users of OpenstreetMap generated Brussels-map) speak Dutch. Our tags should carry both names and our renderers should be able to generate maps that show labels in Dutch, in French or in both depending upon user choice. Even more, for quite a few Belgian organizations, should they wish to use Openstreetmaps in official communication in Brussels, they'd have to be bilingual for legal reasons.--Bartv 09:45, 27 October 2006 (BST)
I share Bartv's opinion (although stating that 'most' people in Brussels speak Dutch may be a bit extreme). How do we go from here considering the Open Street Map setup? It seems to me that multi language support was not taken in consideration as this initiative started in the UK. Do we need more tags, language dependent tags (is there such thing?) or can we get this going without changing the current OSM system? May be interesting to compare this with the German community as they will have this language problems as well (but in a less complex version). Cimm, 3 November 2006
There is a proposal for using tags with names like "name:fr" and "name:nl" but I don't know the status.

Feedback welcome but please keep it constructive with respect to all Belgian languages, we have enough fights about this topic in politics ;).

Personally I'd like to use name:fr and name:nl and have the rendered showing both when it fits. There could be a tag listing what languages are to be used by default. For Brussels it would be fr,nl.
Other than that it's rather messy. We have tags like name="Bruxelles-Luxembourg - Brussel-Luxemburg" for a train station or name="rue Jean-Baptiste Meunier - Jean-Baptiste Meunierstraat". --Moyogo 16:39, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

I think that it should be as follows:

name="Bruxelles-Midi - Brussel-Zuid" name:nl="Brussel-Zuid" name:fr="Bruxelles-Midi " name:en="Brussels-South station" name:de="Brüssel-Südbahnhof"

--Moyogo 15:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC) name="Rue Jean-Baptiste Meunier - Jean-Baptiste Meunierstraat" name:fr="Rue Jean-Baptiste Meunier" name:nl="Jean-Baptiste Meunierstraat"

What goes first in the name tag should be dependent on the preference of the person putting it in there, but once it is set, it should stay the way it is... OTOH for street names I think it's more esthetic to have the French first. It would be tempting to do what is done on the street signs themselves:

name="Rue Jean-Baptiste Meunierstraat"

But I'm afraid we can't accomplish that. Technically straat should be glued to the streetname. Polyglot 15:40, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I'd tend to use the bilingual, '-' separated version, with each language defined where applicable. So, the following is what i'll do: name="Rue Jean-Baptiste Meunier - Jean-Baptiste Meunierstraat" name:fr="Rue Jean-Baptiste Meunier" name:nl="Jean-Baptiste Meunierstraat"

For the "name" one, i'll follow the order indicated on street plates. I will try to picture all of them while mapping, and will upload (med-resolution) the pics to some free, accounted hosting website.

Another topic would be that those street plates, which are most often (always?) written in all capital letters, never show accented letters. Should we write "Rue Hélène" or "Rue Helene" as on the plate?

ThaNerd

There are some villages/cities where they are actually written in the normal way. Mechelen comes to mind. Anyway, I would put the accents on it. I didn't, but that was because my keyboard didn't let me, when I was editing some streets in Brussels recently. --Polyglot 23:16, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Depending on what your platform/operating system is, there are tools that will let you copy/paste accented chars. On windows, run "charmap". On Linux, Gnome has Gucharmap. Meanwhile, copy these: àáâãäåæçèéêëìíïðñòóôõöøùúûüþÿ ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖØÙÚÛÜÝÞß (but most of those will be useless) ThaNerd 18:46, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
It’s really important for accents to be there. --Moyogo 15:00, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
From now on, i'll add them ThaNerd 18:46, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Another question is about searchability. On all street plates i've seen sofar, dutch name is in form "Gentsesteenweg", thus there is no separation between gentse and steenweg. This is a bad example, but one can know the street name, but not wether it is a "straat" or "laan" or "steenweg" or "lei"... A search implementation could lack searching for a part of a word... so "gentse" would not match "gentsesteenweg". Should we keep the words collated or space-separated? ThaNerd 18:46, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Partial matches are relatively easy to do if you already have a fulltext search. You could than search for "genste*" and get what you want. I don't think this is really an issue though, as you know the exact name most of the time. Another problem occurs if several variations actually exist. You're still in trouble if you don't know the full name then :) --Gyrbo 22:15, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
ok. It's actually true that even regular expressions are quite easy to implement, there are GPL libs in so many languages... ThaNerd 02:49, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
As a side note, some signs in Brussels don't follow rules of Dutch. Sometimes the signs will treat steenweg as if it was a word on its own, since they don't add a dash when linebreaking. We should follow linguistic rules even when the signs don't. I've only seen this with steenweg. Laan and straat are always attached (or the previous word has a dash when there'a newline). --Moyogo 15:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

