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Comment by benbristow | Hacker News Reader

OSM needs some form of gamification adding to it.

Google Maps app is great, lets you gain points by adding information & photos & reviews etc. They even send you a free bespoke pair of socks or a badge if you're active enough. So fun to add photos and then see how many views they get (I posted one of a chippy in Scotland (for Americans that's Fish & Chip 'Thick French Fries' shop) which got over 1.4 million views - mental). The location history feature suggests things to contribute which helps too.

Would be good to have something similar to make contributing fun.

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> OSM needs some form of gamification adding to it.

Take a look at StreetComplete [1]. It is gamification of updates to OSM.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplet...

Android-only :(

Every Door

The last time I submitted a few months worth of my travels at once after doing a hundred or so of these challenges/questions and got a bunch of notifications lambasting me for not updating the moment I did instead of later. Honestly didn't realise you had to manually submit, thought it just happened automatically.

Was a really rude intro to the community and reminded me a lot of SO or Wikipedia with its gatekeeping.

I've never submitted a single thing since then. If that's how you treat newcomers then I want nothing to do with you.

It does happen automatically, pretty sure it's always worked that way. Maybe you experienced a bug?

> The user's answer is automatically processed and uploaded directly into the OSM database.

https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/

Of course uploading a few months of changes all at once is going to cause issues, naturally some will conflict with other changes that have been made in the meantime.

There is a setting that disables autoupload. Some people may want to minimise the number of edits made from their account, and some people may not want to leave a trace of locations they've visited together with exact timestamp they've been there.

i've been using streetcomplete for a long time now, i just keep the mobile data on and it keeps uploading fixes and stuff as we go.

As someone who belongs to the OSM community, I am sorry that you had this experience. Gatekeeping is an unfortunate byproduct of a crowdsourcing project, it seems.

I hope you reconsider and try again. Many of us are actually here to help.

> Honestly didn't realise you had to manually submit, thought it just happened automatically.

in my experience, you don't have to manually submit in streetcomplete, and it does happen automatically.

> a few months worth of my travels

Was this travels in your local neighbourhood, going home daily, or one trip to another country or in a very rural area? I'm asking if you had constant data connectivity, intermittent, once daily, or none during that time?

It sucks to have a bad first experience from a Gatekeeping community. Of course, as newbs, we try to move slowly with small changes first to test the waters. That worked for me, sorry that it did not work for you. I also take the point that was raised about not editing based off months-old data.

This is terrible. I have no experience with it myself, but if OSM wants community contributions, they need to make sure that people feel welcome to contribute. Lambasting people for getting something wrong is not helpful. Thanking them and advising them how to do it better next time would be much better.

> Thanking them and advising them how to do it better next time would be much better.

Thanking them and advising is the recommended way to handle this.

Unfortunately, as happens in all large crowdsourced areas, some don't adhere to the recommended ways and "do their own thing", often to the detriment of the project as a whole.

I've seen some gatekeeping in the OSM community as well. In this specific case, this is also (in my opinion) due to bad tooling. Basically the easiest way to keep an eye on an area is to use a tool that shows changesets whose bounding box includes a certain area. So you could make a single tiny edit in both NY and LA, the bbox would ping a huge swath of the US. This happens all the time, actually. It's annoying, but the way I see it that means we need a better way to see changesets that actually affect a specific area.

yah the change set visualization could indeed use a lot of love. I think it would be worth it, something like beyond compare's image diff could be a good start in the right direction https://beyondcompare.gitbook.io/project/other/how-to-compar...

OSMcha and a few other tools are probably much better suited for that purpose.

> Honestly didn't realise you had to manually submit, thought it just happened automatically.

It happens automatically in default configuration.

You can enable manual upload in settings if you want, but then, well, you need to upload it manually.

I am contributor to StreetComplete - so maybe I will add feature to start reminding about upload if edits are old.

Funny, I've had a similar experience, and stopped contributing because of it. My case was even more egregious as autosubmit _was_ enabled on StreetComplete, but unbeknownst to me at the time such submissions are batched, so if you edit local places that you're visiting (vacation) and places far away that you're intimately familiar with (home), it can still end up in one big changeset that spans an enormous geographical area... After that I had a couple of folks breathing down my neck and nitpicking every change -- and one of them tried to support their snark with http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/crybaby.html, which is possibly the stupidest writeup I've ever seen -- no, thank you, I can take my contributions elsewhere.

