MapComplete: Maps about various topics which you can contribute to | Hacker News Reader

MapComplete: Maps about various topics which you can contribute to

mapcomplete.org

195 pointsGTP45 comments

This is genuinely one of the best tools to emerge in the OpenStreetMap ecosystem in recent years. If you've ever tried to onboard a non-technical person to OSM, you know the struggle. The default web editor (iD) can still be overwhelming with its sheer amount of data, and JOSM (the desktop power-user tool) is entirely out of the question for casual contributors. Thanks!

I'd also strongly endorse its on-the-street mobile app counterpart, StreetComplete. Splitting stuff into tiny tasks you can focus on really helps if you're just out on foot in an area.

Or if you are looking for pretext to walk a bit in area known to you :)

What do you mean by this? Does the app have a way of showing you new things in familiar areas?

I like to have some goal on walk even silly one.

"Solve the quest asking about opening hours of shop I have not spotted before" qualifies for me. Even "check footway surface there" qualifies. At least for me.

This is the app I miss the most switching from android to ios. I so wish there was an ios app of streetcomplete.

It's being worked on!

https://github.com/orgs/streetcomplete/projects/1

You could use Every Door — a bit harder to learn, but more powerful too. MapComplete is a web app, so it should work.

Similarly, `Go Map!!` is an iOS app that makes editing OSM data easy.

Adding missing features is one of my favorite things to do while traveling, and feels like a way of giving back (“take only photos, leave only GIS traces”?)

Could be but needs a serious UI/UX revamp (easy). Maximally remove friction when asking for user contributions. Like literally on the first page it puts adding public clocks, I repeat, PUBLIC CLOCKS (and other such things), on equal footing as adding a restaurant. Like, no.

I've occasionally used the CoMaps OSM editing capability to just get the basics in before doing the big work in JOSM, or more likely the web editor. Now I'll be looking into MapComplete much further.

Thanks for the compliments :)

Yeah, the complexity of the other tools is the pitch of MapComplete

I use this app fairly regularly to locate public toilets (I walk 15-20 km daily in random directions after getting down a random bus stop in my city) and have contributed some locations as well.

I use the app "flush" for this, and it works pretty well.

Does it source data from OSM? The app store page doesn't make clear what the data source is.

I opened this up, and immediately saw a contribution I could make. Created an OSM account and fixed it =)

thanks!

How's this compare with street complete? It seems like the categories are different and maybe wider?

just curious how the different tools the community has made stack up

For start StreetComplete is an Android app unavailable (for now) elsewhere.

MapComplete has multiple in-depth layers, while StreetComplete is more general.

StreetComplete puts more focus on being usable out-of the box for newbies, while I would describe MapComplete as having focus on usability but allowing deeper dive in specific topics.

(disclaimer: I helped with developing StreetComplete)

Hi! MapComplete dev here!

One of the major differences is that, in StreetComplete, an object is hidden from the view once all quests are done. That makes StreetComplete a 'contribution-only' tool. (This changed in recent years, where Westnordost created 'overlays'). StreetComplete was a major inspiration though.

In MapComplete, you will see _all_ objects (known in OSM) for a specific topic, wether or not there are unresolved questions. That makes it a tool for both using the data and contributing.

Another difference is that MapComplete started as a webapp (but there is a version packaged as Android app too); whereas StreetComplete is (for now) an Android-only app (iOS is in the works)

A more abstract difference is that MapComplete has some highly specialized questions.

At last, MapComplete has some integrations with other FLOSS-tools, such as: - Wikidata/Wikipedia for additional pictures and articles - Mangrove.reviews for reviews - Panoramax to add pictures - Mapilarry to link pictures to objects - Plantnet to determine the tree species on https://mapcomplete.org/trees

Streetcomplete can filter the map with a variety of filters for features you can edit or complete(Street lighting, Surfaces, Sidewalks, Bike paths, Street parking, Addresses, Places, Things, Buildings). Plus there's some specific "quests" where you can complete information for specific POI ("Does this bench have a backrest? Yes|No", "Where does this fire hydrant lies? On the grass | On the roadway | On a walkway | On a parking).

Mapcomplete also offers filling info about existing POI, but you can filter on specific theme (Drinking water, sports) or very specific theme (etymology) or even your own. There's also an UI to add new POIs; I don't think it's possible with StreetComplete.

Either way both are great.

> There's also an UI to add new POIs; I don't think it's possible with StreetComplete.

