101–109 of 109 posts
I think the piece I’m confused most about is why the little free library website’s map isn’t the place to log little free libraries. That being said, it makes sense that OSM has guidelines like this in place to ensure the data quality stays, well, quality.
Getting an official "charter sign" will cost you 50 bucks.
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I agree that that's the ideal way to do this, but it's just not always an option. I run valideparkeren.nl, a crowd sourced overview of all accessible parking spots in the Netherlands. Ideally, there should be a government-owned single source of truth, but the whole reason for starting this is because that source doesn't exist yet. I'm starting to work with the government to eventually hand this project over to them,…
> I completely understand that they only want high quality data I worked on "openopeningstijden", where my aim was to improve the data for businesses in OSM and to disclose that in apis and uis. There were other reasons why I had to pull the plug, but a big difficulty was the understandable conservatism of OSM. I didn't even want any tagging schemes changed, or the insane dsl for "opening hours" improved, at that tim…
The Dutch OSM-community indeed is very conservative, a bit too much IMHO. We Belgians are more relaxed :)
Such a dataset would still be useful, but perhaps in a quality assurance tool, not as map notes that would clog the map. Can you link more information?
I appreciate OSM for maintaining a higher data quality bar than other projects (Overture places are mostly junk outside of USA), but it's also just artificially limiting itself by not allowing streamlined paths to data contributions.
Yes, you'll always need a user account
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It sounds like the real issue is the "stable ids" one. You need a Single Point of Truth that matches up stretches of waterway with an ID that won't change. You can then sprinkle .isNavigable and such onto your record along with a reference to that magic ID. But yeah, if they don't provide is, they're not a very good point of truth. I have to deal with this in my little bouldering database as well, since the source I…
OpenStreetMap does not and cannot offer permanent IDs. An entity might be mapped in more detail, resulting in something being split in two parts, or change from node to way, with wildly different IDs. At the same time, a point might be repurposed as something else entirely.
Though I kinda doubt they want to support maintaining these for every single project that wants one.
[1]: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:wikidata
[2]: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:gnis:feature_id
I run a website that's in a similar situation, and it sounds like the author is close to the correct solution, but needs to take things one step further: There needs to be a Single Point of Truth, and it should not be your little website. BigCentralThing should be the official database that knows about where all the Whatevers are. Your little Whatever Locator site should only ever _pull_ from them. Need a new Whateve…
This can sometimes be a challenge with OSM, if the way you want to structure data doesn’t align with the way the community has decided to structure data. I was looking into building a canoeing map based on OSM data. An important thing to map is “is a particular stream between two lakes navigable by canoe?” OSM has a defined canoe=yes/no tag, but it’s supposed to be used for legal access, not navigability. In the plac…
Had you considered `canoe=discouraged`?
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:canoe#Access_values
> paddling is technically allowed but may often be unsafe or impractical (e.g. open water or shallow creeks)
I run a website that's in a similar situation, and it sounds like the author is close to the correct solution, but needs to take things one step further: There needs to be a Single Point of Truth, and it should not be your little website. BigCentralThing should be the official database that knows about where all the Whatevers are. Your little Whatever Locator site should only ever _pull_ from them. Need a new Whateve…
> Get BigCentralThing to add it Making a workflow central to your business dependent on the goodwill and efficiency of an external entity is a very bad idea! It's good that you've found a partner who is willing to put in the work, but that is luck rather than what normally happens.
I used YouTube as an example earlier. OSM is a good one too. Neither needs to care about you. They only need to care about their own job, which is knowing about their list of things (videos, roads, electronic part numbers, etc.). So long as they continue to do that, and have an easy way to tell them about the things they do care about, you're good.
They're already "putting in the work". Because it's their work to keep the list. That's all they do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I completely understand that they only want high quality data I worked on "openopeningstijden", where my aim was to improve the data for businesses in OSM and to disclose that in apis and uis. There were other reasons why I had to pull the plug, but a big difficulty was the understandable conservatism of OSM. I didn't even want any tagging schemes changed, or the insane dsl for "opening hours" improved, at that tim…
First of all, I assume you are from the Netherlands (based on the .nl) The Dutch OSM-community indeed is very conservative, a bit too much IMHO. We Belgians are more relaxed :) Such a dataset would still be useful, but perhaps in a quality assurance tool, not as map notes that would clog the map. Can you link more information?
If "Map Notes clog the map" then there still is something needed in OSM to allow data that's not directly geographical, to be kept up to date, the POI data.
Aside from technicalities: if we want a free, open, etc etc alternative to Google Maps, we need to ensure POI data is of high quality, up to date, and comprehensive.
While it's very useful for many to have all traffic-lights, bike-lanes or waterways mapped, in practice, osmand, maps.me, organic-maps etc etc aren't used when Google maps shows accurate list of Bakeries (or campsites, or anything really) but the OSM-sourced ones don't.
Users, like me, only accept driving to e.g. a campsite that's been closed for over a year a very few times before grabbing Google Maps again. I'll edit OSM in these cases. Open Openingstijden was one of a few experiments where I researched "improving and maintaining POI data".
If we consider the amount of "alternatives to Google Maps" that now don't contribute back to OSM, because of technicalities, legal things etc etc, we miss a lot of good POI data that makes these alternatives viable in areas where Google Maps is the one and only king atm.
To 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 this is an opinion, this is just an empirical fact. But it's good! OSM is a public service! This kind of thing should be public, individual citizens should have the agency to improve it, and businesses should benefit from its existence. It's the adopt-a-highway of cartography.
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> 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)…
One of the nice things about OSM is you can profit from it from it if you want to. 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 craz…
Throughout nearly all of human history, one of the most difficult questions to answer was "where the hell am I?" and an even harder question was "how do I get to where I want to go?" Anyone can now answer both of those questions for free, within seconds, with accuracy within 3 or 4 yards. And, when it's wrong, they can contribute back to it instantly. OSM is the logical conclusion to one of the most difficult technical endeavours ever taken on by humans. It's astonishing when you think about it like that.