OpenStreetMap has strict demands on how contributors should structure their changes, but has no way to enforce them. The best it has is having someone review your changesets _after_ they've been already submitted, when it's too late as the "damage" is done. Start implementing a technical solution to problem, instead of disciplining the ones who are volunteering their time trying to curate your dataset for you.

(Also, if StreetComplete is a repeat offender, start a conversation with its devs instead of reprimanding users.)

The devs are unwilling to automatically split changesets spatially. The main reason is that the app is intended to be used on foot, maybe bike, mapping only a small area and doing all that on the ground where you actually are. So mapping from images or memory runs afoul of that intention anyway.

Granted, that still doesn't solve the case that you may have no connectivity and are basically forced to upload a big batch later. It annoys me a bit as well.

On the other hand, despite how angry the changeset comments may read, this isn't a big deal. Globe-spanning changesets happen all the time and yes, they do annoy local users trying to keep a watch on what happens, but the history on the OSM site isn't really well-suited for that either. Also, with enough other changes, those large changesets also fall out of the history range fairly quickly, except in places where no one maps anyway.

> On the other hand, despite how angry the changeset comments may read, this isn't a big deal.

Then why be angry about it at all? It either is worth gatekeeping about our not, decide.

> Globe-spanning changesets happen all the time

I noticed! But this only makes it worse. That's precisely my point: the requirements are there but can't be enforced and then the matter is addressed with... hostility between contributors? Who's benefiting from this behavior, exactly?

I don't really know. There are guidelines and promoting those guidelines to new users can be beneficial. I do sometimes comment on changesets by other users where this happened with the use of normal editing tools (iD, JOSM) where some more care can really be taken (JOSM even warns about large changeset boundaries). But I try to phrase it as a friendly reminder, not so much a broken rule.

Some things like reverting vandalism or fixing large geometries like coastlines or motorways often make large edits necessary anyway. And often it just happens by accident. I have added some cleanup changes to the wrong changeset more than once and then got a changeset for a whole continent. The immediately visible history on the OSM site soon ceases to show that changeset and another will take its place, so personally I don't see much of a problem to get worked up about.

So my stance is basically: It happens, we can't really prevent it anyway (although I'd love a spatial auto-split in StreetComplete and JOSM – Every Door has it, I think), and as long as the norm is that people try to make smaller changesets, I guess we can live with that.

If that's how you treat newcomers then I want nothing to do with you.

OSM is like Wikipedia for maps. Complete with all of Wikipedia's baggage and wannabe bureaucrats.

Thanks for the reference! I've just installed StreetComplete, and expect it should provide a good excuse to take some walks around the neighborhood.

This is exactly what I have found! StreetComplete encourages me not only to take regular walks, but also to explore new areas local to me that I haven't previously visited (since, after a while, you need to move to a new area to find 'quests' that you haven't already completed).

I have discovered lots of places in my local area thanks to StreetComplete!

Every time I see this I seriously consider buying a cheap Android device to play with it

For Apple phones there is also the recently published Every Door app: https://every-door.app/

It'a however a little bit more technical and not all gamified and glossy.

I am always amazed at the effort in UX that StreetComplete has taken. Which sadly is also a reason why rewriting it in something that runs on iOS is a major undertaking. And replacing all those beautifully-designed quest screens with simple key-value pair tables is obviously not a suitable replacement.

This thing is so much fun! I love wandering around a new area and filling in the details.

One thing I wish it had was the ability to add an entirely new building. I'm currently living in a town that is experiencing massive growth and I'll often see a structure that's still a vacant lot on osm, and I don't think you can add it with StreetComplete.

The easiest thing to do for such cases is to add a note, perhaps with a picture of the building if you're comfortable.

There must be folk who dedicate their time to searching the OSM database for unresolved notes, because whenever I leave a note on StreetComplete mentioning an inaccuracy (e.g: a path where there isn't actually one, a driveway marked incorrectly as a road, etc.) I get an email alert a few days later notifying me that the note has been resolved - often by someone who lives in an entirely different country (and who can use the information I provide in the note plus the satellite imagery to resolve the note).

I am one of such people (I do this partially to catch problems in StreetComplete design).

So thanks for leaving notes allowing remote fixing!

Amazing, thanks for your efforts! I've just now sent a couple such notes up into the ether :)

> One thing I wish it had was the ability to add an entirely new building.

If you want to add an entirely new building on the go, there is Vespucci:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.blau.android/

But, honestly, adding a building on a phone sized screen, while quite possible, is much more easily done with either of the two desktop editors:

JOSM, Java based: https://josm.openstreetmap.de/

iD, Web based, this is the editor available from the "Edit" button from the OSM website: https://www.openstreetmap.org

I maintain a website called MapRoulette which is not pure gamification but breaks down map contributions into small tasks. It has some elements of gamification (badges, leaderboard).