Changing translation

Sometimes some roads change name in Dutch but not in French. Like "Chaussée de Wavre - Waversesteenweg" becoming "Chaussée de Wavre - Steenweg op Waver". I'm not sure what to do with those. I always keep the first form, should we follow the signs instead? There’s also a bunch of signs with place X - Xplaats on old signs and then place X - Xplein on newer or sign just on the other side of the same square. I’m guessing the names have been standardized to Xplein in Dutch in Brussels. I haven’t seen Xplaats on newer signs so I always use Xplein. --Moyogo 15:18, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I haven't seen this case sofar, but did you check wether the name change also modify the buildings numbering? I think you should use the name used on plates, for the segments. People living in that street probably use that one. Maybe one could check this by seeing what's actually written on inhabitants' ID card? ThaNerd 23:45, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
OK. I rechecked "Chaussée de Wavre - Waversesteenweg" becoming "Chaussée de Wavre - Steenweg op Waver" and that happens right between Elsene/Ixelles and Etterbeek. So I'm guessing this is a difference in the two municipalities just like "Rue de l’Aqueduc - Aquaductstraat" becoming "Rue de l’Aqueduc - Waterleidingstraat" between Saint-Gilles/Sint-Gillis and Elsene/Ixelles. --Moyogo 05:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Multiple languages in every day life

How is the multiple and equal language challenge handled on local street signs? Are all signs in three languages? Rw 13:28, 13 October 2006 (BST)

In Brussels we have street signs in both languages, Dutch and French. The official languages of the city. In Walonia signs are only in French and in Flanders signs are in Dutch. I'm not sure about the smaller, German speaking part, supose it's in German. Cimm

It even goes much further than that. For example in Brussels North railway station announcements are first made in Dutch then French. In Brussels South it is the other way around. And in Brussels Central? During pair years it is Dutch,French, and on unpair years it is French,Dutch. No kidding. There is also a system for announcements made on the underground but that is just too convoluted to explain here. And don't get me started on announcements made on the train itself: they change depending on the current geographical location of the train. (I've lived in Brussels).--Bartv 09:52, 27 October 2006 (BST)
In trains it normally depends of the native speaking language of the train conductor. He will first do the announcements in his native language, than the other language. --Lithion 10:42, 30 September 2007 (CET)

How to get active (Dutch)

Hallo. Ik heb deze site zopas ontdekt, maar ik ben écht onder de indruk. Graag zou ik meehelpen. Ik denk hierbij vooral aan Dendermonde (waar ik woon). Het center is niet zo groot, het moet in één dag lukken. Dan zijn er nog rand- en buurtgemeentes (met fiets te doen, als het goeie weer is). Verder ben ik gek op sproowegen en trams (zijn de tramlijnen eigenlijk belangrijk genoeg?), daar zit dus ook iets in.

