6 ms·

I've found that in terms of supporting any kind of additional analysis, OSM data to be unreliable to the point of uselessness, which isn't to say there is a bet

I've found that in terms of supporting any kind of additional analysis, OSM data to be unreliable to the point of uselessness, which isn't to say there is a better alternative. I think this quote from your article: "One of the most significant technical problems with OSM is the lack of a review model, that is for a change to the map to be staged and then reviewed before being applied. Not having this functionality caused ripples of problems throughout the system, some of which I'll discuss here." is the primary reason I can't regularly use OSM data. Trust me when I say there are millions of instance where having reliable data regarding streets could save me time/ stress. Do you have any thoughts on how to improve the quality of OSMaps? Conceptually, I feel like the product is indispensable. In practice, I feel like the product is utterly unusable.

emacsen 9y ago
This was a hard post to make. OSM was a big part of my life for many years, and I have friends in the project. I like my friends (even the ones I disagree with). But where OSM has failed most in my view (and maybe I need to add this to the article) is that there are now free geographic datasets from local governments and without the ability to integrate them into OSM easily, and then update them (which we basically can't do), I fear OSM is going to ultimately fail at its mission
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Is this a technology issue? Or a funding issue?
  - croshan 9y ago
    Seems more like a political issue
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    It's frequently a licensing issue and then also a resources issue. There's relatively generalized tools for diffing data against OSM and outputting a change file, but lots of data is released using ambiguous or slightly incompatible licensing. One example is http://blog.improve-osm.org/en/2018/01/new-features-and-enhancements-in-cygnus/ http://blog.improve-osm.org/en/2018/01/new-features-and-enha...
- emacsen 9y ago
  I went ahead and added a small section on this.
- piracykills 9y ago
  Is OSM not doing this? I swear I've seen them importing and updating street level address data in my city - it directly referenced some city GIS server. Maybe not officially, but someone must be running scripts that do this?
  - Avamander 9y ago
    Somebody might be doing that for their area but for example I haven't seen that happen in Estonia where the government provides absolutely excellent data but there's no easy and meaningful way getting that data into OSM
    - piracykills 9y ago
      Seems more like a few hour long hacking session than some serious systemic problem to me.
      - dfox 9y ago
        I would stress the "meaningful" part. I assume that every country in EU gives out CC0 (or so) licensed data for at least geocoding that have the same EU-wide high-level hierarchical format. Problem is that this hierarchy does not map well to OSM tags (which is one instance of problems caused by using tags instead of layers) and often also does not map well to local users' expectations (ie. converting the object names to/from handwritten address is non-trivial problem). Also sometimes the government provided data tends to be stale.
        zo1 9y ago
        Stale or not, this seems like a ridiculously complicated problem without some set of rules/boundaries to govern it. I.e. You're doing a diff with spatial data that not only differs in the spatial component, but in the semantic/descriptive domain as well.
        Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
        > I assume that every country in EU gives out CC0 (or so) licensed data for at least geocoding that have the same EU-wide high-level hierarchical format. Far from the case, I'm afraid.
- lucb1e 9y ago
  Where do you have experience with OSM data anyway? Because your view of the project differs from mine as day differs from night. The quality in western Europe is equal to or better than commercial maps. And the one time I looked at a random, small village in the Sahara, OSM was also better: https://twitter.com/lucb1e/status/522491538912604160 https://twitter.com/lucb1e/status/522491538912604160
bonzini 9y ago
As an occasional OSM editor, I wouldn't really feel good about moderation. My edits are limited basically to my home town (10.000 inhabitants, about 10 sq km) where I am adding unmapped roads (usually agricultural, sometimes new construction) that I "discover" while running. I started doing that simply because Runkeeper's website uses OSM and it was showing me running in the middle of nowhere, while there was actually a small road leading to my grandfather's place. (And FWIW Google doesn't have agricultural roads at all, which kinda sucks for running even slightly out of the beaten path). My edits are probably not perfect, but while somebody cared about mapping the town in the first place, it was out of date enough that probably nobody would bother to approve or perfect my changes. Having them rejected would probably have caused me to stop contributing too. What kinds of issues and vandalisms did you experience?
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  I'd be surprised if your edits would be rejected. More likely, whoever was doing QA would make a few minor alignment adjustments based on satellite data and any county data they could glean (the latter is likely where all the road data came from). Moderation isn't the worst idea, OSM in many areas basically has large scale edit wars, wasting editors time as they fight over road and building alignment with other editors that don't realize Microsoft's satellite data is 20ft off from reality.
- smichel17 9y ago
  I've contributed small-time to the Musicbrainz cd database, and I think they do it pretty well. New additions are automatically approved. Edits are accepted or rejected after a voting period (3 days, iirc). If nobody votes, they're approved by default; I believe (but am not certain) they are rejected in the case of a tie. I think the beauty of this system is that it gives complete autonomy with no oversight to individuals dealing with obscure data that nobody else cares about, while more popular data is subjected to higher scrutiny.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    This is more or less how OSM works now, except there is no waiting period. But undoing a recent edit is pretty straightforward, so there is a similar effect.
MayeulC 9y ago
How would a layered maintainer model similar to the one of the Linux kernel work on a project like OSM? Have a Continent maintainer, a region maintainer, a country maintainer, a town maintainer, etc... all pulling only "good" edits. I think this approach could work, couldn't it?

