Compiling lists

So you want to make a list? Be prepared for some shit. People simply hate it if your list doesn't tally with theirs, or their criteria, or you missed their favourite or...well, read on.

For both writing the book and developing the mooc I recently found myself attempting to compile lists of expert resources that I felt were worth sharing. The point of such lists, whether in a book or a blogroll, or just part of your personal bookmarks is to link to stuff you find useful. Stuff that you also think would widen people's exposure to information on a subject. Stuff written and shared by experts in their domain. My domain is cartography so the lists I want to compile are those that I think will be useful to people beyond what I have to say on the subject. They're lists collated over the years. I've had a smidgen of criticism for not including person x or person y, or this blog, or that blog so let me be clear about the criteria I used.

First and foremost, if it's a list of blogs or tutorials then it must be a blog or have content in a tutorial style - how tos, for instance. That precludes people's Twitter or Instagram accounts (which, by the way, I have included in the book as a list of interesting mapping people whose work is worth checking out and which DOES include many names people are mentioning to me). The blog has to be current and not appear to be on indefinite hiatus. It can't simply be a shroud for marketing. It has to be focussed and not a catch-all with the odd post on cartography. It has to be technique-driven, not just 'about maps'. It might be by one person or it might be by an organisation with multiple contributors. It can't just be stuff that you can find elsewhere in a better form. Crucially, it must be of a sufficient quality. It has to be something I find interesting, informative and useful. Often, something I learn from just as much as I hope others learn from. It has to exude expertise, not just regurgitated stuff that is better explained elsewhere.

Ultimately, with any list, you draw a line. The line demarcates what I consider to be a minimum quality (my list, my red line). It can't just be a list of anything and everything or include a particular person because the internet has decided they've won a popularity contest. It's been sorted, curated and I've done the work of identifying the signal from the noise based on the cartographic content and quality on offer that I consider marks it out from the rest. Some may disagree and that's their prerogative but the beauty of the internet is mine isn't the only list. Others exist. Importantly, many of those I include on my lists will link to others that I don't include and so the process of learning where to seek information is somewhat organic.

I want people to get to the 'best' first. I'm tired of the vast unsorted soup of the internet providing a mouthpiece for anyone who thinks they have cartographic chops to be seen as a self-styled go-to. Often, the evidence is in short-supply. Really, you may think you're great because you have thousands of 'followers' or a gazillion 'likes' but that metric is also just noise. All I have done is pulled out some gems; sifted them from the mass conglomerate and suggested their work is worth being considered as best practice. It's not simply about highlighting the work of my buddies or, conversely, ignoring that of people I perhaps don't necessarily agree with.

As someone from an academic background, compiling such lists is no different to doing research for a project, an essay or a journal paper. You seek prior knowledge to frame your own work. You cite your sources, references and inspiration. You don't just throw in a list of every single Google hit that includes a particular keyword. You don't cite the newest reference you find based on current volume, you seek the original source and give credit where it's due. Expanding the metaphor, if someone asks me for a reference or recommendation for someone they're considering hiring do I give an honest appraisal or just say he or she is a nice person? It has to be about the work. Not the person. It's exactly the same to how I critique maps. It's about the map as a product and what it does or doesn't offer, not the person or organisation who made it.

Your reputation is at risk if you perjure yourself when giving any sort of recommendation. If you end up wasting people's time by recommending a person ill-suited to a job, or you send them to a blog that, actually, really isn't particularly useful in the wider scheme of things then you lose the trust of your audience and trust is crucial. I've developed a lot of really good connections in the cartographic world over the years. Many trust me for advice and comment. Some disagree, but that's OK. If I start selling-out or bullshitting just to please someone then I lose all of that. I lose the reputation of someone who tries to be honest, straight-talking and giving of objective comment. I have my cartographic likes and dislikes but I'm open about them and I confidently stand by them.

Sorting out what is of a high enough quality is part of the process of determining any list. For a list of useful cartographic material it should be as objective as possible in the sense of not precluding based on anything other than the quality of the cartographic comment. That is how I approached it. I also sought comment from others who recommended some I'd missed or hadn't known about. Yes, I've seen plenty of other blogs, web sites and collections of resources. Why aren't they in my lists? They didn't make the cut because the quality didn't warrant it. It's as simple as that. And the lists I have compiled have not been done so in a vacuum. The list of resources for the mooc was reviewed by the team. The lists that appear in the book were reviewed by impartial reviewers and a large editorial team. Hard questions were asked. Discussion over why some were included or excluded were part of the process and justifications were made.