Ik heb wel een PDA met tomtom erop, maar eigenlijk kan ik niet goed mee omgaan (heb het kado gekregen en eigenlijk bijna voor niks gebruikt). Zo snap ik niet hoe ik in die "tracking mode" moet geraken (hele uur mee gezeten, maar er komt niks van). Kan iemand mij helpen? Ik zou echt graad aan OpenMap meewerken Vitalyzator 20:12, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Vitalyzator, leuk om nog wat volk te horen in België! Tramlijnen zijn zeker een mogelijkheid in OSM, er zijn speciale tags voorzien om aan te duiden over welke lijnen het gaat. TomTom kan zelf niet loggen denk ik maar met een ander programma moet het wel lukken, kijk misschien eens naar GPSDash (shareware GPS programma voor Windows Mobile PDA en Smartphone). Heb net wat uitleg geschreven voor een andere beginnende OSMer, misschien kan je dat ook eens doorlezen. Twijfel niet om mij te contacteren! Cimm 21:25, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Bedankt voor snelle reactie en vriendelijke houding! Ik ben niet zo goed met moderne informaticatechnologie, maar op zaterdag of zondag (als ik wat meer tijd zal hebben) zal ik proberen die nieuwe software op mijn PDA te installeren. Hopelijk zal het niet te lang duren tot ik actief aan OSM zal kunnen meewerken.
Verder heb nog een vraag. Ik weet niet waaraan het ligt, maar plattegronden van België worden niet direct weergegeven. Als ik op de link "Browse Gent map" klik, dan krijg ik niets te zien (...more OCM coming soon). Toch kan ik diezelfde plattegrond wel bewerken (als ik op "Edit map" klik). Hoe zal dat komen? Vitalyzator 23:05, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Ja, het is natuurlijk leuk dat de tramlijnen mogen in de kaart gebracht worden.
P.P.S. Sorry, maar wat bedoel je met "loggen"? Route opnemen, veronderstel ik? Vitalyzator 23:05, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Vorige week werd de map aangepast en wat je nu ziet op de hoofdpagina is maar een voorlopige versie, de rest moet nog komen. Dit is al een gigantische verbetering op de vorige map maar spijtig genoeg alleen nog maar voor de UK, de rest volgt wanneer de nieuwe map klaar is (meer op Slippy Map, wie de discussion page waar ik dezelfde vraag heb gesteld). Met loggen bedoel ik inderdaad rondlopen met een GPS en alle punten die je verzamelt opslagen en uploaden naar OSM, taggen is die punten wolk openen in een editor zoals JOSM en straten tekenen over de punten en deze straten dan de juiste namen geven zodat er kaarten van gemaakt kunnen worden. Nog een kleine opmerking, kunnen we in het Engels schrijven? Dan kan iedereen het lezen en krijg je misschien betere of sneller antwoord op je vragen en kunnen ze 1 taal afspreken voor Vlamingen en Walen of vinden jullie dit geen goed idee? Cimm 23:18, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Many thanks for your explanations. While I can understand written English quite well, my writing abilities are less good, but I suppose they would be good enough for our conversation. Yes, we should better communicate in English, since this project is mostly populated by British and American people. It would also help if our Wallonian neigbours will join us. Unfortunately, we Belgians are still not always able to understand each other. Vitalyzator 23:27, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Ik ga ermee akkoord dat Engels best is voor pagina's en openbare discussies om allerlei redenen. Regarding the use of the name:fr and name:nl convention, I have adopted it and find it crucial as a Bruxellois. Attributes such as "Avenue des Cerisers - Kerselarenlaan" is just nonsense. I'm not sure if JOSM takes care of the proper encoding of diacritical characters (accents etc.) Mapping tram lines is also an excellent idea. And as an idea to solve the primary/secondary/tertiary thingie, I would suggest using the standard "lanes=N" attribute, which is a good indicator of the importance of the road and should also render nicely and realistically on maps. By the way, I thought the proper legal Dutch for "motorway" was "snelweg" in Belgium, the equivalent of "autoroute" in French. Also, why not map static radars? Ok, that's a bit too many ideas at a time. I'm so eager to get Brussels fully mapped! --Grungie 21:08, 1 June 2007 (BST)

Trunk, Primary, Secondary etc...

Ok, a question while doing some work on Antwerp: are there any rules for Belgium about what to tag primary/secondary?/tertiary? And what about the trunk, should it be ignored?

In Belgium the road categories are "motorway" ("hoofdweg" in Dutch legal terminology), primary 1 and 2, secondary 1, 2 and 3, and local 1, 2 and 3. We could take the primary/secondary tags in OSM (have a little plan for Antwerp province for that), but there are a few problems...

