MapRoulette: the micro-tasking tool for OpenStreetMap
maproulette.org
maproulette.org
Some people value imaginary internet points so highly, they edit OSM willy-nilly to make it conform to maproulette, disregarding ground truth, not checking if the tasks analysis is complete and mapping slightly wrong around the world.
This is mad MUCH worse by the fact that the default setting in maproulette is that when you finish a task, the system takes you to an another one at a random position in the world. I have no idea, for instance, if this Italian restaurant in Minsk has a correct web address (or if it exists at all), but I'm incentivized to jut remove the tag and get those sweet points.
I used to do a lot of OSM editing. In my experience, it really helps to have edited a lot in one area to better understand local context, make better sense of imagery etc etc.
In other words, it's trying to catch things like typos.
In this case, the spec allows for "commonly used" user defined values, which is unusual (how does a user defined value become commonly used enough in the first place?), measured per this site: https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/surface#values
You can find a few non English entries in there, but the vast majority and all of the most common ones are in English. "木“ has 2 entries, "wood" has >200k. I think it's pretty clear that even in cases when the specification is open, the intention is for values to be English whenever practical.
The alternative is so outrageous that they made it into an April fools joke: https://weeklyosm.eu/osm-tags-soon-in-german-and-french-and-...
Here's someone attempting to translate the tags/values (for display): https://github.com/osmlab/osm-planning/issues/20
So that table there lists all common values covering 99% of the use cases, and finally links to TagInfo for all values in use. That 'all commonly used values' bit is slightly misleading, because TagInfo lists all uncommon values, but it true in the sense that any common value missing from that table will be listed in TagInfo (being derived from the actual database).
So yes, surface=木 is wrong, but to replace it you would have to know if the path uses wood-chips (`woodchip`) or boards (`wood`).
See https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/23/924.3 which includes public pedestrian paths.
I see two clusters with "2", maybe that means that there are 4 tasks on the map segment which need fixing.
Clicking on any of the two clusters does nothing. The sidebar has just an odd "Global: [amenity=doctors] and [healtcare:speciality=*] missing [healthcare]", which, when I click it, reloads the page and shows me a world view with problematic doctors.
When I deselect "Cluster", then nothing is shown, instead of those 4 clustered tasks that apparently need fixing. I expected to see 4 individual tasks, instead of the two clustered ones.
At the same time a label tells me "23 tasks found", yet I see none. I assume those two pairs of clusters of two should represent 4 tasks, but I can't interact with them in any way.
I also can't easily navigate to a place of interest because there is no location searchbox.
I was expecting something like StreetComplete.
I think it could be a really good use of AI to let me, for example, snap a photo of the menu and then have it automatically generate the OSM tags. Then someone just has to review if it all is appropriate.
Just bring able to walk down the street, snap a bunch of menu or sign pics, then go home and drop pins and confirm tags from photos would be great.
Heck it could even scrape their website to verify the information too!
Does anyone know if there is a project like this? Or have any thoughts on if this is a reasonable approach? I think as long as there's a human in the loop checking things it should be fine by OSM.
The main trouble is licensing and change tracking. Most of the scraped data is protected by copyright or database rights so it can't be imported.
And even if the licensing is solved, you have the problem of matching scraped data to OSM data and what to do when changes disagree. For example, a store might be scraped as a point in the middle of a shopping mall, but then an OSM editor would come by and move it to the correct section of the mall - the next import round shouldn't undo that. Or maybe a store changes opening times but forgets to update their website - an editor can fix that, but the next import would break it again.
I have a sort of "grey area" idea for this, but I haven't had the time to try it. Basically, I would track changes in AllThePlaces and create "change reports" such as "store X changed open times from AAA to BBB". Then, I'd make a UI that would show you the changed website alongside an OSM editor and a convenient "copy change" button.
This way, a human is still the one looking at the website and entering info into OSM, which is essentially the same as in-person surveying. The copy button is "just a convenience".
Still, I think this is too messy from a legal standpoint and the OSM editors wouldn't allow it out of caution...
What I think could work is if everydoor allows you to create notes with photos (https://github.com/Zverik/every_door/issues/184) then it would be pretty easy to later go back and drop those photos into an AI tool and extra websites and try to create some tags for review. Could also work with Streetcomplete but there it's not easy to see if a POI already exists.
In any case, I might experiment with this idea further. Some very basic testing shows me that Claude 3.5 Sonnet is pretty great at taking a photo of a menu turning it into decent tags.
So if I could run around taking photos of menus and the outside of businesses then quickly turn them into tags later that would be a nice workflow for me (and hopefully others).
(At some point they made some change that left my class of SU behind, but since the original purpose of 4sq died long ago there wouldn't be a point to donate my time to it now.)