Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Nextgrid | Hacker News Reader

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OSM has the same problem as many other open-source projects: not enough focus on branding and user experience.

Right now, if I want to use OSM on my iPhone and I search "OpenStreetMap" in the App Store I get various applications under various, unknown names. The closest to an "official" name would be OSMaps, but it turns out even that one isn't official and has no navigation capabilities.

On Android, I don't have a phone to test with but seems like the most popular option appears to be OsmAnd. Again, not only is the name cryptic but doesn't imply anything unless you're already familiar with OSM. "Google Maps", "Apple Maps", etc in contrast automatically imply what the app is for even if you've never heard of the brand itself.

If OSM wants to succeed in the consumer space, they need to release an official, "reference implementation" of a mobile client with an UI comparable to the competition that a layman can understand and use even if they have no idea what OSM is nor are interested in contributing.

But that would mean OSM Starts competing with its corporate users. Not sure this will be a healthy strategy.

What I would love to see would be an app allowing me to quickly contribute to OSM, e.g. fix things, add street names or POIs, etc.

On Android you can use StreetComplete. With it, you'll be mostly able to add missing details around you, and the types of quests available are very broad. Arguably, you can't fix things with it, I heard there was an other app on F-Droid to do this but I haven't tried it yet.

"Arguably, you can't fix things with it" - you can fix certain things, thanks to resurvey quests that were added.

For example resurvey of old opening hours data, recent version (v28.0) added also ability to directly handle shop that is gone and replaced by another (it may not be released for you, especially if you use F-Droid). See https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/releases/ta... for details.

For full scale editing on Android see Vespucci.

Ah yeah you're right, I did install the v28.0 version and forgot about this new feature.

Also a big thanks to you for your work on this app, it makes editing OSM super easy on the go, and gave me something to do on my walks during the lockdowns :)

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