Live data from Hacker News

OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20

stevecoast.substack.com

131–140 of 140 posts

Re: OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20

#131
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

StreetComplete is fun for casual contributions, but what OSM really needs is good local mappers. You can tell when a place has local mappers updating and monitoring changes in the real world. Even just taking care of the coming and going of shops is really useful. People who visit your area using apps like OsmAnd and OrganicMaps use that data!

I tried editing my area to reflect road closures due to construction. It was surprisingly difficult. Spent an hour searching online. My edit was denied by the reviewer (I used the wrong method) and the closure was not reflected in the map. Google maps was a one minute process and it was reflected in the map after about an hour. OSM stayed outdated for weeks. From this experience I am tempted to conclude that OSM need…

I'm sorry that you had a bad experience adding data. Road closures are a somewhat advanced topic and differ in tagging depending on how long the road is expected to be closed. For short closures it's not recommended to actually mark the map as unpassable unconditionally because some offline routers may be stuck with months old data, depending on how often they update. So short closures would be tagged as

    motor_vehicle:conditional=no @ (date range)
while longer closures would use something like

    highway=construction
    construction=tertiary
    opening_date=2025-01
That being said, I'm surprised you ended up in the review process, as there isn't really one per se. Just a flag in the changeset that's typically not observed unless some people actively look for that (although new account + first changeset + review flag may have been picked up by someone). Some projects like HOTOSM (the Humanitarian OSM Project) do have a mandated review process and it seems to work fairly well most of the time.

So basically, your edit should have been visible on the map around a minute after making it, but was apparently reverted later. Unless you actually destroyed something I'd say that's not very typical. Reverts are somewhat rare and contributors are trusted to some degree.

As for specific tagging situations, there's probably always something to improve. StreetComplete works really well for keeping track of what's there, other apps have their own niche, and there may not be one that specifically targets road closures.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20

#132
post #118

Another way to contribute is my project https://mapcomplete.org I'm trying to build a somewhat generic map view, which features many thematic maps (e.g. shops, restaurants, bicycle pumps, toilets, ...) Most data comes from OpenStreetMap, but it also allows to make changes, upload pictures, show wikipedia or make reviews with mangrove.Reviews

Can I use this to update the location of e.g. a restaurant that is in the wrong place?

Yes, the point-based maps typically allow you to move a feature.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20

#133
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps used to have geolocated pictures taken by users (IIRC this was called Panoramio). If OSM had an app that allowed you to take photos and they'd be automatically uploaded with location, that'd be great.

Mapillary or Kartaview are the typical choices here to add free street-level imagery which can then be used for OSM purposes as well. What also works is Wikimedia Commons. There's a good mobile app. You can take pictures of a POI, upload them and later associate them with that object in OSM (or via Wikidata).

Yes, and I use or have used them all.

The wikimedia app could be improved a lot to support OSM. It is a bit of a hassle to take a picture, upload it to commons, then add both categories and concepts, then open an OSM editor, find the object, and add the wikimedia_commons tag.

It would be much more helpful if you could search for an object in OsmAnd/organicmaps etc, take a picture, have it uploaded to wikimedia providing default categories based on OSM tags, and then have it added to OSM. It could also help create wikimedia categories if necessary.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20

#134
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Maps used to have geolocated pictures taken by users (IIRC this was called Panoramio). If OSM had an app that allowed you to take photos and they'd be automatically uploaded with location, that'd be great.

Mapillary or Kartaview are the typical choices here to add free street-level imagery which can then be used for OSM purposes as well. What also works is Wikimedia Commons. There's a good mobile app. You can take pictures of a POI, upload them and later associate them with that object in OSM (or via Wikidata).

There is also a newcomer called Panoramax, started in France about a year ago. It's federated and starting to expand in other countries. https://panoramax.fr/

Re: OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20

#135
post #13

OSM has the potential to be the open, available source of truth for so much of our data. From there, we can simply build curated UIs that displays what we need (keep in mind that OSM is not a “map”). Opening hours for example. Today this info is either on a webpage or google maps. Sometimes contradicting each other, where a Facebook status update has the most accurate info.

Unfortunately OSM doesn’t solve the problem if the POI owners don’t use it; and in my experience they often don’t even know it exists. Even in my densely-populated area with tons of OSM contributors a lot of POIs are still outdated because restaurant and store owners care only about their website/Instagram/FB or Google Maps and don’t know about OSM. When I started contributing ~12 years ago a main contributor used to…

> used to say it was a waste of time to map restaurants because the data quickly becomes outdated

I downloaded streetcomplete on the suggestion of someone else on this thread, and that was immediately my intuition.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20

#136
post #132
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I use this to update the location of e.g. a restaurant that is in the wrong place?

Yes, the point-based maps typically allow you to move a feature.

I can't see how to do this in the mapcomplete UI.

Take this link for example: https://mapcomplete.org/food.html?z=16.1&lat=51.400908130317... .

The restaurant "Kefi" is incorrectly located on an entirely residential road. I believe it is probably supposed to be "To Kefi", which you can see here on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/To+Kefi+(Greek+Restaurant+...

I've tried dragging the icon, right-clicking it, or left-clicking it and looking in the popoup menu for a location field to edit, but no luck.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20

#137
post #136
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the point-based maps typically allow you to move a feature.

I can't see how to do this in the mapcomplete UI. Take this link for example: https://mapcomplete.org/food.html?z=16.1&lat=51.400908130317... . The restaurant "Kefi" is incorrectly located on an entirely residential road. I believe it is probably supposed to be "To Kefi", which you can see here on Google Maps: https://www.google.com/maps/place/To+Kefi+(Greek+Restaurant+... I've tried dragging the icon, right-clicking…

In the popup when clicking it there's a "Move object" near the bottom. You must be logged in for that to appear, though.

Re: OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20

#138
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mapillary or Kartaview are the typical choices here to add free street-level imagery which can then be used for OSM purposes as well. What also works is Wikimedia Commons. There's a good mobile app. You can take pictures of a POI, upload them and later associate them with that object in OSM (or via Wikidata).

There is also a newcomer called Panoramax, started in France about a year ago. It's federated and starting to expand in other countries. https://panoramax.fr/

It'd be really nice if all these services auto-federated with each other.

A lot of the images are too dark or low-contrast, so another nice feature would be to auto-adjust the image for brightness (maybe make this a user-level default).

Re: OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20

#139
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on what exactly you want. Google Maps does more then just being a map, such as navigation, streetview, reviews,... In either case, I've heard quite some people being in love with Qwant Maps. And I try to get to build specialized maps with https://mapcomplete.org

Qwant Maps is discontinued, sadly. Features I would want most from a web frontend for OSM: * Smarter search in the local area that is currently focused, with possibility to search for generic terms like "atm", "bus stop", "bakery", etc. * Display of shops/restaurants/markets/etc with additional information like opening hours (which are available in OSM, I've added a ton of it through StreetComplete and often wondered…

https://cartes.app has all these features, but it's french only for now, in the alpha phase.

(I'm the developer)

Re: OpenStreetMap Is Turning 20

#140
post #17

The amount of data OSM has nowadays is a treasure. It's just a shame that there's no well done generic web frontend that would make all this data accessible in a way that could rival Google Maps. The official openstreetmap.org web site just provides bare functionality with an almost unusable search, and otherwise focuses on editing OSM data. Probably the best generic "frontend" for OSM is Organic Maps, which however…

https://cartes.app plans to be the open source alternative to Google and Apple Maps. French-only beta version for now.

(I'm the developer)

Post reply on HN