In the big cities there are often no primary/secondary roads: if one tags the entire city center with "residential", it becomes a big maze with no important roads visible.

Tertiary roads could be used for those important roads, but that seems to give strange results, where the road looks less important than residential (white road, no border; where residential at least has a border).

So, should we "upgrade" everything? I.e. primary roads should be made trunk, secondary roads primary and the important local roads after that secondary?

Or should we keep everything like it is outside city centers and then upgrade the important city roads?

So if there's nothing decided about this already once, I think I personally favor the "upgrade all" option. Other opinions, ideas? Eimai 22:38, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

No idea if anyone read this, anyway: I'll keep the "primary" and "secondary" highway tags for primary and secondary roads resp. The important local roads will be tagged "Tertiary". Eimai 22:40, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi Eimai, I've been wondering about that too. I don't know what to do really. trunk seems useful because it is visible like motorway, whereas primary stops being visible at zoom < 7. --Moyogo 13:47, 10 June 2007 (BST)
Personally, I would set all Nxx roads to primary, secondary would be important(connecting) roads inside a city (bld, avenue, laan, ...), tertiary and minor for the rest based on local importance. Trunk is for 'Routes pour automobiles' (I don't know the Flemish translation) an under-rated motorway or upper-rated Nxx. --PhilippeP 10:47, 21 July 2007 (BST)
I understood motorway is (Autoroute/Autosnelweg A../E..). Trunk is (Route express/Expressweg, speed between 90-120, no bicycles allowed, hmm, I can think of the N25 south of Leuven which has a bicycle lane, but it's sort of separate). Primary should be for N1, N2, N3?, N4 etc. Then it becomes hazy/unclear/foggy for me. I guess R.. are Tertiary, but I use tertiary also for the larger streets in Leuven and it renders nicely.
Polyglot 15:52, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
You can't really use N/R numbers to determine about primary/secondary/tertiary roads. N numbers 1-9 were just chosen as roads starting from Brussels, North to Antwerp is N1, and then incremental clockwise up to N9 to Gent-Bruges-Ostend, and although most of these roads are primary for long distances, they can become anything but primary in some other parts (N1 is defined by the government as a local road in Mortsel for example...). R ringways also vary from motorway to important local roads.
My initial thought about this months ago was that we should try to find out which roads are defined primary/secondary by government (and call the important local roads tertiary), but this information is anything but easy to get. A shame, because that definition represents how the road is built (allowed speed, number of lanes, parking spaces along the road, the type of crossings with other roads etc).
But as said, the information can't easily be found, perhaps it's possible if you find the good person, I don't know. It puts us in a position now where we have to arbitrarily assign these tags. So let's try something out:
  • motorways: the A roads, no discussion about that (E numbers don't fully qualify I think, apparently the N49 between Zelzate and Knokke is also E34, but it's not (yet?) a motorway)
  • trunk: looking at description of "trunk" for English roads (something like: looks like motorway, but isn't one), I think the dual carriageways with speed limit 100 or 120 could be defined trunk in Belgium. I don't think there are many roads like that here though...
  • primary: important roads with speed limit 70 or 90
  • secondary: important roads with speed limit 50 or 70. But where to put the boundary between primary and secondary? The amount of primary roads shouldn't be too much, so I'd define primary as linking "big" cities, or created to handle heavy traffic. But these definitions are probably way too vague...
  • tertiary: this one is even harder: I never attempted a definition on this yet... Important local roads?
Anyway, everyone seems to have their own arbitrary definition... We need to get to some sort of agreement so the same kind of road wouldn't be tagged primary by one and tertiary by someone else...
Eimai 16:50, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
I think I may found a good definition for trunks: the roads which have this traffic sign: [3] (a so called "autoweg" in Dutch). Pedestrians, cyclist and some other vehicles aren't allowed on these roads. Without other speed signs, the speed is 90 or 120 km/h outside built-up areas (otherwise 50). Eimai 13:42, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't think I can't agree more than 100% with this one :) --PhilippeP 13:58, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
The new tunnels under the Leien are also autowegen, but they don't exactly qualify as trunk roads... The maximum speed is 30km/h there... So let's make autowegen with maximum speed above 70 or so trunk roads. --Eimai 21:55, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
That's what the max_speed tag is for, although I agree that they probably shouldn't be tagged as trunk. Do they have the street sign indicated above? If not, I'd simply tag the primary/secondary/whatever and foot=no, bicycle=no, horse=no or something. If they are, maybe a trunk with a max_speed might be better for the sake of consistency. --Gyrbo 23:40, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

