Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

streetcomplete.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 209 posts

Re: StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

#181

Post by pbmonster »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #164
cwillu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Various driving/delivery apps ultimately use OSM data. Doordash and instacart both use it to various degrees via mapbox, for instasnce.

OSM is actually perfectly sufficient if you just want street and address data. This stuff gets pulled in from official government sources so it's all present and up to date. Where it's lacking is business info since this has to be entered manually and changes much more often than streets or buildings change.

The thing lacking even more is a good search engine. Doesn't matter how complete the database is when search keeps missing text appearing verbatim in a label.

Re: StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

#182

Post by pbmonster »

earth-tattoo wrote: post #51

It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps, but we can't do vice versa. OSM should change their license to something like if you use our data, you have to make yours open as well.

> It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps

No way they are doing this deliberately globally. My city has a lot of pedestrian stairs interconnecting roads, and not a single one is on GMaps. If you navigate on foot, it will send you on walks 2x-3x longer than necessary.

OSMand and CoMaps reliably find the shortest way. And can tell you the pavement type, number of steps, stroller ramp and hand rail situation of every single one of those stairs.

Google has a really hard time adding roads without frequent car traffic, I think.

Re: StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

#183

Post by YoshiRulz »

Cider9986 wrote: post #71
freakynit wrote: post #25

Just downloaded and made 15+ small contributions in the vicinity of my area. Very well built app. Super simple to use. And gamification is top-notch. Recommended.

I naively thought that Duolingo's gamification was for a good cause, helping you learn a language by addicting you, but now I know it's not only an extremely ineffective way to learn a language, but they're an advertising/social media/data broker company, which makes the gamification unethical. I wonder if there are any other FOSS apps or websites with gamification that are for a good cause, like StreetComplete.

https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Games#Contribution_ga...

Re: StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

#184

Post by pbmonster »

lapetitejort wrote: post #66

I got into OSM and StreetComplete to flesh out intersections, stop signs, and sidewalks in my area. I always felt like I was doing something wrong though. I created crosswalks, then OSM would prompt me to connect the crosswalk to the road via a crossing. In StreetComplete, it felt like I was filling in duplicate data. I had to add whether the crossing had crossing lights not only at the middle crossing, but on the si…

> Basically, I am never confident I am editing OSM correctly.

This is the case for the majority of users. The rules are complex and not always obvious or clearly defined. The world is complex, unfortunately, and so is describing it accurately.

One of OSM killer features for me is finding drinking water along the route when I'm hiking/biking/exploring. Unfortunately, there isn't a single, consistent label used for all sources of drinking water. So I have to check amenity=drinking_water, man_made=water_tap, amenity=fountain, one after the other.

I think StreetComplete has missions to add the label drinking_water=yes to all of those, so the situation might improve in the future.

Re: StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

#185

Post by timoshishi »

freakynit wrote: post #25

Just downloaded and made 15+ small contributions in the vicinity of my area. Very well built app. Super simple to use. And gamification is top-notch. Recommended.

Is your area already well mapped? I opened up the app to find more than 5000 tasks within a 20 minute walk of my place

Re: StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

#186

Post by pferde »

lapetitejort wrote: post #66

I got into OSM and StreetComplete to flesh out intersections, stop signs, and sidewalks in my area. I always felt like I was doing something wrong though. I created crosswalks, then OSM would prompt me to connect the crosswalk to the road via a crossing. In StreetComplete, it felt like I was filling in duplicate data. I had to add whether the crossing had crossing lights not only at the middle crossing, but on the si…

The seemingly duplicate data on crossing is because there are different "parts" of the crossing, intended for different users.

There is the path across the road, usually from one sidewalk to the opposite, which is meant for pedestrians, and there is the node where this path touches the road, which is meant for car drivers.

Yes, the system could be improved by grouping these somehow, maybe using relations (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relation ), but that would add complexity to any navigation or rendering application using OSM data that wants to process information about crossings.

Re: StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

#187

Post by pferde »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #164
cwillu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Various driving/delivery apps ultimately use OSM data. Doordash and instacart both use it to various degrees via mapbox, for instasnce.

OSM is actually perfectly sufficient if you just want street and address data. This stuff gets pulled in from official government sources so it's all present and up to date. Where it's lacking is business info since this has to be entered manually and changes much more often than streets or buildings change.

I'd like to point out that it only "gets pulled in" if the data is actually made available by the government, and there are dedicated volunteers who work on getting the data, massaging it into the right format and importing it into OSM, and that is not the case in many countries.

Re: StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

#188

Post by freakynit »

timoshishi wrote: post #185
freakynit wrote: post #25

Just downloaded and made 15+ small contributions in the vicinity of my area. Very well built app. Super simple to use. And gamification is top-notch. Recommended.

Is your area already well mapped? I opened up the app to find more than 5000 tasks within a 20 minute walk of my place

Nop... when I opened the app, I found 100's of tasks within 100 meter radius.

Re: StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

#189

Post by matsemann »

edent wrote: post #42
hirako2000 wrote: post #18

One thing missing on osm is pictures. Would defeats Google maps if it had some, where users would feedback and bad shots would get wiped to save space. We would get the best shots the world has to offer.

OSM does have a pictures layer. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Panoramax I use https://mapcomplete.org/ to add images of artworks to OSM objects.

Panoramax is still unfortunately very lacking outside a French instance. I've tried to contribute my street view images, but it's not used by anyone or anything as far as I can see.
Post reply on HN