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Comment by cookiecaper | Hacker News Reader

Really think this is a cool idea and have had it installed on my phone for more than a year, but somehow, I never really feel the compulsion to do anything more than open it up and think about how cool it is. Maybe would be nice to present a list of nearby simple quests to get new users started? A little intro/tutorial sequence may help bridge the gap and suck people in.

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There is an intro in version 19, released a week or two ago.

I was in a similar situation as you for a while. My perspective changed when I realised that it's a great thing to make going on walks -- another habit that I've wanted to get into (for physical+mental health) but never really did -- a little more interesting and fulfilling. Now I'm at ~2000 quests completed.

Depending on where you are, the available things to do can be limited and uninspiring.

I have been using it for a while, and I have filled out useful things like bus stop shelter and seating, road surfaces, opening hours on shops etc.

Near me right now, I have a few house numbers (adjacent to known house numbers), one probably unnamed pedestrian passage to name, and loads of default speed limits.

Should parking spaces by apartment buildings be marked as open to the public?

If they're only meant for access by residents of the apartments, then no.

Depends on the signage. Intention alone usually doesn't legally restrict usage. If the parking spaces are part of the apartments then they should have signs saying so. It's fine to have a sign at the driveway that gives access to these parking spaces of course.

I'm not talking about legality, I'm talking about how they're meant to be marked in OSM, which is the question I was responding to.

The OSM community generally holds that access-tagging of a feature should be based on ground-truth; for parking spaces this means defaulting to what is the local law, and specifying exceptions if signs indicate that it is private parking.

Go with the signage.

When asked to put in opening hours, if the sign in the window says 0800 daily, you don't write "well, I was there at 0830 last Wednesday and they weren't open yet, so maybe 0900?". Similarly, you don't write "I parked there for two hours yesterday and I didn't get a ticket"

If there are official-looking signs (not a scrap of plywood with NO PArkiNG written on it with a marker), I don't think it's the cartographer's job to investigate whether the clamping company is legitimately authorised to demand a release fee, how thoroughly the operator enforces restrictions, or how long the warden takes on their rounds.

I like to think every last bit of that sort of information could at least improve the quality of GPS navigation apps using OSM data. I use OSMAnd for navigation and w.r.t. map completeness it's pretty good but not great. I think much of what's lacking is the finer details, thigs like many houses not being numbered.

I've seen a lot of quests on StreetComplete that seemed a lot less relevant, like the number of stories a house has, or the style of roofs. I guess that's useful for 3d maps, but personally I don't see much value in that relative to mapping addresses and street rules.

“Pretty good” certainly isn’t true in my area. Most businesses aren’t labeled, or are labeled incorrectly, and certainly no houses are labeled.

As best as I can tell, there are simply no boots on the ground on the east side of Indianapolis. Unfortunately I’m not in a position to do much about it myself, but the sheer volume of missing data is a pretty strong deterrent.

It definitely can.

I'm just saying that as a newcomer, being able to fill out things with obvious personal usefulness like "does this bus stop have a shelter and seating" is really cool and engaging. As is having a diverse range of things to fill out.

When your area is already pretty thoroughly covered, it's not as fun to say "this stretch of road has the same speed limit as every other stretch of road nearby". However, once you are an engaged user, doing a few of those things every so often is fine.

What I was trying to say in my original comment was "if you can't find anything interesting to do in it try somewhere else (when you can)"

It shows nearby quests on the map, and you can select types of quests in the settings if you want to turn off the harder or less interesting ones.

I guess there is still a bit of a barrier to entry, but once you get used to it it's a fun way to explore your neighbourhood and find things out.

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