> There is obviously outdated/sub-standard data, but automated fixes are forbidden. Please consider arms race encouraging automated edits would begin. A lot of

> There is obviously outdated/sub-standard data, but automated fixes are forbidden. Please consider arms race encouraging automated edits would begin. A lot of people have a lot of awfully different views about how map data should be recorded (you thought source code formatting was contentious?) > I couldn't expose an Add/Edit/Fix functionality for my users. Lots of tools have managed this. > if I wanted to let my users upload a photo of a venue, there was no service to store it No. That's not what OpenStreetMap is. They aren't there to give out free image storage. > The API returns only nodes entirely within an area Yes, it's meant to be a low-level API which makes few assumptions about the meaning of any of the data. For the ability to make more complex queries you could have looked at Overpass. And possibly there is a space for a third party service to provide an API with such an ability. Again, I don't see that as OSM's business - OSM here should be considered more like the UN. > There was free building data available for areas I was interested in, but I was told to copy them by hand. And yet NYC have managed somehow to get most city building data into OSM, so perhaps you haven't investigated every possible option for getting what you want here...?