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OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

blog.emacsen.net

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Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#191

Post by zo1 »

splonk wrote: post #145
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 used to work on user generated content in maps. Business vandalism is a big problem once you reach a certain scale. It's possible that OSM doesn't have this problem yet because it's not as valuable a target as Google/Apple/Bing. I'm not super familiar with what's available on OSM these days, but an unscrupulous locksmith might try to make competing locksmiths unreachable by moving their address to a distant locatio…

It's already a problem. Go look at the history tab for any moderately large town in OSM. You'll find gigantic edits overlapping the area you're trying to look at. The reason for that is someone posting changes/additions onto map locations on separate countries and/or continents, so it intersects with your small town regardless if the changes were near it.

Those edits are usually people adding useless businesses and phone-numbers. I've seen people advertising bitcoin-related business and general spam.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#192

Post by maxerickson »

btilly wrote: post #190
maxerickson wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

alltheplaces is almost what you are looking for. https://github.com/alltheplaces/alltheplaces I guess you'd be looking to bypass the hard part.

No, that's the opposite of what we are looking for. We're not looking for data that other people have uploaded. We've got that data straight from the companies before it is publicly announced. We're publishing it to everywhere the companies want it published to. OSM is not one of the places that we want to deal with providing that data to.

If you hand alltheplaces your data, people ingesting alltheplaces will have your data.

I was suggesting it as an alternative open distribution channel that was less concerned with details.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#193

Post by chuckdries »

michaelt wrote: post #188
djsumdog wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I realize hosting a service is expensive, but can't there be an open source set of service APIs that's self hosted? That way you can chose to get a full copy of the data (and be responsible for pulling updates) and the API, or just pay someone else for access to their hosted version of the API?

can't there be an open source set of service APIs that's self hosted OSM does have open source self-hosted options. Unfortunately, the developer experience is much more painful than using Google Maps. With Google Maps, if you can add Javascript to a web page you're basically good to go. Data updates, software updates, server redundancy, server support and security, all taken care of. Even if you're exclusively a fron…

Is it something that could be containerized? Maybe not as simple as a JS embed, but deploying a self hosted docker container is far easier than installing most things I've encountered.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#194

Post by mynameisvlad »

ris wrote: post #119
pbowyer wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sta…

Investigate Overpass and in particular Overpass Turbo. And really, any strict layering system in OSM would quickly just fall apart into debates of exactly what belonged in each layer. The range of detail captured by OpenStreetMap users in different areas is really far too nuanced to work crammed into coarse, crude "layer" classifications.

How can that be the case? Even with a range of detail, the points on a map have to represent one of a fairly limited selection of types. Even if you keep it high level like "buildings", "roads", etc. it's still a massive improvement over having no layers whatsoever.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#195

Post by LoSboccacc »

jedberg wrote: post #23
striking wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maps.me is pretty killer, though. The only issue I see with OSM is lack of traffic data. Generally when I drive with Google Maps, I already know the route but want Google to step in when there's traffic.

> 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,…

Waze is extremely regional. I was among the first adopter and mappers here in Italy, and was involved with various misfortune with the local bureaucrats which locked all the dialogue and started making terrible, terrible decision for a mapping software: for example to save mappers time they decided not to map service roads nearby larger mains, except in places like Milan if you need to know when to get from the main into the service road since not all left turns from the main are legal and not always the service road can merge back into the main.

As a direct result Waze was unusable in large Italian cities for the longest time, long enough that the gap in free turn to turn navigation that was once there got filled by google maps on ios and everyone forgotten about that experiment. They eventually conceded and started mapping all the details as needed by turn to turn navigation, but too little, too late.

(source, in italian https://www.waze.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=1408&start=1... )

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#196

Post by bhousel »

sorenjan wrote: post #183

One thing that made me a bit nervous to start editing is the lack of an easy way to roll back changes, at least I couldn't find one using the iD editor. If I make a mistake and save it I need to do new edits to try and fix it, possibly making things worse, instead of just removing the entire changeset. I had some issues with multipolygons and had to edit the same things maybe four or five times before I got it right.…

Hey sorenjan - The OSM Wiki is not correct. We've received no license from Strava that allows tracing outside of their iD fork.

Current progress on securing permission to use the heatmap for OSM tracing is happening here: https://github.com/osmlab/editor-layer-index/pull/373

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#197

Post by lucideer »

djsumdog wrote: post #174
emacsen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The post calls for OSM to essentially become Mapbox The problem is that most companies using OSM are using Mapbox. This leads to a few problems, including attribution, which I decided not to touch on, but is a serious problem that Mapbox doesn't address sufficiently. If they could use OSM directly, they'd be engaged with OSM directly. They'd care about OSM. Right now OSM shoves these users away and makes them into…

I mean, I realize hosting a service is expensive, but can't there be an open source set of service APIs that's self hosted? That way you can chose to get a full copy of the data (and be responsible for pulling updates) and the API, or just pay someone else for access to their hosted version of the API?

> you can chose to get a full copy of the data (and be responsible for pulling updates)

Even if you could make the general setup and maintenance incredibly easy somehow, just syncing the map data from osm regularly would require decent hardware: the extra cost of each dev doing this themselves just doesn't compare to using a central tile host.

On top of that, if every dev was regularly updating their own OSM data, OSM would have a lot of extra strain on their data download servers to deal with. Not sure if this could be comparable to the hardware overhead of providing a tile hosting service though.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#198

Post by lucb1e »

ben_w wrote: post #132
lucb1e wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Needless to say I quickly gave up on using OSM and turned back to Google Maps--and I'm their perfect use case, a skilled techie with a deep interest in using free software! I can't imagine trying to explain how to use OSM to my mom My mom got an iPhone gifted from my dad, so there's mistake number one (I don't know of any decent OSM apps on that proprietary platform), but for what it's worth, my non-technical girlf…

> I don't know of any decent OSM apps on that proprietary platform Is ViewRanger of use? (Disclosure: I used to work there). It’s focused on outdoor pursuits such as hiking and biking rather than driving or public transit, but OSM is one of the available maps.

The use case would mainly be driving, but thanks for the tip! I hadn't heard of it yet.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#199

Post by lucb1e »

Accacin wrote: post #160
lucb1e wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Needless to say I quickly gave up on using OSM and turned back to Google Maps--and I'm their perfect use case, a skilled techie with a deep interest in using free software! I can't imagine trying to explain how to use OSM to my mom My mom got an iPhone gifted from my dad, so there's mistake number one (I don't know of any decent OSM apps on that proprietary platform), but for what it's worth, my non-technical girlf…

I use Galileo, but it's the only one I've used on Android or iOS so I'm not sure how good it is but it works for me.

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out!

Re: OpenStreetMap Is in Trouble

#200

Post by altitudinous »

That is tl;dr

I got criticised when I was a young coder for writing long rambling emails and articles. Now I am older I see why. Too much info in the world, I don't have time to read that although I am interested in why this person thinks openstreetmap is in trouble, but man a wall of text. This is why scientific articles have extracts at the top, bulletpoints work well too.

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