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I was once on a trip in Åndalsness, one of the most scenic places in Norway. Fjords, mountains, you know it.
On the walk to our cabin, a little outside of town, I was checking something on OSM, might have been just learning to use it and read it (it has some learning curve when switching from G-maps).
To my surprise, I saw a shortcut/walking path exiting from the road we were walking on. Already used such paths twice that day for a nice shortcut that didn't show up on G-maps. But there was nothing there.
I told my friend that I'd like to check what this strange hacker map is showing. When we looked again, we noticed that there actually was a trail uphill, what at first sight seemed to just be a forested hillside.
As we went up, the trail started to be more evident. We climbed for a couple minutes, went past a cabin with no road leading to it (pretty normal in Norway), and a few more minutes after it we arrived at a semi-top, with a big boulder and a picturesque view out from that viewpoint.
Very cool memory on the last day of the holidays, made possible thanks to somebody marking that trail on OSM.
I did something like that for my local area (in about 2012). It turned into a hobby, whereby I spent a couple of years on foot exploring the local bush in minute detail and used OSM to document what I found. There are features on OSM that exist on no other map, especially off-road. I know other people do this too, as similar obscure tracks have appeared in neighbouring areas.
I've been on a number of orienteering or rogaining events where the maps look familiar, and it turns out they have used my OSM data. It's been great to see something lasting come from that mapping effort. (It's also a nice bonus in such events to be that familiar with the map and its covered area!) I suspect some local bush fire brigade members might also be looking at OSM, as a number of the fire trails I mapped seem to have had names added.
Back in 2019 OSM helped us by showing a walking path back from the Shiroyama Park hill in Kagoshima, Japan. It has a beautiful view of the city of Kagoshima and the towering Sakurajima volcano across the bay.
Google Maps only showed some car only roads and tunnels leading back to the city. But OSM showed a walking path comming down from one of the parking areas.
And indeed, it was there and we arrived back down in the city in a few minutes, avoiding lengthy backtracking.
One of these viewpoints maybe ?
I got into OSM and StreetComplete to flesh out intersections, stop signs, and sidewalks in my area. I always felt like I was doing something wrong though. I created crosswalks, then OSM would prompt me to connect the crosswalk to the road via a crossing. In StreetComplete, it felt like I was filling in duplicate data. I had to add whether the crossing had crossing lights not only at the middle crossing, but on the sides as well. This probably doesn't make any sense.
Basically, I am never confident I am editing OSM correctly. Am I supposed to manually draw out sidewalks, or tag the road as having a sidewalk? After adding sidewalks in my area, StreetComplete is now asking me if roads have sidewalks, which I clearly see on the map. Reminds me of editing the various Wiki pages. There's several ways of documenting something, only one way is correct, and it's undocumented.
edit: after playing with StreetComplete more, I noticed you can mark sidewalks as displayed separately. This is tagged as "sidewalk:both=separate" on the road. Whether this is the right way to do things I do not know
Usually in OSM there are several different ways to map things, to varying levels of detail. (E.g. As you discovered, you can just tag a road as having sidewalks, or trace out the actual sidewalks themselves.) Generally, as long as the information you're adding is accurate, you're helping. Changing tagging schemes later is a lot easier than re-discovering that information from scratch. If you're really concerned, usually the wiki has good information on what is currently considered best practice.
Incidentally, I think for crossings StreetComplete now only asks about the actual crossing nodes, so no more duplicate quests.
When in doubt, look for adjacent localities and do what the others are already doing. OSM is chaotic and (usually) driven by consensus that can be slightly different in specific communities.
The first time I tried using OSM's web UI to add stuff, my head was spinning. Bless you folks who do the intersections, speed limits, and whatnot.
I've mostly stuck to using Organic Maps to add individual businesses, that's a very easy thing to do. Drop a pin, name, phone number/website/hours/whatever, submit.
> Basically, I am never confident I am editing OSM correctly.
This is the case for the majority of users. The rules are complex and not always obvious or clearly defined. The world is complex, unfortunately, and so is describing it accurately.
One of OSM killer features for me is finding drinking water along the route when I'm hiking/biking/exploring. Unfortunately, there isn't a single, consistent label used for all sources of drinking water. So I have to check amenity=drinking_water, man_made=water_tap, amenity=fountain, one after the other.
I think StreetComplete has missions to add the label drinking_water=yes to all of those, so the situation might improve in the future.
When I'm unsure I make a note with a photo and someone who knows more looks into it.
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
Great app. There is also https://every-door.app/ that gives you slightly different set of tasks and allows you to place POI easily. I recently mapped a lot of trash cans and benches around my neighborhood while walking with my dog.
It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps, but we can't do vice versa. OSM should change their license to something like if you use our data, you have to make yours open as well.