N-roads

Should we use the national road network classification fr/nl for tagging? How about the following:

  • Autostrade/Autoweg in 1st and 2nd N-road network, as well as RX roads with highway="trunk"
  • other 1st and 2nd N-road network (NX and NXX) with highway="primary"
  • 3rd N-road network (NXXX) with highway="secondary" and sometimes highway="tertiary" for small ones
  • other important village/municipality road with highway="tertiary"
Seems good until NXXX wich could also be primary depending on local importance --PhilippeP 12:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Should RXX roads be highway="primary" or highway="trunk"?

Trunks are 'cars only' so it depends and then also RXX are also very different in a large city and in a smaller one ...--PhilippeP 12:05, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Activiteiten?

OSM 2 in Brussels

On sunday 16 September we organise an Open Street Map event in Brussels. We will collect GPS tracks in the center of Brussels and upload them to the database of Openstreetmap.org. Welcome to everyone who wants to help walking, bicycling and help upload and annotate the tracks. We aim to tackle the whole pentagon of Brussels, if we don't make it in one day, we'll continue some other day. We will provide coffee, tea and a warm hangout.

Meeting point:

Sunday 16 september, 11:00 RECYCLART, Station Bruxelles-Chapelle, Rue des Ursulines 25 1000 Brussels

If you have a bike? Please bring it along! Do you have a GPS device? Take it with you!

You don't own a bicycle or GPS but you would like to use one? please let us know: We have 6 GPS devices to be used, and bikes we can rent easily.

Contact us:

E: osmap at constantvzw.com


hope to see you all!


...--Constantvzw 14:35, 4 Sept 2007 (BST)


Mapping@the Beach

How about making a mapping party in some beach station ?? Westende is partly done, but is also the only one

...--PhilippeP 12:49, 20 August 2007 (BST)


OSM in Brussels

This Sunday 22nd of July, a few openstreetmap enthusiasts are cycling through the center of Brussels. Rendez-vous Grand Place- Grote Markt at 10 AM. In the afternoon, we will work together with JOSM. More info and subscription here: http://www.towards.be/wiki/doku.php


FOSDEM

It would be nice if we are present at FOSDEM. But of course we need people to help organize it. We can take it from just being present to giving several presentations in a dev-room. Or discussing several items concerning mapping in Belgium. Or meeting all mappers from Belgium Or ... Who is in for this idea? or how do you want to see OSM on FOSDEM.

FOSDEM = Yearly meeting in February of Free and Open Source Developers in Europe (and outside of Europe), It is held in the ULB. More info on: www.fosdem.org

--Raskas 20:19, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

I just noticed that if we want a stand or devroom we must request it before 26/11/2007 , this is THIS monday. Leave a message if you want to join!

I would love to come, but I already have plans for that weekend. Maybe it isn't a bad idea to just meet each other. koko 09:51, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
It's still far from now, and don't know if I can participate but reserving a stand might be a good idea.--PhilippeP 10:37, 21 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm definitely going to be at FOSDEM. Have been for the past few years. I might volunteer to help them though. I would love to meet some people there. Anybody volunteering to give a talk? Has a dev room been reserved? Polyglot 15:58, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

FOSDEM sounds interesting I'll try to be there. It would be interesting to have a mini-OSM-meeting there. Perhaps it would be best to agree on a date, time and maybe a place (or we can all just wear a shirt that says "I map"). Since we probably don't have our own room, we'll need some place to talk, maybe even outside of FOSDEM itself. As is evident from the Talk pages, there's a lot we can discuss :). To get an overview of we will be there, we could add a small list on the wiki? --Gyrbo 21:37, 2 January 2008 (UTC)





Hoi,

Een week geleden heb ik dit project ontdekt en zonet ben ik bij de Belgische gebruikersgroep terecht gekomen. Nu is de vraag: hoe actief is deze? Zijn er veel mensen nog bezig met op verzamelen van data? Het tekenen van wegen?

