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OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

blog.emacsen.net

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Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#91

Post by acdha »

puzzle wrote: post #60
miah_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waze is pretty great but it has a habit of running you through hospital parking lots to save 2 minutes or turning multiple times to avoid a intersection that isn't really that busy. What I wish Waze would do is have a mode that allowed me to learn a route. Maps, and Waze both 'optimize' so much that its sometimes hard to learn a route from point a -> b because every time you go it sends you on different paths. Many o…

If you run them side by side, you will often find that Google Maps does not try as hard as Waze to save seconds. It prefers routes that are easier to learn, as you yourself like them, with fewer turns (and thus fewer interruptions). It caters to the 90% of people like you that don't obsess about seconds. Of course, it also has get traffic into account. Perhaps, in your case, the intersection isn't that busy, but traf…

I think there must be a factor like local data quality: I stopped following Google Maps as closely because it does things like an unprotected left turn on a major arterial road to save 100 feet going to the next light.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#92

Post by lucb1e »

Avamander wrote: post #78
aw3c2 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Installing OSMAnd or Maps.me is not hard.

Um, maybe everyone doesn't want to use that software?

You want to write your own routing software from scratch, or are you talking about using vector data for research purposes?

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#93

Post by freneticfox »

twblalock wrote: post #17
dalbasal wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... Nothing similar to Wikipedia has really happened in the last ten years. It's a fairly unique thing, still as relevant and important as ever. Hard to say if it's because Wikipedia was a long shot at any time, or because of the 90s web vs the current one, culturally or technically.

I think its because anything similar just gets implemented as part of Wikipedia/Wikimedia at this point.

Just to meta-meta this conversation and the article in new and confusing ways, Wikimedia also hosts a map server, using OSM's data, @ https://maps.wikimedia.org/ :)

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#94

Post by lucb1e »

emacsen wrote: post #6
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #5

I've found that in terms of supporting any kind of additional analysis, OSM data to be unreliable to the point of uselessness, which isn't to say there is a better alternative. I think this quote from your article: "One of the most significant technical problems with OSM is the lack of a review model, that is for a change to the map to be staged and then reviewed before being applied. Not having this functionality ca…

This was a hard post to make. OSM was a big part of my life for many years, and I have friends in the project. I like my friends (even the ones I disagree with). But where OSM has failed most in my view (and maybe I need to add this to the article) is that there are now free geographic datasets from local governments and without the ability to integrate them into OSM easily, and then update them (which we basically c…

Where do you have experience with OSM data anyway? Because your view of the project differs from mine as day differs from night. The quality in western Europe is equal to or better than commercial maps. And the one time I looked at a random, small village in the Sahara, OSM was also better: https://twitter.com/lucb1e/status/522491538912604160

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#95

Post by WhitneyLand »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #18

This post seems half right, half wrong. Wrong that OSM should be a service provider and not a database - I think it should be a database, and corporations are good for OSM. The post calls for OSM to essentially become Mapbox. It's insanely expensive to be Mapbox, and Mapzen just failed trying to be a less corporate version of Mapbox. And then the usage policy part of the article is moot or at least not that consequen…

You make the point OSM should be a database and not a service, but that’s a false dichotomy as nothing inherently prevents it from being both.

The main point against a service seems to be that’s it’s an expensive thing to do, however I don’t see how we can draw any conclusion from that without weighing the costs against the upsides.

I don’t see how the expense argument can be made with confidence without first establishing some basic data points. For example:

1) How expensive is expensive?

2) Have the benefits and advantages been throughly explored ie what’s the value proposition?

3) Given this value proposition, what level of fund raising success would be plausible?

As an aside, the ineffectiveness of leadership and how it is seemingly blocking progress is quite striking.

