3 ms·

This might be the right time to suggest OpenStreetMaps. I turned to it after not being able to fix things in Google and endless advertising. OSM data is flaky..

This might be the right time to suggest OpenStreetMaps. I turned to it after not being able to fix things in Google and endless advertising. OSM data is flaky... but you can fix it!

chrismorgan 6y ago
Amusingly, OSM apps can suffer from similar problems, because the way things are done vary across the world, and the software tends to at least start by being designed to work best with the way things are annotated in a particular area. I filed https://github.com/QwantResearch/qwantmaps/issues/65 https://github.com/QwantResearch/qwantmaps/issues/65 because Qwant Maps was resolving “Navarre” to the centre of a rather large administrative boundary by that name, so that it’s 20km away from the village node that it should be using instead. (That particular issue is partly resolved by OSM data changes that have happened since: it’s still using the administrative boundary, which is the wrong thing for it to do, but seven months ago someone added an admin_center to that boundary so that Qwant Maps drops the pin on the right point rather than the centre of the boundary—though it still zooms to include the whole boundary, which is much wider than it should zoom.)
gfxgirl 6y ago
I don't see how OpenStreetMaps will do any better. On top of just mistakes there will be active fraud https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20237365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20237365
- aaronax 6y ago
  It's probably not controversial to say that Wikipedia is the "best" encyclopedia. What differences between Wikipedia and OSM do you think prevent OSM from becoming the best map?
  - MauranKilom 6y ago
    How exactly would you go about basing a map on secondary and tertiary sources?
  - Godel_unicode 6y ago
    One of the fundamental reasons Wikipedia works well is there's no profit in changing what an article says. Any time there is a motivation, the system falls apart and the article has to be protected and actively monitored.
    - blackboxlogic 6y ago
      There is plenty of profit in Wikipedia editing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_o...

This might be the right time to suggest OpenStreetMaps. I turned to it after not being able to fix things in Google and endless advertising. OSM data is flaky... but you can fix it!

chrismorgan 6y ago

Amusingly, OSM apps can suffer from similar problems, because the way things are done vary across the world, and the software tends to at least start by being designed to work best with the way things are annotated in a particular area. I filed https://github.com/QwantResearch/qwantmaps/issues/65 https://github.com/QwantResearch/qwantmaps/issues/65 because Qwant Maps was resolving “Navarre” to the centre of a rather large administrative boundary by that name, so that it’s 20km away from the village node that it should be using instead. (That particular issue is partly resolved by OSM data changes that have happened since: it’s still using the administrative boundary, which is the wrong thing for it to do, but seven months ago someone added an admin_center to that boundary so that Qwant Maps drops the pin on the right point rather than the centre of the boundary—though it still zooms to include the whole boundary, which is much wider than it should zoom.)

gfxgirl 6y ago

I don't see how OpenStreetMaps will do any better. On top of just mistakes there will be active fraud https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20237365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20237365

aaronax 6y ago
It's probably not controversial to say that Wikipedia is the "best" encyclopedia. What differences between Wikipedia and OSM do you think prevent OSM from becoming the best map?
- MauranKilom 6y ago
  How exactly would you go about basing a map on secondary and tertiary sources?
- Godel_unicode 6y ago
  One of the fundamental reasons Wikipedia works well is there's no profit in changing what an article says. Any time there is a motivation, the system falls apart and the article has to be protected and actively monitored.
  - blackboxlogic 6y ago
    There is plenty of profit in Wikipedia editing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_on_Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict-of-interest_editing_o...