Let me be honest though - there's an ugly tribalism at work. There are many people who I know have no internet presence and whose work is stellar. Just because you're online it does not necessarily make you worth listening to. You want other divides that people hang their cartographic allegiance on?...proprietary/open source; Adobe/GIS; drawing/coding; desktop/browser; PC/MAC; old/new; academic/maker; old bloke/cool kid; Blogger/Tumblr. the list goes on. People increasingly identify with a tribe that supports their own echo chamber and that also tends to give rise to lists that suit that meme. I genuinely try to go beyond that and I'd ask that you try and look beyond it too.

And finally, there's the elephant in the room - under-representation. If people identify under-represented socio-economic/age/gender/geographic groups in my (or any) list then please don't think for one minute that there's bias in the selection whatsoever. What you may very well be identifying is under-representation in the source, or, possibly assuming the list should be something different to what was intended. In terms of online content, the bigger question is how come this sort of online content doesn't better reflect the wider world? Let me give you an example using the demographics of Twitter use. 67% of all internet users use social media. People who live in cities tend to use social media more than those who live in rural areas (geographic inequality). Only 16% of those who use social media use Twitter (platform inequality) and they are most likely to be adults aged between 18-29 (age inequality)...and male (gender inequality). So by definition, if your source is Twitter then anything you do with information will undeniably reflect the character of those that use it and miss those that don't. That doesn't denigrate those that don't or deliberately shun them. If those who write cartographic blogs tend to reflect wider patterns in the use of social media then any list will likely reflect the same.

And the page that caused the most consternation in my book is what are loosely called 'contributors'. This is a page that lists the people who wrote one of the 25 alphabetical divider pages; great maps that have ~150 words written by someone other than me. I thought it would be good that the list was not just my list and the words not just my words. There's a good spread of people from different backgrounds, ages, disciplines, expertise and nationalities but all but one are white and male. And that has caused a small number of people to be very upset. this is difficult. Any defense I might want to make will always look like a desperate attempt to cover my tracks. I've had conversations with some of those who have taken offence and they are difficult conversations. Did I drop the ball?  I had only focussed on content but I’ve thought about this a lot since. I asked people who I felt had gravitas and who could reflect on maps from their experience and their domain.

And as I pondered the issue I stared back at my bookshelf. There’s 129 books on my bookshelf published between 1962 and 2019. Only 11 have a female author or editor. That’s less than 10%. And all of those were published in the last 10 years. There’s only 2 from (the same) non-white author. You see the same pattern reflected in blogs and other forms of social media. And if I widen that scope to look at the International Cartographic Association then of the 27 Commissions, only 6 have a female Chair. This is not an excuse but it is a reality and one that is changing for the better.

I did add sections of further material and resources in the back matter which perhaps have a better balance.

But my list of contributors simply does not satisfy some people and I fully understand that and accept the criticism. I also entirely agree with their assessment that there are many more women, in particular, getting involved in cartography and I do very much hope the person who writes the equivalent of my book in 20 years time has a greater opportunity to draw upon a more diverse range of expert contributors, and it needs to go beyond simply improving the gender balance. If there’s ever an appetite for a second edition I’ll try and deal with the issue too.

That said, I hope the content in my effort speaks for itself regardless of who wrote or contributed. If you approach any work and view it through a very specific lens you will find fault. You will find problems. If you use raw counts as a way to frame your argument then I don't think you're helping move the conversation forward because that misses the point and, arguably, means once you've fixed one balance you've likely fallen foul of another. Should my list have had 50% women? It's an argument I know some would make. But widen that approach and you soon find that it's impossible to implement without it becoming an artificial construct, or seen as positive discrimination, or, leaving others off the list. The shortage, or under-representation of certain groups of people is easy to see when we count but that metric often hides the illusion that we might in some way have some element of control over it. I've had people say I should be using my position and the position of the book to do more and be that agent of change but forcing my list of contributors to be something other than the criteria I used was not an agenda I wanted to get into. There were commercial reasons why some people were not approached (whom I might otherwise have done so). The book was published by a private press and while I got considerable latitude, there were still a few rules I had to play by. There were also many many great up and coming people who some think I should have included. Yes, maybe in 20 years when they have a body of work and a background that qualifies them. I have made the point that if the criteria was 'make a list of 25 great, cool, modern cartographers then that list would be fundamentally different. In fact, most of the people that were listed as contributors wouldn't find themselves included.