emacsen 9y ago

This was a hard post to make. OSM was a big part of my life for many years, and I have friends in the project. I like my friends (even the ones I disagree with). But where OSM has failed most in my view (and maybe I need to add this to the article) is that there are now free geographic datasets from local governments and without the ability to integrate them into OSM easily, and then update them (which we basically can't do), I fear OSM is going to ultimately fail at its mission

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Is this a technology issue? Or a funding issue?
- croshan 9y ago
  Seems more like a political issue
- maxerickson 9y ago
  It's frequently a licensing issue and then also a resources issue. There's relatively generalized tools for diffing data against OSM and outputting a change file, but lots of data is released using ambiguous or slightly incompatible licensing. One example is http://blog.improve-osm.org/en/2018/01/new-features-and-enhancements-in-cygnus/ http://blog.improve-osm.org/en/2018/01/new-features-and-enha...
emacsen 9y ago
I went ahead and added a small section on this.
piracykills 9y ago
Is OSM not doing this? I swear I've seen them importing and updating street level address data in my city - it directly referenced some city GIS server. Maybe not officially, but someone must be running scripts that do this?
- Avamander 9y ago
  Somebody might be doing that for their area but for example I haven't seen that happen in Estonia where the government provides absolutely excellent data but there's no easy and meaningful way getting that data into OSM
  - piracykills 9y ago
    Seems more like a few hour long hacking session than some serious systemic problem to me.
    - dfox 9y ago
      I would stress the "meaningful" part. I assume that every country in EU gives out CC0 (or so) licensed data for at least geocoding that have the same EU-wide high-level hierarchical format. Problem is that this hierarchy does not map well to OSM tags (which is one instance of problems caused by using tags instead of layers) and often also does not map well to local users' expectations (ie. converting the object names to/from handwritten address is non-trivial problem). Also sometimes the government provided data tends to be stale.
      - zo1 9y ago
        Stale or not, this seems like a ridiculously complicated problem without some set of rules/boundaries to govern it. I.e. You're doing a diff with spatial data that not only differs in the spatial component, but in the semantic/descriptive domain as well.
      - Doctor_Fegg 9y ago
        > I assume that every country in EU gives out CC0 (or so) licensed data for at least geocoding that have the same EU-wide high-level hierarchical format. Far from the case, I'm afraid.
lucb1e 9y ago
Where do you have experience with OSM data anyway? Because your view of the project differs from mine as day differs from night. The quality in western Europe is equal to or better than commercial maps. And the one time I looked at a random, small village in the Sahara, OSM was also better: https://twitter.com/lucb1e/status/522491538912604160 https://twitter.com/lucb1e/status/522491538912604160

bonzini 9y ago

As an occasional OSM editor, I wouldn't really feel good about moderation. My edits are limited basically to my home town (10.000 inhabitants, about 10 sq km) where I am adding unmapped roads (usually agricultural, sometimes new construction) that I "discover" while running. I started doing that simply because Runkeeper's website uses OSM and it was showing me running in the middle of nowhere, while there was actually a small road leading to my grandfather's place. (And FWIW Google doesn't have agricultural roads at all, which kinda sucks for running even slightly out of the beaten path). My edits are probably not perfect, but while somebody cared about mapping the town in the first place, it was out of date enough that probably nobody would bother to approve or perfect my changes. Having them rejected would probably have caused me to stop contributing too. What kinds of issues and vandalisms did you experience?

StudentStuff 9y ago
I'd be surprised if your edits would be rejected. More likely, whoever was doing QA would make a few minor alignment adjustments based on satellite data and any county data they could glean (the latter is likely where all the road data came from). Moderation isn't the worst idea, OSM in many areas basically has large scale edit wars, wasting editors time as they fight over road and building alignment with other editors that don't realize Microsoft's satellite data is 20ft off from reality.
smichel17 9y ago
I've contributed small-time to the Musicbrainz cd database, and I think they do it pretty well. New additions are automatically approved. Edits are accepted or rejected after a voting period (3 days, iirc). If nobody votes, they're approved by default; I believe (but am not certain) they are rejected in the case of a tie. I think the beauty of this system is that it gives complete autonomy with no oversight to individuals dealing with obscure data that nobody else cares about, while more popular data is subjected to higher scrutiny.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  This is more or less how OSM works now, except there is no waiting period. But undoing a recent edit is pretty straightforward, so there is a similar effect.

MayeulC 9y ago

How would a layered maintainer model similar to the one of the Linux kernel work on a project like OSM? Have a Continent maintainer, a region maintainer, a country maintainer, a town maintainer, etc... all pulling only "good" edits. I think this approach could work, couldn't it?