Comment by mxfh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mxfh | Hacker News Reader

Also I don't get the point why you would want them easily scrapeable to begin with. If you have eyes to read and can walk across YOUR neighborhoods, you would have eventually seen one. I thought that was the whole point? They are not exactly hidden. I find those public bookcase incidental low barrier offerings to a reading exprience you just stumble upon, nothing you would seek out on a map.

Why would you want to have more people from anywhere else possibly raid them for anything useful? This way nobody is inclined to put anything worthwhile in there if it just ends up outside of their communities. Not that I'm in general pessimistic, just would like to know what is gained by putting the exact location into a map and not just have a list of neigborhoods with a book corner and optional photo on that neigborhood level, if people want to network around them.

Those people traveling to them are probably just as likely to put something in as a more local passer by. And I'm not sure why I would care that someone the next suburb over read my book. As long as someone is enjoying it, that's the whole point of donating.

Recently it's seemed like (very roughly) half the Little Free Libraries I see aren't in OSM.

I sometimes edit OSM, so I'm wondering whether any public bookshelf omissions are intentional, and adding the shelves would be unwelcome by the people running them.

The few places I have seen book nooks like this, they end filled up with religious literature which is usually not the intent of the person who started it.

I see OSM as a mapping application. It is in the real world, publicly visible for a long period of time, and there is no law preventing sharing the information (like military stuff) it can be in the mapping application (decide what is relevant enough is another story).

I would not include the wishes of the people into it, because there are various groups that might have strange ideas (dunno, like only churches of some type should be shown; or no shops of a certain kind because it hurts my feelings, etc.).

I personally would not like any edits that advances the wishes of "any" group of people (like removing features). I do not like all things that exists on maps, but I will not remove them because of my feelings.

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