If you see my book through a specific lens then I think you're distracting yourself from the substantive work. It's hard to see the forest when you're busy counting trees. My friends, colleagues and those I know in the business are many and varied. I engage with them in different ways for different reasons and needs. I juggle who I contact, highlight or work with based on who is expert enough. The very idea that looking from the outside on a list, and deciding whether I'd made it 'correctly' based on gender seems really presumptuous. If you're going to argue for diversity to capture a fuller portrait of reality then I agree, but to do so means you need to look more widely than a list of 25 names. Look at the maps made by people in the book, look at the ways in which others have contributed. Look at the entirely female team of experts in editing, copyediting, graphics editing, aquisitions editing and so forth that brought the book to life. Focusing on that one page gives a very false sense of clarity or certainty to your argument. Categorising people by anything before determining if their presence is just seems to be to the detriment of the final objective.

Let me be clear. I wholeheartedly encourage increased participation from any and all under-represented groups to give a better balance in all walks of life. Cartography is no different. I hope those that feel my list(s) did a poor job of representing diversity can see the value in the wider work as it pertains to cartography.

So, rather than focus on a list of 25 people, here's a list of my sources which is far more useful Here's the one that's in my book and you can download it as a small poster here.

If you post links below citing a blog, tutorial or person's work that I didn't include then two things. First, if it's genuinely something I am not aware of then I'll give it due consideration and it'll be included in future lists if it makes the grade. Second, you are, of course, presuming I haven't already considered it (or the person involved) and decided it wasn't going to be included (based on the criteria I explain above) and that's already the case with many that have already been proposed on other social media platforms. Thanks.

A new map in prospect

We took @wisley_dog to one of his favourite local parks the other day. Prospect Park in Redlands is a lovely spot that sits a little up the hill in south Redlands offering spectacular views across the San Bernardino valley to the mountains beyond. It's a mix of trails, orange groves, places to picnic and also houses an outdoor amphitheatre. It's also next to Kimberly Crest House - one of Redlands historic houses. At 11 acres it's not a large park.

Like many, we parked on Cajon St and entered the park by its North-East access points. There's a shady picnic spot and, as I found, a new information board which houses a new map of the park. Here it is, measuring about 3ft wide:

That's a lot of map for a small park. It kinda ruined my walk. It likely ruined Linda and Wisley's walk too as I bent their ear about the map and its problems. So let me bend your ear too and, hopefully, in the process, show you how to critique a map.

On the face of it it looks nice enough but as with anything that's dressed nicely it can often deceive. So let's deconstruct it a little and have a conversation about some of the cartographic and design choices.

The information board is located on the North-East edge of the park. You look at it facing South-West. Yet the map is oriented with North-West at the top to align Highland Ave with the top edge of the paper. This makes absolutely no sense. Fundamentally, the map is oriented incorrectly. These sort of in situ maps need to be oriented so the map is laid out as you look at the park in front of you. This map should have Cajon St at the foot of the sheet and, as you look (and wander) beyond the map you can then easily process the lefts, rights and other locations of points of interest in the park. Rotate the map and you get this which is far more useful from that location:

This is an all too familiar problem of maps on information boards like this. It simply needs the people who commission the map and those making it to have a conversation about where it's going to be displayed. It means if it's to be displayed at several locations it should be rotated accordingly but that's not difficult if you use a GIS and it's data-driven. It's also not difficult with some forward thinking as this other Redlands park map shows. The Caroline Park map is on a board on the south edge of the park. North is top and you stand looking at the map, looking northwards. Perfect. It's also a beautifully illustrated map that shows you the function of different parts of the park as well as the flora and fauna you may see.

Back to the Prospect Park map. Orientation is not the only problem. The labeling is awful because you have difficulty reading it.

Simply overprinting black text (in boring Arial) over the background is never going to work. There's so many ways of improving this. Masks, Halos, Shadows. Anything! And there's leader lines everywhere. they're unnecessary.

There's so much space on the map which makes should make lettering it an absolute joy compared to most maps. And as far as the overlooks are concerned, a symbol might be more useful and that would obviate the need for a typographic element and three ugly leader lines altogether.