...--Koko 00:47, 14 July 2007 (BST)

Maybe we can add a little table here with people still being active? --Lithion 10:47, 30 September 2007 (CET)

It would still be some sort of manual sign in in the wiki table, not quite easy to apply, a better way would be to request User information (last login time) on the OSM server and add this information on the Users in Belgium page --PhilippeP 10:54, 30 September 2007 (BST)
I can recommend signing up for an OSMMapper account at http://www.itoworld.com/static/osmmapper. If you use this, it's very easy to see all that's going on in a defined area, including users and when and what they did. --Ldp 14:18, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


Hey,

Zou er iemand voor mij de nieuwe OSM protocol version 0.5 kunnen vertalen naar het Nederlands, en hier op de wiki zetten. Dit is een belangrijk document voor het bewerken van data en 't zou mij vooruit helpen. Aan de persoon die zich geroepen voelt, op voorhand bedankt.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/OSM_Protocol_Version_0.5

Mvg Filip

You should ask through the Nl mailinglist to make a Nl:OSM_Protocol_Version_0.5 --PhilippeP 15:15, 11 October 2007 (BST)

OSM mapping party in Mechelen

Dutch version follows (sorry, I didn't take time to translate it to French)

Hi all,

What about organizing a mapping party in Mechelen? Nobody seems to be very active there, but for most of us it's only one train ride away. There are a few streets mapped, but none of the ones in the center has a name tag yet. Maybe a way to get to know each other? I have a GPS and a data logger I can lend to somebody. If there is an interest I'll go scouting to find a pub with wifi access or maybe we can invade one of those internet cafés/phone shops... Let me know what you think. Maybe in March? But not on the 29-30 weekend. As far as I'm concerned it can also be sooner. Polyglot 08:58, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Hallo allemaal,

Wat denken jullie ervan om een mapping party te organiseren in Mechelen? Er is daar nog niet veel gebeurd en het lijkt er niet op dat er iemand actief is, maar voor zover ik dat kan inschatten is het voor de meesten onder ons slechts een treinrit zonder overstap (De Belgen dan toch). Er zijn al een paar straten in kaart gebracht, maar geen enkele van de straten in het centrum heeft al een naamplaatje gekregen. Misschien is dit een manier om elkaar te leren kennen? Ik heb een GPS-toestel en een data logger, die kan 'k nog uitlenen aan iemand anders. Als er interesse voor is, wil 'k wel 's op verkenning uitgaan om een taverne te vinden met draadloos internet of wellicht kunnen we zo'in internet café/phone shop inpalmen... Laat maar weten wat jullie ervan denken. Liefst op de wiki. Misschien in maart? Maar niet tijdens het weekeinde van de 29e-30e. Wat mij betreft, kan het ook eerder al. Polyglot 09:14, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a great idea, you can count me in. I usually map by bike, so I'll have to see if I can get it over there. On the other hand, it might be easier to map on foot since there are several streets without proper cycleways. --Gyrbo 10:10, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Great. It's possible to take a bicycle on the train, but it costs like 4-5 euros one way. Any preference for a date/time frame? Polyglot 14:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I'm unavailable for some weekends, namely those of 2/2, 16/2 and 5/4. Other than those, I'm pretty much good to go. As for time, that probably depends on how much we want to map and how many people are going to join. We could start in the morning/at noon, eat somewhere and start mapping. That way we can use the daylight optimally (I know from experience Mechelen isn't a good place to be walking around after dark). If there is some more certainty, a separate wiki page would be advisable. As for equipment, I'll be bringing a laptop, and my regular gear. I have access to a second GPS, but I'm not sure if its capable of logging. --Gyrbo 14:21, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Post dates on the OSM-talk-nl list please. If I'm free the weekend that is going to be picked I will join. --Mdeen 16:15, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
It's all still tentative. Let's try with 9-10 February. FOSDEM is 23-24. Anybody for whom this wouldn't work? I'll start looking around for a place where we can gather... Polyglot 16:36, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I've made a wiki page where all events/activities can be discussed. Should I move the older discussing into that talk page as well, to not clutter this already overloaded talk page? --Gyrbo 20:42, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Be my guest :-) I've just moved railways and motorways from the project page to subpages myself. --Eimai 22:00, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Taal

