OSM needs a way to ingest "signals" instead of edits.
Yes, the data source is clearly useful, so not having it is a loss. But an edit is large enough a privilege to require all these checks. Perhaps it's not that OSM that needs a signal, but perhaps it's that there's an opportunity for an open map that has many signals, of which OSM and Book Corners are examples.
Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap
21–30 of 107 posts
Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap
#22Also I don't get the point why you would want them easily scrapeable to begin with. If you have eyes to read and can walk across YOUR neighborhoods, you would have eventually seen one. I thought that was the whole point? They are not exactly hidden. I find those public bookcase incidental low barrier offerings to a reading exprience you just stumble upon, nothing you would seek out on a map. Why would you want to hav…
Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap
#23Also I don't get the point why you would want them easily scrapeable to begin with. If you have eyes to read and can walk across YOUR neighborhoods, you would have eventually seen one. I thought that was the whole point? They are not exactly hidden. I find those public bookcase incidental low barrier offerings to a reading exprience you just stumble upon, nothing you would seek out on a map. Why would you want to hav…
I sometimes edit OSM, so I'm wondering whether any public bookshelf omissions are intentional, and adding the shelves would be unwelcome by the people running them.
Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap
#24To be clear to folks not familiar with OSM: These restrictions are unique to projects doing automated submissions of mass data. If you're an individual just trying to make the world a better place, you can make an OSM account, go to the website, click, add a thing, hit submit, done. Someone will review it. Apps like CoMaps and Organic Maps make it super easy to contribute data for businesses, landmarks, and such.
> you can make an OSM account, go to the website, click, add a thing, hit submit, done. Someone will review it. I will share an unpopular opinion: thil will only make a freeworkforce for those projects who profit from using OSM. And the OSM has surprisingly unreliable data quality for walking around even in the popular tourist places like Tokyo or Kyoto, or New York. I've tried, and it's so worse than GMaps (or Bing)…
I don’t think you’ll find even most the die hard OSM fan disagree with you on the POI data.
On the other hand, the road network in OSM is very high quality. As you point out, it’s used and contributed to by companies like Lyft and Amazon.
The fact that anyone can download an accurate detailed global road network for free is pretty crazy.
Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap
#25To be clear to folks not familiar with OSM: These restrictions are unique to projects doing automated submissions of mass data. If you're an individual just trying to make the world a better place, you can make an OSM account, go to the website, click, add a thing, hit submit, done. Someone will review it. Apps like CoMaps and Organic Maps make it super easy to contribute data for businesses, landmarks, and such.
> you can make an OSM account, go to the website, click, add a thing, hit submit, done. Someone will review it. I will share an unpopular opinion: thil will only make a freeworkforce for those projects who profit from using OSM. And the OSM has surprisingly unreliable data quality for walking around even in the popular tourist places like Tokyo or Kyoto, or New York. I've tried, and it's so worse than GMaps (or Bing)…
I would assume that tourist places don't have many locals going by and updating them and tourists don't want to fill in info on that kind of app, but that's mostly an adoption question. If more people contributed more info would be mapped.
Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap
#26In summary: Because OSM requires work and care to be put into the data submission plan, which isn’t worth it. A project like OSM would be bombarded with spam and junk submissions if it didn’t have these barriers to submission. Understandable.
If their apps instead submitted directly to OSM (letting submission trickle back down), then the flow would fit into "user submission". Book Corners simply becomes an app though which the user performed the submission, rather than an intermediary exporting data.
Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap
#27I've always been confused why OSM doesn't design a cheap open source stereo imager, some finetuned modern YOLO neural network could detect and blur the glass parts of windows, doorbells, nameplates and humans in the scene. It could use GPS for rough geolocation, and 3D models of all the scenery could be generated. New contribution traces would contain changes compared to the past. Volunteers could request new paths i…
Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap
#28Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap
#29Fully LLM-written article, maybe that's another reason :)
I highly doubt that. What tells do you see that lends to probability of it being llm generated content? Is it possible that we (myself included) have become conditioned to think content is llm generated as the default opinion?
> The workflow I had in mind was deliberately cautious
> The code was not the difficult part.
> These requirements are not a one-time form to complete and forget. They create an ongoing responsibility around the account, the documented process, community feedback, failures, and potential reversions.
Just a few examples. And yes, Pangram 4 also flags it as 100% LLM written. I don't mind being downvoted or flagged, but I think more people should be aware of the LLM style, even if they're ok with it being used without any disclaimer. It's honestly sad that nowadays people on HN cannot recognize this style.
Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap
#30This makes sense, but I wish there was a generally accepted way to share geospatial data and POI data against OSM IDs. e.g. I want to be able to add overlays for noise level, etc. and I find the whole thing too fragmented. The OSM way seems to be the right way, but no one seems to do it. You just maintain your own DB with an optional OSM POI entity identifier etc. I suppose if you want something badly enough you have…