So...overlook. That tells you something. It means that there's some elevation throughout the park. Yet the map displays no information to warn the casual visitor that there nearly a 100ft elevation gain between Cajon St and the highest point. A vantage point that then allows such beautiful vistas towards the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains (and the San Andreas Fault but I try to ignore that most of the time). OK, but there's a network of nicely paved paths right? They're all shaded grey so they're all the same?

Imagine you're a wheelchair user or struggle with walking up a moderate incline. You'd not only be frustrated that the map shows no detail of the elevation gain but, worse, many of the trails are nothing more than dirt and gravel making them almost impossible to access for some people.

By making all the paths the same symbol type the map infers they are the same. Yes, you can drive up to the parking lot at the top via Prospect Drive but you can't take your car anywhere else. You can't similarly access it from the other apparent entrance on Cajon St either. the map might not need detailed contours other other ways to show elevation but showing how elevation changes along the trails would, at the very least, be an extremely helpful piece of information.

And what of the parking to the left of the map that you can access via Highland Ave? Well, technically, you have to go through the entrance to Kimberly Crest house to get there and that has a gate that is locked at times when the adjacent park is open. Useful information, particularly so you don't get locked inside with no way out. In fact, that car park is not really part of Prospect Park at all. It's the access to Kimberley Crest House and Prospect Court as this OpenStreetMap map helpfully symbolises by specifically not including it in the green that designates the park boundary.

View Larger Map

Take a look at the OSM map again - it shows one route into the park for cars to get to the central parking lot. It shows clearly how you access it via Prospect Drive. It shows other trails inside the park differently to distinguish their use. But while we're at, it there is an error on this map too. If you access Prospect Drive from Highland Ave you cannot drive through and round the bottom edge of the park and into the Prospect Park lot that way. There's a chain across the road to prevent access. And neither OSM or the new Prospect Park map has the new footpath included between the Kimberley Crest car park and Highland Ave.

Zoom in to the OSM map. See those water fountains? Redlands can get kinda hot. Water fountains are important for dogs and humans alike. They should be on the map. The Prospect Park map has restrooms (labelled - maybe another case for a symbol?) but not water fountains. Makes the map a little partial with basic information.

And back to the map's background. At first glance the Prospect Park map appears to be a hand-drawn and painted map. I think it's based off some form of digital data (possibly even just traced off imagery). It looks OK but it could be so much better. Each orange tree gets a uniform symbol. A bit of rotation on each would make the groves look more organic and 'real'. And what about all the other vegetation? There's palms, giant mature specimen trees, a bamboo forest, seating and grassy areas to name a few major parkland types of ground cover. yet pretty much everything other than orange trees and the palms along Cajon St gets the same smudgy fill. This could have been so much more exciting with other tree species canopies or symbology.

There's also a small creek than runs between the picnic area beside Cajon St and the park beyond. Why wouldn't you mark that? It has 6ft walls despite not always having much water in it. It's hard to miss in reality yet the map makes no mention of it. It's a prominent feature yet all the map has to indicate anything is a bridge label next to a cross-hatched rectangle that is presumably supposed to represent the bridge itself. A bridge over what?

Possibly a spelling mistake too...lower left 'Orange trees on Terrance'. I think they mean 'terrace' though I can't be absolutely sure. I've never seen Terrance there. I don't know anyone named Terrance.

The north point thing seems to be a small apology wandering aimlessly in a vast space because there was a space and to cap off the entire map the title and credit lines are in Comic Sans - that font that every map-maker loves to hate. Is this a subtle bit of carto-trolling? Could be. Could just be a pointless use of Comic Sans that makes no sense on a map that otherwise uses Arial. And why on earth would set the title in horizontal letters aligned vertically? Use Comic Sans with purpose. Reserve it for the uses it was designed for (children, comics and, latterly, to support those with dyslexia). It has no place on an information map like this - in the same way Papyrus has no place on restaurant menus.

So...what to do. Well, I've had a moan. I've justified my thoughts based on what I know about cartography. I tell you what, I'll make another version (for free) and offer it to the City of Redlands Parks Division. I'll post back when it's done and invite anyone and everyone to critique my map. In the meantime, you'll find me at Caroline Park where I hope they're not planning to update the current map with a similarly weak replacement.