You can do it in Things and Places layers (layers can be enabled by tapping circle in top-right)

What does the etymology theme do? Allow you to add the etymologies of place names?

https://mapcomplete.org/etymology links objects (mostly streets, but also parks, schools, ...) to the Wikidata enitity of of what that street was _named_ after.

If the link is already there, it shows the relevant Wikipedia page. E.g. the 'Willow Street' would show the Wikipedia page on willows.

As a downstream effect: those links are also used in https://equalstreetnames.org/ to make gendered maps.

Hmmm, I love OSM, consume their data in my small cycling project and regularly contribute smaller fixes.

But I also shy away from anything more complex than fixing attributes and meta data of existing objects. Especially editing relations, ways and nodes - is this possible with MapComplete? I loaded the Cyclofix map, but I can't even select cycle paths or roads, just edit POIs.

Checkout https://mapcomplete.org/cycle_infra and https://mapcomplete.org/cyclenodes.html

Editing attributes of relations is possible. Adding or deleting objects to relations might become possible one day. Editing geometries is out of scope for this project.

Thanks for the pointer! I posted here before properly exploring the other themes.

Really nice project. Thank you for contributing to the OSM community.

>Editing geometries is out of scope for this project.

Out of curiosity, may I ask why?

It's not that I have this use case regularly, cycling-related it mainly comes up dealing with tracks through forests and fields.

Excellent question!

First: editing _attributes_ of geometries is totally possible, editing the _shape_ of geometries is not possible with MapComplete.

If one allows to edit shapes (aka: geometries), this means that one can draw or move lines around - for example: add/move a cyclepath. A contributor might thus move a line into another geometry (such as a building). But as MapComplete has focused maps, they might not be shown to this contributor!

Allowing to edit geomtry shapes this implies I should show all _other_ lines and polygons (e.g. forests, streams, buildings, ...) to avoid incorrect intersection.

The point of MapComplete is to keep it simple and focussed on a single topic. Showing all geometries is counter to that. On top of that, we already have an excellent tool which handles geometry drawing: the iD editor you'll find on openstreetmap.org/edit .

One could also argue that creating/moving points (which can be done with MapComplete) could also cause data errors; but the 'add new point'-wizard has some steps to invite to add with high accuraccy. And even if someone adds a point in a wrong location (e.g. in a building instead of outside of it), the impact of a misplaced point is generally way less then that of a misplaced line or area.

IDK, maybe I'm missing something, but I can't do something I feel like should be super basic. I went into the Arcade category, zoomed to my city, Arcade was in the wrong location. How can I report an incorrect location?

You can login with an OpenStreetmaps.org (osm) account and edit it yourself. This app is used to add those objects. There is also an app "StreetComplete".

To keep the user interface clean, I hide buttons when they are not relevant. If you are logged out, the 'move this feature' button is hidden.

In other words, you need to log in with an OSM-account. Then, the 'move this feature' button at the bottom of the popup will be visible.

I am aggravated by this post because it reminds me of how good life could be with an internet that was not enshittified.

Really great way to edit OSM and ulike StreetComplete I can use it on the web. I tried editing through OSM and found it confusing and difficult.

Thanks for the compliments :)

Hi all! MapComplete creator here! If you have any questions, shoot!

Asing users to have to navigate all those options with terrible design and UI, then putting them on zoom out of the world, having to click a bunch to zoom in to their location (95% of what people would be adding would be where they are)...I mean I could go on, but that is where I bounced. I was happy to add the cafe I am at, and others, but once I got to this point I was like ok, no sorry. Improved UI would go a long way.

This should make George happy:

https://mapcomplete.org/toilets.html?z=10&lat=40.9094928&lon...

Who is George? I'm probably missing some (cultural) reference

I think we're hugging it to death.

I've been in and out of MapComplete since this arrived on HN and have not had any such problems.

Yeah, it's definitely super slow right now.

Well, nice try, but sadly maintaining up to date GIS data takes much more than a UI. The only thing that gets close to such datalake is perhaps OSM and ESRI World Atlas... but nothing is close to huggingface or github as positioning. Besides, data is a live thing, and all such cartography very quickly dates and gets irrelevant or incorrect.

Mapcomplete is literally an OSM editor though... xd

Looks like you missed that MapComplete is an alternative interface to view OSM data and contribute to it.

I can well see and disambiguate what it is and is not what QGIs aims to be. Nothing is close to QGIS in terms of features, it deploys 1gig of open tech. The only trouble is the design of the app haven’t changed much in 20 years, while data sizes did 10x at least on every level. It struggles to breath u der heavy load…

What does QGIS have to do with this? It's not even an OSM editor.

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