For more task-based editing with gamification elements check out StreetComplete, an Android app.

if people don't know it -- MapRoulette is massively successful and a giant contribution to Openstreetmap

I also used to have a lot of fun with the KeepRight tool. Something oddly satisfying about taking a small geographic area and completely removing all flagged "problems". Feels like taking an ugly .C file and fixing all the warnings and lint errors. Only problem with KeepRight is I found it had a lot of false positives.

The concept is great, but the map on the site is very buggy on the desktop (Edge 105). Trying to zoom in with mouse wheel, it often randomly zooms out and in again. Trying to pan when dragging while zoomed in and near task markers, it will often pan back after releasing the mouse, and in one case, I've seen it pan back and forth between two points on the map in what looks like an infinite loop. It seems that it's trying to do some kind of snapping to the markers, and ends up fighting the user and/or itself.

Also, the markers disappear entirely past a certain zoom level. When that happens, zooming out one notch does not cause them to reappear, either - I had to do like 4 levels before they'd show up. The worst part is that it also happens when you click on a marker and the map auto-zooms on it.

EDIT: just realized that for that last problem, what happens is that a single combined marker (the one that shows a number) is broken up into individual markers. The problem there is that those individual markers often end up outside of the viewport, and so it looks like the combined markers just disappeared.

Thanks for trying it out! Yes, the map UI has a number of known issues, some of which you pointed out. We're actually working on addressing the most annoying ones right now! I hope to have them addressed in the October / November release.

This is the main thing I hate about google maps. I refuse to do free work for google in return for 'fun'.

I also want to hate it, but in reality I recently uploaded my first picture and then get monthly updates on how many hundreds of people have seen it and I have to admit the gamification works :(

On the topic: I think it would be a good idea for OSM if done in a good and non-technical user-friendly way.

This is a pattern that OSM could adopt. OSM data is used by about half of FAANG and countless smaller companies and organizations directly and indirectly (through Mapbox for example), so your contributions are seen by millions if not billions, depending on where you are.

There is no way for OSM to know how many people use your contribution in which way.

Try thinking of it as work done to help other real people.

I found the "Emergency" door of a local hospital hard to find IRL, so I added a photo of it from the driveway POV. Another sort of real person you can help are the web-clueless owners of local small businesses.

I tried to look at it that way, but... it only helps other people until Google decides to drop that particular feature, after which all your work is gone forever.

Instead of supplying a mega corp with some free information to increase their monopoly on directions, maybe you could have just mentioned to the hospital staff that they could do with a new sign pointing to the door?

I think the point of having the online map accurate is so people can plan better ahead of time. We had this exact situation recently when my MIL needed to go to get CT scan in a hospital campus but my wife wanted to plan ahead which of the many entrances she should drop her off at. The actual hospital web site is a labrynth of the type that government bureaucracies excel at.

Most of the the you see actual staff in a big organization, like hospital or government office etc do not have authority to add or remove signage. Most of the time its somebody in admin, or even a totally different department in case of government offices (to keep all locations similar) who is actually responsible. That doesn't mean that one should not give feedback, I do, & at least half of the the time it makes a difference.

there is some aspect there about how web-savvy business owners can be and how easy it is to bring business to them. It'll be great to see that playing field fleshed out in time.

This is definitely one of the trickiest ethical questions for me -- and it applies not only to Maps updates, but also writing Amazon reviews, and so forth.

On the one hand it's free work benefiting the corporation... but on the other hand it's genuinely helping sometimes thousands of other people. I benefit massively from reading Amazon reviews, and it feels good to give back. But it is also a contribution that further entrenches Amazon (or Google Maps), it's not like Wikipedia where contributions can be used by anyone.

What do we do when we can help other users, but doing so also supports corporations for free? Although then again, I've never paid a dime for Google Maps and use it daily, it's literally a major part of my life -- so does getting the product for free also play a role?

I appreciate your viewpoint, and in some ways I agree. However I see it mostly from a competitors point of view. If you were to start up a new directory/mapping service, you would need to set up a team of people paid to gather this information for you.

For example if you wanted to put in your new directory whether company A has a car park at their premesis or has disabled access etc, you would need to pay somebody to either go there and perform a survey or call them up and ask them. Googles monopoly enables them to just ask the question to everybody that has ever been there and get the data returned back into the system automatically and free.

I see this as anticompetitive and so I choose not to participate.

