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I'm pretty sure that Google Maps does auto-discovery of hiking and biking trails by simply watching peoples' positions? At least I've had rather good experienc
by matt4077 8y ago
I'm pretty sure that Google Maps does auto-discovery of hiking and biking trails by simply watching peoples' positions?
At least I've had rather good experiences using Maps for biking. Even small, unofficial paths were mapped, and travel times indicated that Maps had an accurate idea of their condition.
- ghaff 8y agoGoogle's pretty weak for hiking trails in the US in my experience; OSM is far from perfect but it's much better. They're both significantly worse than maps focused on hikers.
- zylepe 8y agoI recently switch https://onthegomap.com https://onthegomap.com from google to OSM for walking paths between points. The trail quality is much better where I live (Massachusetts) but I have been getting a lot of complaints from people all over the world that it no longer has their trails. I wonder what the lowest friction way to get my users to help contribute trails to OSM would be?
- seba_dos1 8y agoA built-in editor that's specifically targeted to what interests them. There's an app called OpenVegeMap which shows you vegetarian and vegan restaurants nearby. It also allows you to add and edit this information. Found a nice vegan bistro? You're just two clicks away from adding a missing tag about it to OSM. Just this and nothing else.
- zylepe 8y agoGreat idea, signing up for an OSM account is a pretty high barrier though. Is OSM is ok with anonymous edits through 3rd party apps?
- maxerickson 8y agoNo. The person doing the edits should be directly contactable through the OSM messaging system.
- rmc 8y agoAs Max Erickson says, they need their own OSM account. You can write your own editor, which submits changes to the OSM API. Users can authorise your editor to edit in their name via OAuth. Once someone has auth'ed your app, they can stay entirely within your app. But be careful that you don't lead your editors to think this isn't a global database that others use, or other OSMers will be annoyed.,
- sabas_ge 8y agoYou can act as proxy like WheelMap does (upload the edits on behalf of the users), but you must then be reachable when some edit is wrong.
- rmc 8y agoStreetComplete is an Android app for answering simple questions about things in OSM. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete
- maxerickson 8y agoHave an opt in for sharing their gps traces and maybe get them to take and share georeferenced pictures of trail signs.
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoWith auto-discovery of routes, Google might be picking up the most popular routes, but that does that does not mean they are the best ones. For example, on Strava heatmaps you can frequently see routes that are heavily cycled, but they might also be extremely stressful because one has to share the road with traffic. In fact, most cyclists might only be using them because they are sports cyclists with very thin tires unable to explore and find other options. The great thing about OSM is that it only takes a single mapper to find a nearby alternative and add it to the map. > At least I've had rather good experiences using Maps for biking. You wouldn’t in many countries around the world. Google Maps is considerably inferior to OpenStreetMap for cycling in much of the Western Balkans, Africa, and Patagonia.
- matt4077 8y agoFunny you should mention Albania: It's exactly where I learned never to doubt Google Maps. Specifically, never to assume that "It's like ten meters between these two points... I don't see a reason why we would need to go all the way around". (There was a 30m deep gorge) More to the point: Given enough position data, Google should be able to assess all those road parameters you mention, far better than manual entry could ever do at scale. They could easily notice, as but one example, when locals routinely take different routes than they would suggest and modify their data accordingly.