Hacker News Reader

Comment by Ruthalas | Hacker News Reader

If you appreciate OSM, consider installing the StreetComplete mobile app[0]! It lets you contribute to OSM in a very simple manner, via simple questions like, "Is there a marked crosswalk here?"

I'm not affiliated, I just think it's cool. It's very satisfying to complete quests in your local area.

[0] https://streetcomplete.app/

View on HN

StreetComplete is fun for casual contributions, but what OSM really needs is good local mappers. You can tell when a place has local mappers updating and monitoring changes in the real world. Even just taking care of the coming and going of shops is really useful. People who visit your area using apps like OsmAnd and OrganicMaps use that data!

I cannot describe [0] my pleasure and satisfaction when, visiting Germany, we found an icecream shop closed. We'd stopped by with the assumption Google Maps would have the correct hours; they did not, and we carried on without icecream. OSM, on the other hand, correctly showed the shop as closed for the day.

[0] I can't, but my fiancee used the words "impossibly smug"

I mean, both rely on community contributions for this sort of thing, so it feels weird to be smug about this... It just depends on who decided to put the correct hours in.

"Smug" was mostly tongue in cheek. More than anything, it was a breath of fresh air seeing OSM, a product so heavily reliant on it's community, beating out one of the most well-funded corporations on our planet.

Google has satellite views, they run their own network of vehicles to gather streetview data at a planetary scale, they follow every Android user (with Google Services installed) to know popular locations, new and closed businesses, likely opening hours, travel times, and more. They (at one point) pushed users to update store information, and then (from everything I've heard) charge out the ass for embedding a Google Map view.

I am ecstatic that we have a free-as-in-beer, donation and corporate sponsorship funded, open-for-all map that not only can go blow-for-blow with this absolute behenoth, but in this case actually won.

So while "smug" may be overselling it, "thrilled" would not be

Is OSM not free-as-in-freedom?

AFAIK it is, but I thought I'd stick to claims I was all but certain of when posting from mobile and (because of that) not fact-checking

Bit of an ironic one to leave out though, considering my preferences with most of the software I use and enjoy.

"Smug" is what I would give the Google Maps response that I submitted when we came across a store closed due to wrong hours (in Seattle). I sent a picture of the hours plate and the response was "nah, we think Google Maps is correct here". I stopped submitting error corrections to Google after that.

When a huge highway bridge collapsed in Genoa, I checked OSM a few hours later, and someone had already updated the road segment as permanently closed

Video has clips of the bridge falling and aftermath: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53628580

Google cheats here, though. They were able to show a recently completed bridge as completed simply by the fact that traffic was passing over it. OSM still had it within half an hour of opening, though.

The other way around is where OpenStreetMap is faster though. With Google a road which is closed (or gone) for a longer while means someone has to report it and Google employees verify it. Doing this automatically based on traffic dropping to zero is not really possible, because the algorithm doesn't know why traffic is rerouted or for how long. This can take a while depending on the number of people reporting it to Google. OpenStreetMap mappers can act autonomously much faster (errors are sometimes made, but often picked up and reverted just as fast for high profile stuff).

Google actually fucks up royally when a road below the level of a motorway/freeway is closed and formally withdrawn from public use, but still sees some traffic (by people illegally using it and people with legitimate goals like construction workers). There is a road near me where this is the case. Google will happily route cars over a road where one of the two lanes is in use as a soil depot for the nearby housing developments, and gates on both sides block the road. Those gates are shoved aside or bypassed by driving through the grass by a handful of simpletons. A bit of observation during a walk there showed me two cars passing there illegally; a postal worker and a power utility guy. Two types of road users who likely use Google Maps quite a lot, and drive up the virtual traffic there.

On OpenStreetMap this road is simply closed and limited to private use (i.e., the construction workers hauling soil), and has been for a number of years now.

Google took about 6 months to accept my edit to an incorrectly named park near me. I took pictures of the signs as proof of course I could not submit them as evidence but a thought someone else would report it. In OSM I could change it in a few minutes and I am not very familiar with the tool.

I personally know someone with a similar story (small pedestrian path that existed in real life but missing from Google maps). He made the effort to flag it, provide proof etc etc.

What I told him was you guys be nuts to be spending your time to improve Google's product.

Google has the private road of a local landfill labelled as a bike path. They label little paths in cemeteries as bike paths. Its a little embarrassing how much they rely on automatic data vs, you know, a cities own published bike network maps.

That contribution was initially done by me :-)

Google has been atrocious all across Europe ever since Covid. They used to have (maybe still do?) this local guide thingy, but this empathetic contribution doesn’t feel good for a for profit company.

At one point Google developed a spam problem with map contributions, IIRC.

Some assholes worked out it was pretty profitable to (for example) create a '24 hour emergency locksmith' pins all over the country, with no real physical presence, then pass the business on to a real locksmith a few towns over, while taking a cut.

