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Comment by SamWhited | Hacker News Reader

Interestingly, in Atlanta I've had the opposite experience. In town OSM always seems to be better (Google has a lot of outdated open hours and the like). Outside of town in the cheaper burbs which is the only place I can afford to live though few people are editing OSM and it's pretty out of date.

That being said, I switched to Organic maps years ago. For 90% of places I go, it turns out I go to them repeatedly day-to-day, so I added them to the map the first time and update them when I go there and the hours have changed. Then they're on the map the rest of the time when I need to look up hours or what not so I rarely have anywhere around here that I go to that's not on the map anymore. When I do, I add it and next time it's on there and it works well enough 99% of the time.

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You highlight a function of OSM that is hard to get across to people: I can fix the map!

For example, bicycle routing in my area was unreliable, because it would try to route me over rough trails. Just adding a few tags improved the experience dramatically. And then it was fixed not only for me, but everybody else too.

Meanwhile, other people fixed other annoyances, and the map works better across many areas. Google instead decides to hide things that interest me, and shows sponsored places I don't care for. I have zero recourse.

> Just adding a few tags improved the experience dramatically.

This works for routing, but doesn’t apply to businesses: for the bare minimum you have to add one or two tags (type + name), to make that more useful you have to add the opening hours and ideally the website. Now multiply this by 60,000 (the number of businesses in Paris, France). By the time you’ve finished your neighborhood some businesses you checked last month are already closed and some new ones already opened. Go on holidays? Too bad, you have to start over again when you come back. Trust me, I’m contributing almost every day and I can’t keep the pace.

Don't do all the businesses in Paris, just do the ones you frequent the most. Google doesn't have all the businesses in Paris either (or at least, in Atlanta I run into ones that they don't have too or that they have but it's completely wrong, at an old location, etc. fairly frequently).

Yeah the idea that I should keep up with all the shops in the larger area is scary. Luckily, I'm not alone. All I can say is you're doing a good thing by adding regular updates.

And I think even partially complete OSM is helpful. If I add just one ATM, that can already help somebody looking for one. That might even be me, when I know it's there somewhere, but not exactly where.

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