Hoi,

In welke taal zouden we de wiki opzetten? Zou het geen goed idee zijn om al de info in het nederlands te zetten met verwijzingen naar gelijkaardige Franse pagina's? Iig, in het Engels vind k persoonlijk niet zo denderend ... Dan kunnen we bijna evengoed het engelse project lezen... koko 20:39, 1 November 2007 (UTC)


We kunnen misschien beter een forum opzetten, want de wiki vind ik niet zo geschikt om voorstellen ed te lanceren. Het is niet overzichtelijk. Lithion 13:35, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I think we should stick to English, because Dutch pages are basically for the Netherlands specific mapping, the same with French pages wich concerns France... (except for the technical pages like the OSM Protocol) --PhilippeP 14:07, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Hoi,
Dat de talen vooral landgebonden zijn vind k persoonlijk geen goed argument... Voor welk land zijn Spaanse pagina's dan? En de Engelse?
Euhm, tja, een forum... Is op zich natuurlijk geen slecht idee, maar wat zou je zeggen van een BE mailinglist?
Ivm de taal, mijn voorkeur gaat uit naar NL aangezien k van Vlaanderen kom. Hebben we al kennis gemaakt met Waalse Mappers?
Well maybe it's not a good idea, but if you go to the Nl:Map Features page , you'll see that it describes Netherlands specific map features .... same thing with Fr:Map Features page... and the whole osm highway system is based on English Road specifics ... Oh and BTW, I was born in Brussels and live in Lessines.--PhilippeP 14:32, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
Since all the countries have their own specifications because of different definitions of road types, I think we should develop also our own. So all the pages about Map Features should be rewritten into belgium-specific descriptions. Why shouldn't we do this in French or Dutch? koko 15:23, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
I've read the dutch specifications and they don't have to change a lot for Belgium. We can maybe publish them om openstreetmap.be? Lithion 19:46, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Why not in French or in Dutch ??? because it would be necessary to it in French and in Dutch, and then probably in German so no-one gets frustated... maybe we might do it Frutch or in Dench ?? --PhilippeP 19:06, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
Ok, let's do it in English. I've made a new section, where we can discuss the organisation (of the wiki) of the belgian mapping project. This is just a proposal! Edit as you wish. koko 08:48, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Structure of the Belgian mapping project

  • Homepage (met eens we zover zijn, een kalender?)
    • Mappers (All the mappers are listed here with the region they work in)
    • Mapping features (in English, for the Belgian roadtypes)
    • Mapping Progres (to have an overview which region is working on)
      • Motorways
      • Cities
      • Railways
    • Development
      • Client Software
      • Server Software
    • PR-information(Maybe we'll be able to attract new mappers)

Please, add items! This is just a start ;-) koko 08:48, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Mailing List

