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

191–200 of 209 posts

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

#191

Post by habi »

circuit10 wrote: post #32
khernandezrt wrote: post #30

Does it have to be a mobile app? Id love to do this when im bored at work but i dont wanna make it seem like im just sitting on my phone.

A web app would also make it work on iOS (and other non-Android platforms) at the same time

There are many apps for editing OSM on iOS: https://osm-apps.org/?platforms=iOS

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Go_Map!! also has some kind of 'quests' built in, and the StreetComplete is planning to porting SC to iOS: https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/5421

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

#192

Post by amiga386 »

m4rtink wrote: post #178
amiga386 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If StreetComplete starts asking road width and loading capacity for bridges and viaducts... start to get suspicious :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bqzwsM6eoQ

Street complete does load width - it can be quite useful for example for the fire fighters. They can try to plot some routes based on OSM data, then check if the narrow places are actually there and reach out to the city to address them, so their fire engines can get through.

That's a fair use for the data, but it would be hilarious if StreetComplete asked users to get a trundle wheel and measure the width of roads around embassies or seats of government...

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

#193

Post by jllyhill »

black_puppydog wrote: post #111

I've been mapping out shops, their contacts, cuisines (for restaurants), opening hours etc in my area. It's a lot of work and much of the information will actually simply not be available to me without a shop owner. So I'm trying to get some of them to update their own shop information. But I'm really struggling to find good arguments. Small shop owners often have quite stressful days already and taking even five min…

You can get some info on the tag use with taginfo, e.g. https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/cuisine#projects But it is really technical and not all projects provide this info.

The most obvious place where people will look for and query this kind of data are the OSM-based map apps: OsmAnd, OrganicMaps, CoMaps, mapy.com etc. I don't know if this data is pulled into other major maps like Google's or Apple's.

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

#194

Post by jllyhill »

esperent wrote: post #114
black_puppydog wrote: post #111

I've been mapping out shops, their contacts, cuisines (for restaurants), opening hours etc in my area. It's a lot of work and much of the information will actually simply not be available to me without a shop owner. So I'm trying to get some of them to update their own shop information. But I'm really struggling to find good arguments. Small shop owners often have quite stressful days already and taking even five min…

> So I'm trying to get some of them to update their own shop information. But I'm really struggling to find good arguments. I did that for my business (a bakery). Spent ages on it, put in all the details I could think of. At the end of the process there seemed to be a requirement to send it you review so I did that. This was several months ago (probably six months), and it's never showed up. I'm busy, and I have a th…

Do you remember what you've used to add your business? The process shouldn't be so difficult and normally the changes to the OpenStreetMaps database are instant and don't require any moderation or review. There are some sites that were intended to help business owners to get info to the database, maybe there's a problem with one of them.

> The actual business is listed, but with a slightly wrong name. But I can put that exact slightly wrong name into the search on openstreetmap.org right now and there's zero results.

Can you give the name and location? I can look it up to see if there are any errors.

> Then I can manually zoom to the location (which is correct), see my business, tap on it... And nothing. It doesn't open. So given all of this, why would I bother with openstreetmaps as a business owner?

That's the part that annoys me the most. Counterintuitively the map at openstreetmap.org is NOT intended to be an interactive common user web-map, a Google map alternative. It is a non-interactive map for the mapping volunteers to get feedback on whether their changes to the OpenStreetMap database were correct. While you can still right click on a feature, select "Query feature" and look at the raw text, you are better look up your business on something like mapy.com or an app like CoMaps (that use OSM data to create a Google map alternative) to understand what would the users see.

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

#195

Post by jraph »

matsemann wrote: post #152
jnpnj wrote: post #65

Are there other similar apps to stimulate soft "crowdfixing" ? I'm sure there are plenty of other aspect of society that would benefit from a light way to know where someone can contribute or notify so other can fix things (forest dumps, random trash). Homeostatic apps to ensure our surroundings are close to a good state :]

I upload street view pictures to Mapillary, which again can be used to automatically infer info into OSM (like signs etc) But I feel very few OSM mapping apps use street view / have it as a feature. But for me it's the main feature I use Google Maps for. Like checking road conditions or finding nice places to camp when bikepacking. Which is why I also upload my stuff to Google (cars can't access most of these areas),…

Check out panoramax if you don't know about it already.

https://panoramax.fr/

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

#196

Post by Aachen »

thangalin wrote: post #174
Aachen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that OSM? I didn't even recognise it, good job on matching the color scheme to the website so well! There's a little (i)nformation icon on the bottom right but it doesn't seem to do anything. If this is OSM then attribution is required. It's how we make people aware of the noncommercial project (considering we barely have budget for servers, running ads is a bit hard) and it also tells people where they can add co…

Thanks! The location page was a map image, it's now an interactive map with the clickable (i)nformation icon.

Yay! Works for me and looking good :)

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

#197

Post by Aachen »

jorvi wrote: post #160
Aachen wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't fly for several reasons, one of them another commenter already mentioned. See these pages for why we can't copy facts from proprietary sources: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Copyright_Easter_Eggs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right

It's too bad you guys aren't incorporated in the EU[0]. Looking at that, Google is only allowed to protect its content with database rights for 15 years after publication, with "substantial additions" getting the same 15 years from the moment of their publishing. I bet there is an interesting legal argument in if modifying opening hours or location of a PoI is considered a "substantial addition", because otherwise an…

We broadly aim to be legal worldwide since it's not very cool if we get outlawed in e.g. Australia and businesses there can't use OpenStreetMap for anything, can't download OsmAnd there, MapComplete is blocked from browsers, etc. Incorporating in the EU was actually a consideration due to Brexit (don't remember the reasons) but it sounds like the benefits didn't outweigh the effort of moving, seeing as it hasn't happened

Interesting though that there's this different (15 years) term where normal copyright is just about forever. That's going to come in handy somewhere for datahoarder me I'm sure :D

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

#198

Post by Aachen »

Acrobatic_Road wrote: post #170
Aachen wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many companies do. Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, TomTom, Über, Komoot, VKontakte; I see German, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish local governments mentioned; Austrian emergency dispatch; USA school bus operator... Full list: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activi... It's more surprising at this point that Google isn't getting in on the fun, at least taking the good bits and calling their ow…

How do I get a job like this? Should I just email the team leads or is it the kind of job that's done in-person in another country?

I'd say government is your best bet unless you live in a low-income country and can get into one of these teams

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

#199

Post by habi »

lapetitejort wrote: post #159
ndriscoll wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do that, little free libraries, water fountains, etc. all in StreetComplete as well.

The amount things you can map in OSM is impressive. However I ran into two things that have no formal tags: time capsules (historic=time_capsule), and camera obscuras (camera_type=obscura). You can add the values, but they are not official. Time capsule is in the work [0]. [0]: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposal:Time_capsule

> However I ran into two things that have no formal tags:

You can use https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Any_tags_you_like on OpenStreetMap. Many of the used tags are simply "in use" and not formalized with a proposal.

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

#200

Post by janpeuker »

aweb wrote: post #2

I discovered that recently, it's a very fun way to contribute to OpenStreetMap, and the UI is really well-done, it's totally beginner friendly! I wish there was a way to do more than labeling though, like add simple roads and footpaths

I love the app idea but I don't think it's beginner friendly - for example it starts zoomed out of the globe and there is no button to zoom to the location; also it's unclear what the hatched lines until one zooms in.
Post reply on HN