Yeah, this makes me think further and it feels like one solution could be legislation that declares companies never own user-supplied content -- that when users submit data like Amazon reviews or Craigslist posts they become public domain. Competitors are free to scrape them however they can.

It's harder for map corrections though, as the user-presented data mixes commercial and user-supplied data. Maybe legislation should require regular data dumps of all user-supplied content much like Wikipedia makes available in XML form? Then no scraping is even required.

Agreed. Overall I see it as a net negative to society if Amazon succeeds so I don't help.

Contributing to Stackoverflow is my one exception.

Personally I just use it for me. Even if they made it so that nothing is shared, and it bookmarks my edits I'd be happy. I don't want to keep a separate override list.

That isn't the main return for me. It is knowing that you have contributed to the community corpus of knowledge that is almost impossible to come otherwise. For instance I had the to visit a data centre that I had previously been to but was under a new owner. The pin had Equinix but not the site code. Once I confirmed it, I submitted the edit for it to become Equinix SY6. It apparently has since been used thousands of times.

I also enjoy adding a food shot or a representative photo of places I have enjoyed as a small reward and enticement for others to do likewise.

I'm working through similar gamification of map update questions right now, specifically with aerial imaging. We're trying to crowdsource aerial imagery using (for now) passengers in window seats, so the most obvious solution was to provide them free in-flight wifi so that we could upload the images as they're captured as well. They don't record the entire flight, just at certain points based on altitude and tasked coordinates along their filed flight path. Most have appreciated the gesture, but a good amount would prefer airline miles, free in-flight goods, etc. We've looked into chain-based royalties where an image accessed by our customers is paid out to the original photographer, but that's a ways out. Gamification is tricky.

I do not oppose.

But personally, I have a ton of fun just mapping for the sake of it. Seeing my contributions rendered is a satisfaction.

Same here. I think mapping is fun and it should be done by people who love doing it.

Doing it because you get a pair of socks or some smiley clippy character telling you something cute is very different.

No it's not. We're talking about a silly pair of socks or a quirky avatar message, not, y'know, actual amounts of money. You can't pay rent or buy food or taxes with a pair of socks. Someone doing mapping for free, with the hopes of getting a pair of socks is much closer to this hypothetical mapping purist than a 3rd party contractor that doesn't care about cartography and is just doing it for the paycheck.

In my experience, OSM data is usually better than Google Maps. The only problem is that Google Maps has the better app.

Pokemon Go upon release encouraged people to contribute to OpenStreetMap in my area, as Pokemon weren't spawning in incorrectly tagged areas :)

I thought Pokemon used Google Maps like its predecessor, Ingress?

If I remember correctly, at first Pokemon Go used Google Maps to display the actual map, but it still used OSM data for the spawning algorithm. Later on they made the switch to only use OSM.

The changes to Google maps api pricing made it entirely unsuitable for a whole lot of apps.

I do recall when that happened all of the complaints, madness from Google, but that's entirely their MO I suppose.

Interesting, thanks for clarifying!

> I posted one of a chippy in Scotland (for Americans that's Fish & Chip 'Thick French Fries' shop) which got over 1.4 million views - mental

Do they protect against self promotion somehow? seems like it would be an easy way to market something to a huge audience. I mean something like giving a completely legit review then dropping a link to your website or something.

I concur completely. I was having my young son learn how to use the computer focused on input devices and simple UI interactions by having him annotate buildings and pools in OSM for a few random towns friends live in. I thought he'd very much more enjoy this if it was gamified in some way. He did it, got the hang of the UI, but then it grew tedious so he moved on to something else.

Most of the contributions to OSM are commercial now. Most of the big names except from Google have people working on improving the maps.

sorry but that is simply not true... I think there are areas where it can be, probably those more remote, or where there are less contributors but at least in western europe, the map is built and maintained by individuals like me. Maybe helped with external datas but still carefully handpicked and integrated by individuals

The statement is at least partly true. Nearly all big corporations and many smaller ones have people on the payroll contributing to OSM. And there are entire countries where paid / commercial editing makes up the majority of contributions to OSM. See this post from last year that breaks it down: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Jennings%20Anderson/diary....

Hang on... I can get paid to edit OSM instead of just doing it for fun? Where do we find those jobs?

This is typically offered as minimum wage job in poor countries.

For example one company caused noticeable damage as UK was mapped by people from Belarus who were unaware about many local intricacies.

Web3 is on it https://hivemapper.com/

$649 for a dashcam probably worth $50 being generous on Wish.com/AliExpress to earn some random crypto. Hmmm.

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