Should we open a mailing list to discuss matters for mapping Belgium? It looks to me that we could use it from time to time, and often it's easier to discuss things than through the wiki talk pages... --- Eimai 11:52, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi,
I think it would be nice if we could manage 1 place where everybody can note their thoughts. Two places will be too much i think. koko 13:48, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
I would prefer a Belgian mailinglist as a premordial soup-page to this one. On the list, keep general discussions in English and choose Dutch or French when appropriate. This page could then be kept as the area where the pre-cooked proposals resulting from discussions on the mailinglist could be set-up. After some time topics have rested in concensus, the 'Article'-page could be updated. Mayby my idea is a bit far-fetched and comes relatively unworkable considering the amount of currently active users, but think of it that when 10-20 people are supposed to keep on editing this page... That's not very attractive to get started as a newby. ivom
There is already a mailinglist OSM-talk-nl, this is completely in Dutch. Same for OSM-talk-fr, but Frech ;). But these lists contains discussions specific for the Netherlands or France. Therefore it would be useful to start a mailinglist specific for Belgium to discuss all items related to mapping in Belgium. I personally find a mailinglist more useful for chatting and discussing that a wiki talk page. So if we all agree I would go for the mailinglist, I even volunteer to create and admin the mailinglist. --- Raskas 11:47, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, talk-nl and talk-fr are too specific for the Netherlands and France, and would opt out the other part of our country, furthermore we may have German speaking mappers as well... (guess we'll have to use English as main discussion language so everyone can follow...)
Let's just go ahead with it then, we'll need to firstly find out who can give us a talk-be list. If we get one, we will also need to somehow inform all Belgian mappers (through their wiki talk pages I guess?). --Eimai 12:59, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
Okidoki, I will go after the admin who can give us a talk-be mailinglist. I'll be back on this page when there is news --ivom 17:38, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
I had also mailed some guys to request the mailinglist and I saw your mail on OSM-talk, without any answers. I checked on IRC and TomH created our mailinglist. So from now on the talk-be mailinglist is a fact! all supscribe to talk-be@openstreetmap.org! I will add all necessary information on the Belgium mainpage this evening! -- Raskas 14:47, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
Just great, a new list! Let's all jump on it and discuss. Some announcement on the talk-nl, talk-fr, talk lists. Is an that an appropriate thing to do? --ivom 18:16, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
The announcement was sent 1 minute before I saw your message ;). I already sent a message to talk-nl and talk, can someone send a message to talk-fr and talk-de? -- Raskas 18:18, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

German part of Belgium: "Strasse" or "Straße"?

Hi everyone,

in Kelmis (East Belgium) the street signs display the German street names with the ß character (e.g. "Poststrasse"). But according to wikipedia:de:ß, the ß character is used in Belgium: "Die deutschsprachigen Minderheiten in Belgien [...] richten sich nach den in Deutschland, Österreich und Luxemburg üblichen Regeln." So the correct spelling would be "Poststraße".

I think that OpenStreetMap should use the orthographically correct spelling with ß, but I'd like to hear the opinions of German-speaking Belgians. I'd also like to know whether the street signs in other cities (e.g. Eupen) use the ß character. Once we've reached a consensus, we can ask the operator of xybot (which regularly changes Strasse -> Straße in Germany and Austria) to include East Belgium in its bot runs. --Head 16:16, 22 August 2010 (BST)

Each municipality in Belgium has an official street name list, and normally the spelling on that list should be used because that's the only correct one, even if it's not really correct to current spelling rules (we have a few street names here in Antwerp that aren't correctly spelled since Dutch spelling reform of 1995 for example) and even if the street sign itself shows it differently. So if you want to be sure you'll have to ask for these lists at each of these municipalities...
And a side note: aren't most of the street signs in all caps anyway (and as a consequence using "SS")? --Eimai 12:51, 23 August 2010 (BST)

Discussion about the nominatim responses for belgian places

I start a discussion about the nominatim responses for belgian places at this place. Your opinions are very welcome. --Corentin (talk) 12:40, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Public Transport lines in Belgium

Hi,

Is it possible to create a topic to know the status of bus, tram and train lines in Belgium, whether there're up to date or not ? Something like WikiProject Belgium/Public transport lines ?

This would be helpful.

Have a look here for a draft.

Arflha (talk) 20:36, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

Skeeler (inline) routes

Recently "Sport Vlaanderen" tested an inline skate network/routes between Hasselt and Genk. Is this worth mapping? If yes, should we agree on a convention for inline skate routes in belgium or is the info on Inline_skating sufficient? I saw on Waymarked Trails that some of it is already mapped. --lowie2028 (talk) 09:31, 5 June 2021 (UTC)

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