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Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

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Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

#81

Post by ponorin »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #77
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally this means “national” and the sub-board on the OSM discussion forum.

Okay, that’s slightly more reasonable it means if I’m going to be rolling stuff back into OSM in a new country I should at least have a quick chat and ensure what I’m doing abides by that country’s regulations etc like South Korea has some notorious law around data residency

> South Korea has some notorious law around data residency

if you're talking about the export restrictions of map data, that only applies to official, government-managed geodata. OSM explicitly doesn't rely on any other maps, so the law doesn't apply.

Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

#82

Post by mikeocool »

jasonkester wrote: post #52

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 place I wanted to map, canoeing is basally legal everywhere, but there are many streams that no one ever canoes down, because it would be an enormous pain. There isn’t a way to represent this is OSM today, and community tends to be resistant to adding tags that map “subjective” data.

The solution would probably be for me to keep my own database of navigable streams with references to the OSM features, except that OSM features don’t really have stable ids. If another mapper comes along and decides to map an existing stream in more detail, they might choose to delete an existing stream feature and replace it, split it up into multiple features, or join several existing features together — all of which will result in id changes.

Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

#83

Post by ponorin »

DoctorOetker wrote: post #15

I'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…

OpenStreetMap is a 2D map with limited 3D features, not a streetview alternative. For crowdsourced street view there are services like Mapillary (now owned by Meta) and Panoramax, both of which are cleared for use in mapping in OSM (and in case of Panoramax which is self-hostable, often run by a local OSM community).

Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

#84

Post by Aurornis »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #75
Aurornis wrote: post #3

In 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.

I get this perspective. But I also find the standards to be onerous. They were honestly fine until this one: > Contact the relevant local communities affected by the contributions Do I literally have to do new local community outreach every little town one of my bookcases shows up in? Ridiculous if so

Refers to OSM communities, not the literal physical local communities offline.

If every contribution required community outreach, we wouldn’t see any contributions.

Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

#85

Post by laserbeam »

Is there a path forward to writing a guide for how users can contribute back to OSM if they wish? A "thank you for your contribution, if you wish to learn more about OSM and how our maps are built click here" => go to a blog post which describes the relationship with OSM, why Book Corners can't be liable for contributing data back to OSM, and how a user could do that if they wanted.

Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

#86

Post by berkes »

Moghammed wrote: post #59
jasonkester wrote: post #52

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…

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 time.

All I wanted was to allow obviously "wrong" data to be flagged with a note. Where "wrong" could easily be proven with links to other resources. "The shop is permanently closed. See this url at archive org about their announcement" or "contact details wrong. See their website at url and cross check with BigFoodDeliveryPlatform entry at ..."

Again. Reluctance for such automation is understandable wrt intelectual property rights. It becomes too easy for editors to copy in data that's not allowed.

But the result is that businesses on OSM are poorly represented, often many are missing. That data is hopelessly outdated. And that consumers use proprietary sources and apps to find e.g. a vegetarian restaurant in an unknown city, or to find out if the hairdresser is open at noon.

Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

#87

Post by marisen »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #66
Aurornis wrote: post #3

In 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.

That's not how I would summarize it. OSM is only giving them two options: apply to be treated as an automated sync source, or don't submit at all. They're willing to put in work and care but not to handle all the other complex barriers.

There's another path that the author hasn't considered, which is making users contribute directly to OSM.

To contribute a bookcase, ask them to create an OSM account, log in with OAuth, and send the edit straight to OSM.

Book corners becomes just a custom view and editor over OSM data, instead of being its own database.

Users are now responsible for the data they submit (OSM already has tools to deal with vandalism etc...).

Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

#88

Post by ddevnyc »

jasonkester wrote: post #52

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.

Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

#89

Post by DoctorOetker »

namibj wrote: post #80
DoctorOetker wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was talking about photogrammetry, preferably with 2 global shutter synchronous image sensors, attached to the ends of say a 1 m pole.

Don't need global shutter just use a bit more math and IMU data with frequency in excess of the frame rate. Make it work with the recording capabilities of a good modern phone and handle the compute in non-real-time.

the compute for rigidly separated binocular vision is much much more compute efficient and precise than having to guesstimate positions from monocular + IMU.

Re: Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

#90

Post by jasonkester »

mikeocool wrote: post #82
jasonkester wrote: post #52

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…

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 mentioned does in fact change or reuse its IDs every so often. There's already a periodic update that has to happen on any given boulder problem, to pull down changes from the other end. That also needs a way to self-heal if a record at the other end splits off into two pieces, and my ID now points to the wrong half of it.

It's all stuff you have to keep on top of, but your idea of keeping your own table with each record pointing back to OSM seems like the only path that avoids madness. Even it it does take some work to keep those references up to date.

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