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any actively developed software with a non-deprecated api that hasn’t changed in so many years.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#96

Post by smichel17 »

bonzini wrote: post #30
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #5

I've found that in terms of supporting any kind of additional analysis, OSM data to be unreliable to the point of uselessness, which isn't to say there is a better alternative. I think this quote from your article: "One of the most significant technical problems with OSM is the lack of a review model, that is for a change to the map to be staged and then reviewed before being applied. Not having this functionality ca…

As an occasional OSM editor, I wouldn't really feel good about moderation. My edits are limited basically to my home town (10.000 inhabitants, about 10 sq km) where I am adding unmapped roads (usually agricultural, sometimes new construction) that I "discover" while running. I started doing that simply because Runkeeper's website uses OSM and it was showing me running in the middle of nowhere, while there was actuall…

I've contributed small-time to the Musicbrainz cd database, and I think they do it pretty well. New additions are automatically approved. Edits are accepted or rejected after a voting period (3 days, iirc). If nobody votes, they're approved by default; I believe (but am not certain) they are rejected in the case of a tie.

I think the beauty of this system is that it gives complete autonomy with no oversight to individuals dealing with obscure data that nobody else cares about, while more popular data is subjected to higher scrutiny.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#97

Post by jedberg »

bahmboo wrote: post #36
jedberg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally when I drive with Google Maps, I already know the route but want Google to step in when there's traffic. You should try Waze. I too mostly use Google to route me around traffic, but Waze is an order of magnitude better at it. It has more frequently updated traffic data and is willing to take you on side streets. For example the other day I was driving down a major road, and Google said to just stay on it,…

Google maps does update route in real time. They also integrate Waze data since they own them. Waze was taking heat for routing onto residential side streets which makes me wonder if Google is taking a softer approach. Interesting that you mapped your route with Google maps and Waze at the same time and compared them. I'll have to give that a shot.

They update in real time, but Waze predicts traffic, which is better. For example, in the Bay Area, if you are coming from Sunnyvale and going to Berkeley, you could go up the peninsula side or the east side. GMaps might tell you to take the peninsula route, because right now, the bridge is clear. Waze however will predict that the bridge will be crowded in 40 minutes when you get there, so it will take you up the east bay side.

GMaps may notice the bridge is crowded when you get there, but at the point it can't reroute you, because you're already on the wrong side of the bay, so it will just update your ETA.

What I've found is that the Waze ETA is almost always accurate when I start the trip, whereas the GMaps one keeps updating as I go.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#98

Post by johannes1234321 »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #18

This post seems half right, half wrong. Wrong that OSM should be a service provider and not a database - I think it should be a database, and corporations are good for OSM. The post calls for OSM to essentially become Mapbox. It's insanely expensive to be Mapbox, and Mapzen just failed trying to be a less corporate version of Mapbox. And then the usage policy part of the article is moot or at least not that consequen…

> Imports need to be supported.

I don't really agree. I have seen so many wrong imports and I have seen imports demotivating individual mappers.

With a good data source an import can be a good start, but it's not a silver bullet.

I agree to your other items, though.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#99

Post by lucb1e »

sydd wrote: post #41
Avamander wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to move away from awful raster maps and to vector maps?

There are some, e.g. OSMAnd on Android, they are awfully slow. I wonder why no one has written a proper, fast Opengl renderer for osm

> [like] OSMAnd on Android, they are awfully slow

On my Galaxy Note 2 (2012), you're right. I've ordered a new phone yesterday because it's getting quite bad after five years of daily use.

My girlfriend bought a phone for €300, and the one I ordered (now, a year later) for €250 actually has the same chipset. It runs great on that.

I consider ~250eur to be the bottom of the smartphone market unless you're going for a potato to call and text with (not even browse the web). Given that it runs smooth on that... I'm not sure what you're running OsmAnd on with expectations of fast rendering.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#100

Post by lucb1e »

aspirin wrote: post #38

Im my opinion the biggest problem is the data model (or lack of). Tags i.e. key-value pairs are used to add properties to geometry. Mappers use different combinations of keys/values to describe the same thing. The post touches on this, but does not offer solutions other than adding "layers". There should be a strict schema that would be community managed through some process.

Like what, tag proposals where people vote yay or nay? We have those. As an active mapper, I very rarely find two ways of tagging the same thing, so the process seems to work fine.

And if you do find a situation where there are multiple options, it takes only a quick check on taginfo to find the more commonly used one. If you go with that, it should converge soon.

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