Once people find it's profitable to provide fake user contributions and you have to start policing them, I imagine the value of user contributions drops significantly...

It's the business owners responsibility to publish their opening hours on Google Maps, Apple Maps and on the web. Most don't give a damn about their own business, at most putting their hours on Google Maps if they remember.

I do this local mapping, and I also use StreetComplete.

I find it's not one of the other, it's "Why not both?"

e.g. new coffee shop opened down the road? I'll take a picture of it on my phone, go home and open https://www.openstreetmap.org/, click "edit" and add it, along with info from the phone photo (Shop name, Address, phone number, and a website if I can find one).

The next time I'm nearby, StreetComplete will prompt me for other key info such as opening hours.

They compliment each other.

On the one hand, the full OSM experience is much richer than StreetComplete.

On the other hand, StreetComplete is a gateway drug to it, and also a useful accessory to it.

This is how I work.

Having a dog means that I can record updates and additions as I walk varied routes around the area.

Updating the map later using its Web interface is very satisfying and much more worthy than doomscrolling through social media (which I don't really do anyway).

Re: shops/businesses, it would be nice if we could find somehow a way of having businesses themselves update their details: just basic stuff like opening hours and contacts. Not sure what's the solution for this though. One half of the solution certainly is just a convenient (web) UI for this, minimal friction just go to this website, enter your info, and click okay. But the other half is even making businesses aware that this is a thing. Mailing flyers with a QR code? x)

Absolutely. In Theory a business could make an OSM account and just go and update their own details on www.openstreetmap.org.

From my point of view this is easy. But as we have seen by the experience of how bad restaurant websites are, this is a significant barrier for these businesses.

I'm not knocking them: I couldn't run a restaurant; it's just different skills and experience. It's on the software people to make the software easy enough for restaurant people to use.

But surveying shops coming and going works really well with StreetComplete as well (check the places overlay).

Besides, the app is such a wonderful gateway drug to OSM that even if the only benefit at the end of the day from most mappers were road surfaces and building levels, there's still a few people who become good mappers beyond StreetComplete. I started with SC in March 2021. By now nearly no quests remain in my village, nearly every building has proper building and roof colours, I have far more changesets by now with JOSM and I strive for at least one changeset every day.

I won't touch bus routes, though. They're scary.

Local mapping is surprisingly difficult. I believe that the commercial products (i.e., Google Maps) are viable only because there are strong incentives for people (e.g., business owners, property owners) to submit edits as they are the main way that people search for them. Without that, you get into a limbo where you have data but it's not the most updated one.

By the way, not even government agencies have good geo data, even when they should. I needed up to date address information for work, so I bought a map from my local county assessor's office. In my mind, the assessor should have the most recent data on properties, as their main mission is to collect taxes annually. I was wrong. Their data is about 4 to 5 years wrong, with whole "new" subdivisions missing from their inventory. Google Maps kind of has them on the map; I believe that their geolocation data comes from real estate platforms when new houses are on the market. OSM is about 10 years behind in my area. I am submitting edits as I find them.

If someone has a better idea on where to find address data, please let me know.

The assessor's mission is all about parcels and tax lots though. For that purpose, it's not 4 to 5 years wrong, it is current, but they don't care what the "address" is. Not all parcels have an address, or are on a street. The only addresses they care about are where to send the bill.

OpenStreetMap barely has any users in many areas. It seems likely enough that a modest amount of traction would lead to people noticing out of date information much more quickly.

be the change you want. Start fixing your area.

That's how I approach OSM: I can't fix the world, but I can keep my own local patch up to date.

Other people do other things, and that's great too.

I added all the shops and addresses once already. Seems fine to not be all over keeping them up to date if there aren't that many users.

I have been focusing on adding POIs throughout the US. Probably only a few tens of thousands so far though.

Maybe try the National Address Database?

https://www.transportation.gov/gis/national-address-database...

> Even just taking care of the coming and going of shops is really useful.

This is exactly why I contribute to OSM and add/remove/fix my favorite restaurants, bars etc. in the city I live in. I feel like I'm doing three nice things at a time: helping local companies, making travel better for tourists, and sticking it to $the_man[1]

[1]: whatever corporation is currently responsible for sucking up data on what beer I drink, what pizza I eat, and what clothes I wear, so they can cross-references it with my haircut, circle of friends and lidar-scanned calves measurements from my robo-vacuum while i'm taking a shit to sell me keyrings and usb-cables from china

I tried editing my area to reflect road closures due to construction. It was surprisingly difficult. Spent an hour searching online. My edit was denied by the reviewer (I used the wrong method) and the closure was not reflected in the map.

Google maps was a one minute process and it was reflected in the map after about an hour. OSM stayed outdated for weeks.

From this experience I am tempted to conclude that OSM needs to make mapping easier.