Just downloaded and made 15+ small contributions in the vicinity of my area. Very well built app. Super simple to use. And gamification is top-notch. Recommended.
Reminds me of when Microsoft released a new Flight Sim, and people immediately started spotting buildings and things that were out of the norm in the game, which in turn started getting reported to OSM for corrections.
https://hackaday.com/2020/08/21/microsoft-flight-simultors-d...
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'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 minutes to update some information only makes sense if I can present them with a case that this will help their business.
Does anybody here know of ways that OSM data is used and products that people actually use to find businesses? I have heard rumors that Apple pulls data from OSM every now and again in areas where their own datasets are sparse. But do we have anything more meaningful or more concrete that would work in an area like France where data is not necessarily sparse in Apple's maps? (I'm saying this looking at Google Maps here in southern France where half of the shops that it displays just don't exist anymore for years...)
I love this tool.
It brought me back to mapping on OSM.
Wherever you are and need to wait for a minute, there are quests to be solved there.
I recommend SCEE for those who are already familiar with OSM mapping or are in an area where the most common tasks are already covered: https://github.com/Helium314/SCEE
This is very cool, I wish there was some way to use it on a bicycle though. For example, when moving into a street it could ask (using voice) if this street is paved, and I could answer it using voice too.
One thing missing on osm is pictures. Would defeats Google maps if it had some, where users would feedback and bad shots would get wiped to save space. We would get the best shots the world has to offer.
I downloaded this, and I'm slightly amazed at how much detail there is. What material the utility poles are made of?
Tesla cars with their dashcam turned on collect enormous amounts of data.
They have 4-6 cameras writing continuously to a USB flash drive.
I wonder why we can't get folks to drive around and collect it, then use AI/automation to fill in great swaths of information automagically.
EDIT: some people do similar things:
- https://wcedmisten.fyi/post/dashcam-to-openstreetmap/
EDIT2: and maybe it goes the other way:
- https://teslamotorsclub.com/2019/11/04/tesla-owners-can-edit...
Hi! Is this yours? Would you like help porting this to iOS?
I am using EveryDoor to contribute to OpenStreetMap. I find the information it allows to add much more useful than the one in streetcomplete quests.
StreetComplete's trick is hiding the tagging model until you actually need it. Most contributor tools expose the schema too early.
Every day I take a 2 hour walk and contribute as much data as I can to OSM using this app.
I really love this - fantastic that it's open source too as would love to contribute. Is there an opportunity to add fresh new sites on this?
https://shufflenblues.com/location/
OSM is fantastic. I wanted a free, unencumbered map that matches the site's theme for ride sharing, billeting, and the venue location. The solution wasn't trivial, but at least it was possible. Couldn't imagine doing that with Google Maps.
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.
I just downloaded it and launched it. It's very funny and somewhat addictive but it also feel overwhelming, just around me there are hundreds and hundreds of questions.
Some,I really don't care to answer, like "the Telephone pole, is it made of wood or steel ?!"
Who cares honestly.
Some more info in an earlier thread [1]
[1] CoMaps – FOSS Offline Maps | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808928
Please advertise that you offer it on f-droid as well! I only see Play store and App store links. But it's available right here: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplet...
Is https://keepright.at still a thing? That used to be my go-to site when I was bored and wanted to find things to fix in OSM. No matter how much you fix, it seems that when you go back to that site, there seem to always be tons of stuff flagged for fixing.
Is there something equivalent for iOS?
Thank you for the reminder! I got out of the habit of checking StreetComplete since my previous neighborhood was well populated in OSM, but having just moved, I should check it out again.
StreetComplete is cool, fun and useful, yes. And there is its companion app StreetMeasure which makes it easy to add measurements like the width of a narrow street, for example.
This is such a great idea. Are there ever any plans for a web app?
Last week I am #2 in Sweden on StreetComplete, despite using veapucci for about half my edits (my neighborhood is pretty effed up).
AMA I guess
See also, https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SCEE
What's the best apps as a Google maps replacement that uses open street maps?
I enjoyed the simulated phone screenshots, particularly the choice of House of the Trembling Madness, a great beer stockist and drinking establishment on Lendal in York. I would like to think that the name in the input field is deliberately slightly wrong, ready to be fixed by someone. (It's "House of the Trembling Madness" rather than "The House of Trembling Madness".) Gamification at another level :-)
If anyone is interested in where StreetComplete is used or which quests are the most popular, you can check out: https://piebro.github.io/openstreetmap-statistics/stats/04_s...
They should've called the app MapQuest :-)
AMAZING work
In principle I like it, what I don't like is that some companies will use the data only for their own benefit / dystopian nightmare mission.
See also:
Been using this for my dog walks too. There's something oddly satisfying about turning a boring loop around the block into "wait, does that bin have a lid?" Never thought trash cans would be the thing that got me into mapping.