geteilt von: https://feddit.nl/post/33407329
We’ve all already talked about switching away from google/apple maps to something like openstreetmaps, mapy, tomtom amigo, etc. But all of these services use openstreetmaps (UK non-profit) as a source and they still miss a lot of local data even for bigger cities!
If you have some spare time, think about adding a bit of data to the map with your local knowledge. There’s a lot of business data missing that is on google maps like websites, phone numbers and opening hours but also stuff like parking lots and whether they’re publicly accessible and free or not. Adding these makes the competition of ALL services using OSM as a source better.
I also use the mobile app https://streetcomplete.app/ and https://every-door.app/ to add data while on my walks, these make my walks more engaging and I actually take longer ones + see new places because of it. Streetcomplete also has a focus on important and easy to collect data with their default filters, and you can choose what you want to contribute.
If you really want to get into the thick of it and contribute more than just simple data you can always check out https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/How_to_contribute and see in which of the many ways you can contribute!
Thanks for bringing this to my attention! I installed both Organic Maps and Streetcomplete on my phone now.
Organic Maps has faced some recent controversy, circling around use of donations to fund personal vacations, development of some functionality in private repositories, commercials partners (e.g. Kayak), and hints that they’re building the company to sell for profit.
I can’t speak to the truth of all this, but CoMaps is a stable community fork with active development and FOSS-embracing principles.
Do you know where I can read more about this? I haven’t been paying attention to this at all and am curious to know more.
Here’s the open letter sent to the Organic Maps shareholders from many of the community of contributors, prior to the CoMaps fork.
Here’s a follow-up post with some details about the response.
The CoMaps announcement blog post says that they made no headway in resolving these issues, hence the split.
Oh, good to know! I will look at other options then
https://www.comaps.app/ is a community led fork of Organic Maps, which was made as a response to the controversy.
Personal addition: You would be surprised, how many details in your area are still missing! And if you want to “increase gamification” or even make it more challenging, you try to catch features while on your commute or lunch break! Or by going out with a group - doing it in "team mode.
But please do not do this if you commute by car or bike :)
I love Street Complete! It gets me out of the house and walking, and it’s fun to do it when traveling, especially when there is a bunch of missing data you can fill in.
I used to do the tasks from StreetComplete, but the app has stopped showing any. Does anyone happen to know how to fix that?
EDIT: Clearing cached map data fixed the issue
Do you manually add houses? My whole city needs building mapping but idk if it can be automated.
Well, I am also a “newbie” for OSM. But for building outline mapping it’s done on OSM editors, not with the StreetComplete app. So not sure if this can be automated. Most work is done manually, I believe. If you check out https://osmlab.github.io/show-me-the-way/ you will see how people are mapping their neighbourhood manually, too! - Yes, such a crazy community this is!
I certainly don’t do it as regularly as I did, but I knocked at a few good sized areas.
I’m a committed contributor in the OSM Notes area. As I see a lot of people here recommending StreetComplete, which is an awesome tool, let me tell you there are some weird notes coming from this app users trying to add notes to OSM which are not useful. For example, notes like “they don’t show their opening hours” when asked about opening hours of some POI. As you can see, these answers as notes do not add information to the POI at all. On the other hand, the app is mighty useful for beginners wanting to contribute.
For example, notes like “they don’t show their opening hours” when asked about opening hours of some POI. As you can see, these answers as notes do not add information to the POI at all.
No, this is actually somewhat useful. At least you should add
opening_hours:signed=nofor cases like this. If the hours are not specified at all (as they are for some places), useopening_hours=unknown.The reason this is useful is so to specify that someone tried to figure out the opening hours, but there aren’t any, so at least for a while there’s no reason to check again.
Right, there lies the problem. Within StreetComplete you cannot set the POI-stats like that. You only answer questions or enter numbers (stairs, specific hours). So, the App should set this, if you select the drop-down answer “There are no opening hours.” - Does anyone has connections to the developers to claim this “bug”?
