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OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

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Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#101

Post by lucb1e »

SteveCoast wrote: post #85

I'm the DRI for most of these problems. Random thoughts: I think David Ogilvy said something like "Search all the parks in your city, you'll find no statues of committees". Everyone was super keen to make OSM in to a web of committees, and this is one root of the problem from an organizational point of view. It's not super clear to me what the OSMF has done in the last (to pick a number) 5 years. (I don't regard "doi…

> I'm the DRI

All I can find is "Dietary Reference Intake" on https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/DRI -- what do you mean?

(I agree with most of your post by the way (except for the bit about it being art, which would mean it has no function except to be art), I'm just unclear on what you meant here.)

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#102

Post by emacsen »

just_testing wrote: post #68

I'm also interested in the development of OSM (being an editor and a data consumer) and I've witnessed first hand some of your issues. For instance, once I've had to create my own "geocoder" for transit fines in São Paulo using OSM data, because no geocoder commercially available would be able to deal with the data. So, now that we clarified I'm not a troll, nor a bot, I ask you: how should we deal with those issues?…

Honestly, I have no idea.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#104

Post by SteveCoast »

lucb1e wrote: post #101
SteveCoast wrote: post #85

I'm the DRI for most of these problems. Random thoughts: I think David Ogilvy said something like "Search all the parks in your city, you'll find no statues of committees". Everyone was super keen to make OSM in to a web of committees, and this is one root of the problem from an organizational point of view. It's not super clear to me what the OSMF has done in the last (to pick a number) 5 years. (I don't regard "doi…

> I'm the DRI All I can find is "Dietary Reference Intake" on https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/DRI -- what do you mean? (I agree with most of your post by the way (except for the bit about it being art, which would mean it has no function except to be art), I'm just unclear on what you meant here.)

Directly Responsible Individual

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Coast

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#105

Post by lucb1e »

jimmyrocks wrote: post #25

Thanks for posting this here! I feel like this is mostly good constructive criticism. I have given a few talks about using OSM data in the US government and it comes down to authoritative data sources and validation. It's a great starting point, but there needs to be another layer (or two) of validation before it can be used at the enterprise level. The National Map Corps has some good examples of how this can be imp…

> it will become less authoritative

Or better than the authoritative original.

Like with Wikipedia, where you often hear that people prefer to cite a single person as source (because "anyone could edit Wikipedia", as if no single person can setup a website or write a paper), at least Wikipedia has had thousands of reads and often dozens or hundreds of reviews. People are scared of the idea "it could be anyone", while the most likely editor is just a peer with good intentions.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#106

Post by btilly »

Here is my experience.

I work for a company that syndicates location data for businesses. We had a couple of businesses that wanted to syndicate to OSM.

It. Was. A. Nightmare.

We have addresses for every store. We don't know where the building is. Any store we place is going to be easy to place on a street near the building. If you've not placed it inside of the strip mall on the right spot, other people delete it. And what do you do with NYC? Suppose that you have a store that is somewhere on the second floor of a skyscraper. We don't know where it is in that building.

Have you tried to map out thousands of department stores? We know hours, phone numbers, and addresses for each department. We have NO idea what the actual store layout is. Without the layout, OSM basically didn't seem to want the rest of what we can give them.

If a customer is willing to pay us to deal with OSM, we're going to discourage them and ask for top dollar if they insist. It is that painful.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#107

Post by lucb1e »

SteveCoast wrote: post #104
lucb1e wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm the DRI All I can find is "Dietary Reference Intake" on https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/DRI -- what do you mean? (I agree with most of your post by the way (except for the bit about it being art, which would mean it has no function except to be art), I'm just unclear on what you meant here.)

Directly Responsible Individual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Coast

Oh, I see. Hello there! I never knew the founder of OSM was on HN too :)

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#108

Post by pbowyer »

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…

> Probably right: OSM needs layers, or even a more sweeping re-architecture to allow better versioning, moderation, better tooling, and easier understanding of the data.

I have a hobby site about railways [0] I'm picking up again after a decade of inactivity. I wanted to display a route map of each railway, with clickable stations and the route highlighted.

I can not work out how to do that. OSM has the route and station data (there and in Open Railway Map [1]). I expected to find a layer called 'Railways' with sub-layers, one for each railway, and I could export the data and highlight it on another map.

Instead I have raster tiles, and no way to highlight the railway I'm talking about. I know the data must be there somewhere but how on earth do I get it?

[0] https://www.narrow-gauge.co.uk [1] https://www.openrailwaymap.org/

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#109

Post by emacsen »

SteveCoast wrote: post #85

I'm the DRI for most of these problems. Random thoughts: I think David Ogilvy said something like "Search all the parks in your city, you'll find no statues of committees". Everyone was super keen to make OSM in to a web of committees, and this is one root of the problem from an organizational point of view. It's not super clear to me what the OSMF has done in the last (to pick a number) 5 years. (I don't regard "doi…

I just spent several minutes of my life trying to figure out what a DRI is, and I still don't know.

I agree with you in regards to the OSMF. There has been a lack of motivation and a lack of desire to experiment.

> From a technical point of view we merged sysadmin (who inherently want stability) with development (who inherently want change)

Agreed, operations and development are often at odds. I've done both, and there are organizational ways to solve this, but they require a great deal of work.

> It's still a wonderful project

I completely agree. A prominent OSMer just sent me a message saying how he never wants to hear from me again, but this is not me writing against OSM, but rather me getting down and dirty into exactly where I think OSM doesn't do a good job.

I can love something (especially software) and advocate for it to change.

Steve, you and I don't always agree, but I think we both agree that we want the project to succeed and are frustrated by the current situation.

> I think what really happens is that projects go through a lifecycle and something new comes along to replace them, rather than anything getting fixed.

I'd hate for this to be the case, but it seems that if the project can't move forward, this is what will happen.

It would be possible to start by stiching together data from existing libre data sources, and then using tools to augment them. I'm not a computer vision expert, but I bet much of what we (you and I and many of our bretheren) were doing tracing roads and buildings could be done better by computer.

BTW, if you're Liking my post- like the parent post, since Steve is the primary founder of OSM. I mention him in the post.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#110

Post by maxerickson »

smichel17 wrote: post #96
bonzini wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 indivi…

This is more or less how OSM works now, except there is no waiting period. But undoing a recent edit is pretty straightforward, so there is a similar effect.
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