I'm sorry that you had a bad experience adding data. Road closures are a somewhat advanced topic and differ in tagging depending on how long the road is expected to be closed. For short closures it's not recommended to actually mark the map as unpassable unconditionally because some offline routers may be stuck with months old data, depending on how often they update. So short closures would be tagged as

    motor_vehicle:conditional=no @ (date range)

while longer closures would use something like

    highway=construction
    construction=tertiary
    opening_date=2025-01

That being said, I'm surprised you ended up in the review process, as there isn't really one per se. Just a flag in the changeset that's typically not observed unless some people actively look for that (although new account + first changeset + review flag may have been picked up by someone). Some projects like HOTOSM (the Humanitarian OSM Project) do have a mandated review process and it seems to work fairly well most of the time.

So basically, your edit should have been visible on the map around a minute after making it, but was apparently reverted later. Unless you actually destroyed something I'd say that's not very typical. Reverts are somewhat rare and contributors are trusted to some degree.

As for specific tagging situations, there's probably always something to improve. StreetComplete works really well for keeping track of what's there, other apps have their own niche, and there may not be one that specifically targets road closures.

And until there's an iOS version [1], you could try EveryDoor - especially great for POIs

[1] https://github.com/orgs/streetcomplete/projects/1 [2] https://every-door.app

For folks not too familiar with OSM, POI are points of interest, usually shops, parks, water access, restroom, etc. Just one point and a few labels. Much easier to map on the go than sidewalks or buildings that require more precision.

Yes, I can also confirm that it's a great way to lose weight, as it gives long walks a sense of purpose. ;-)

> consider installing the StreetComplete mobile app [...]

I'll second that and I'd add the tip to install its companion app StreetMeasure too in order to measure things like the width of a street or the length of other things.

When on holidays or a weekend trip visiting places I often use StreetComplete to add missing data while walking around with my wife. And recently in the South of France I had to answer questions about the width of rather small streets in an old town center where my guesses wheren't very good. Then StreetComplete suggested that I use StreetMeasure and I got much better estimates.

I carry a laser distance meter for that sort of things. Also wall/hedge/fence heights, etc. Besides, you can just ... not answer certain quests if you're unsure of the answer (or need to use estimation – there's tagging for estimated widths, but it's not used by StreetComplete). But I also found it handy to figure out the sizes of common paving stones, which makes sidewalks rather easy to measure without actually measuring :)

I use GoMap!!. It's comprehensive and a little clunky to use. I had not heard of streetcomplete. A quick suggests it is similar but a welcome alt.

StreetComplete is a gameified approach to updating details on OpenStreetMap, and only available on Android (for the moment: https://github.com/orgs/streetcomplete/projects/1).

A good companion to Go Map!! (which is a nearly full-featured OSM editor app) is https://every-door.app/, which is great for on-the-go stuff.

In the GoMap display settings (the “map” button above the big “+” button), you can enable “Quests” which is basically the same thing StreetComplete does. In GoMap you can even define your own “quests” for details to add.

Of course, I forgot (because I have them turned off). Thanks for reminding me.

Sadly does not seem to be available in iOS App Store in the UK or I would love to.

Try https://every-door.app/

Excellent, thank you!

Thanks for sharing! I'm glad there is an FDroid version. I think I'll enjoy this while on walks. It's like gamification for map stewardship.

I remember when OpenStreetMap was new. I added a short missing footpath in my neighborhood at the time. It was a shortcut between homes. Today that same path even displays a very slight 1° turn. Amazing.

Can really recommend StreetComplete - really fun to use & using it right now on a day trip to improve a less mapped area. :)

Turns out I have new mini-hobby now, thanks!

Google Maps used to have geolocated pictures taken by users (IIRC this was called Panoramio). If OSM had an app that allowed you to take photos and they'd be automatically uploaded with location, that'd be great.

Mapillary or Kartaview are the typical choices here to add free street-level imagery which can then be used for OSM purposes as well.

What also works is Wikimedia Commons. There's a good mobile app. You can take pictures of a POI, upload them and later associate them with that object in OSM (or via Wikidata).

Yes, and I use or have used them all.

The wikimedia app could be improved a lot to support OSM. It is a bit of a hassle to take a picture, upload it to commons, then add both categories and concepts, then open an OSM editor, find the object, and add the wikimedia_commons tag.

It would be much more helpful if you could search for an object in OsmAnd/organicmaps etc, take a picture, have it uploaded to wikimedia providing default categories based on OSM tags, and then have it added to OSM. It could also help create wikimedia categories if necessary.

There is also a newcomer called Panoramax, started in France about a year ago. It's federated and starting to expand in other countries. https://panoramax.fr/

It'd be really nice if all these services auto-federated with each other.

A lot of the images are too dark or low-contrast, so another nice feature would be to auto-adjust the image for brightness (maybe make this a user-level default).

Is it normal that website gives 403 Forbidden?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com