It’s a FOSS project, hosted on GitHub. You can even make a PR yourself, the codebase is very readable, the devs are really nice and responsive. I made a contribution with 0 previous Kotlin experience. And if you don’t want to do that, just open an issue.
Why not implementing this as a tag instead? Why the extra step of creating a note if the tag exists? I’ve been in OSM for way more than a decade and these tags are news for me, probably the developers of the app themselves don’t know them.
For example, notes like “they don’t show their opening hours” when asked about opening hours
Guessing this is probably someone less tech savvy who were asked this and they felt they had to answer even if they can’t give anything meaningful. I see this on reviews a lot where the website will ask buyers about a product and get a lot of I don’t knows.
Well, that sounds like an app issue. Because this is one of the standard answers when you don’t find opening hours. Sure, it’s no “new” information, but at least you now know from the note that somebody has tried checking this, without success. - Is there a better way, in your opinion?
The other partner that answered my comment replied, accurately, what could be done instead. They propose that the notes solver uses a specific tagging. I think this could be implemented in the app, instead of the note option.
What’s the best way to start contributing? Is there like a written tutorial or a video outlining the process? Or should I just download one of the mentioned apps and it will tell me everything I need to know?
By far the easiest to get started with is StreetComplete. You go around answering questions.
For example:
Afaik you can’t add new roads for example in it, I am sure there are other tools for that, I just haven’t tried any.
You can add new roads (or really anything) with desktop editors like JOSM, iD, Merkaartor, or on Android you can use Vespucci. StreetComplete is intentionally very limited in what it can do so that it’s easy to use, so you can’t add new roads with it.
You can add GPS tracks though that can be turned into a road later using another editor
I have found Street Complete to be perfectly useable with nothing more than the advice that’s in the app. For some of the details of how things should be classified I found the discussion pages on the relevant map features on the wiki ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_features ) to be useful, though I have no idea if that’s actually the best source
The wiki is definitely the most authoritative source.
I’ve also started using this on my walks. My town has thousands of information points missing but I’m slowly starting to make a dent!
Another fun way to contribute that I’d give a call out to is map roulette: https://maproulette.org/ , this one has lists of easy tasks you can do typically without being in person to fix up issues.
quick reminder: the project is called “OpenStreetMap”, without an “s” in the end
Right you are! Did not checked when copying the title. But now it’s edited.
Thanks, today I learned about https://every-door.app/ which looks super useful
So, quick question, what is the solution to run my own self-hosted OSM server and use that for turn based navigation with GPS ?
Can I do that ?
I want to leave google maps behind foreverOSM is like Wikipedia, there is no point self hosting it. If you want to download the data you can, OrganicMaps/CoMaps for android does this automatically so you can use it offline
What do you mean no point in self-hosting it.
I do plan to host a private wikipedia instance, resiliency is it’s own point.
I understand it’s not necessarily economical to run private instance when I could use “someone else’s computer”
but I’m in a very burned out mood about “other people’s computers” and how often they stop doing what I want
I do want to run my own things, my own fully offline, pull out the internet and it still works things
If anything as prevention against capability regressionNot going to repeat what the other person replied to you but just to let you know: https://kiwix.org/en/
If that is what I think it is then that’s sick ! Thank you !
There is a worldwide data dump (153 GB) once in a while. download.
You can spin up your own database server and a separate routing server, e.g. osrm.
You will inevitably fall behind in live edits though, forcing you to download a new dump periodically. As long as your own database doesn’t need to have any edits, this should be fine, but tedious.
You will probably also need to host a tile rendering server ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Servers/Tile_Rendering) that will print the map, which can be quite computation heavy. The official servers have a lot to benefit from cdn/cache. Self hosters will not.
You also need a gui - perhaps Leaflet - to put it all together.
Sorry, can’t answer this. - But I never use Google Maps or any self-hosted solution, just “OsmAnd” (https://osmand.net/) on my mobile for about a decade. It gives all I need for navigation, thought it’s not FOSS.
What do you mena it’s not FOSS ? AFAIK it is
