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I use only 1 metric to compare maps - are they accurate giving directions to my address? Google Maps used to be great - far better than Map Quest. Waze was pr

by maire 6y ago

I use only 1 metric to compare maps - are they accurate giving directions to my address? Google Maps used to be great - far better than Map Quest. Waze was pretty bad. Apple was initially bad. Open Street Maps was pretty good except they thought my driveway was a road. In the past year Google got pretty bad. Apple became awesome. About a year ago Open Street Maps improved. Then this morning I checked Open Street Maps and it now has the exact same bug that has irritated me with Google! I suspect there is some bad code sharing between OSM and Google. Details - if your physical address is in a different county than your postal office it confuses the heck out of Google. OSM used to handle this just fine, but not now. Accuracy counts more than anything else!

lukeqsee 6y ago
What app are you using? OSM itself (openstreetmap.org) doesn't do routing, so I'm guessing the data itself is bad? It could be a bad governmental open data merge.
- maire 6y ago
  > What App are you using. I used the OSM web page. Just type in the address with zip code, and it takes you to a completely different different zip code. This is a relatively new bug. I find it interesting that I am down voted by 4 points. The OSM fans must not understand the value of user testing. Maybe it is the google fans who don't understand user testing.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    I'm sorry you're being downvoted, I see where you're coming from. The misunderstanding is that OSM is argued to be not a map but a database. The homepage at openstreetmap.org is meant to be a sort of dummy viewer, showing what data is there and that you can have different styles, it also integrates a popular geolocation service (Nominatim, this is the component you're complaining about) and some routing services. But it's all just a demo and not meant to be the best one could offer. There is no proper user testing because it's not a commercial company and also because it's just a simple demo, similar to how one might have a demo for some JavaScript library that shows many or all of its features but not necessarily in the best or most integrated way. The idea is that this database can be used by anyone, e.g. OsmAnd, the openstreetmap.org homepage, Facebook, Apple Maps, Mapbox, GraphHopper, etc. provide various services on top of it. Nominatim, the component you're having trouble with, is indeed fairly picky in its input. But do mind that you're comparing this to Google, the company on this planet that is the undisputed king of search. I'm not surprised their search function works better than this open source project using an open source set of data. For what it's worth, if you stick to common address formats and don't put in abbreviations like a country-specific postal code (it doesn't look for results near you, it just searches the planet for what you typed; it has no knowledge of where in the world you are as it doesn't track you -- yeah, maybe it should), then it works fine, or at least as reliable as the underlying data is.
    - mkl 6y ago
      Country-level GeoIP sounds like it could help, and wouldn't need to be stored (i.e. not tracking).
etimberg 6y ago
Is what you consider a driveway actually a driveway legally speaking? In rural areas even if you own all the property around the roadway, the road itself might be a public easement.
- maire 6y ago
  The driveway was put in by my father - so no it is not a roadway. I think there was wishful thinking since many of the OSM maintainers are mountain bikers and the Santa Cruz mountains has some desirable mountain biking paths. The back part of our property is on The Soquel Demonstration Forest which has an awesome mountain biking path. They were pretty good about fixing the issue when I pointed it out.
  - Reason077 6y ago
    You know the best thing about OSM? It's in the top left corner, right next to the OpenStreetMap logo. The "Edit" button. You could literally fix this issue yourself in under 5 minutes, and that includes the time to set up an account.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      Not necessarily. If the address lookup is making a wrong inference from correct data, then there wouldn't be anything to fix in the data.
      - Reason077 6y ago
        That case sounds like a bug/algorithm issue with address lookup software. If the OSM data is correct, then it would make the same mistake with any other correct map data source, right? But in this case, it sounds like the issue is that a private driveway is mis-labelled as a public route. This sort of thing is trivial to fix in OSM.
        maxerickson 6y ago
matkoniecz 6y ago
> I suspect there is some bad code sharing between OSM and Google. It is possible that both suffer from incorrect entries in the official database or some insane addressing scheme that requires special handling. Chance that Google Maps copied some buggy code from one of OSM software seems unlikely. And chances that OSM software copied GMaps code is even lower.

by maire 6y ago

lukeqsee 6y ago

What app are you using? OSM itself (openstreetmap.org) doesn't do routing, so I'm guessing the data itself is bad? It could be a bad governmental open data merge.

maire 6y ago
> What App are you using. I used the OSM web page. Just type in the address with zip code, and it takes you to a completely different different zip code. This is a relatively new bug. I find it interesting that I am down voted by 4 points. The OSM fans must not understand the value of user testing. Maybe it is the google fans who don't understand user testing.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  I'm sorry you're being downvoted, I see where you're coming from. The misunderstanding is that OSM is argued to be not a map but a database. The homepage at openstreetmap.org is meant to be a sort of dummy viewer, showing what data is there and that you can have different styles, it also integrates a popular geolocation service (Nominatim, this is the component you're complaining about) and some routing services. But it's all just a demo and not meant to be the best one could offer. There is no proper user testing because it's not a commercial company and also because it's just a simple demo, similar to how one might have a demo for some JavaScript library that shows many or all of its features but not necessarily in the best or most integrated way. The idea is that this database can be used by anyone, e.g. OsmAnd, the openstreetmap.org homepage, Facebook, Apple Maps, Mapbox, GraphHopper, etc. provide various services on top of it. Nominatim, the component you're having trouble with, is indeed fairly picky in its input. But do mind that you're comparing this to Google, the company on this planet that is the undisputed king of search. I'm not surprised their search function works better than this open source project using an open source set of data. For what it's worth, if you stick to common address formats and don't put in abbreviations like a country-specific postal code (it doesn't look for results near you, it just searches the planet for what you typed; it has no knowledge of where in the world you are as it doesn't track you -- yeah, maybe it should), then it works fine, or at least as reliable as the underlying data is.
  - mkl 6y ago
    Country-level GeoIP sounds like it could help, and wouldn't need to be stored (i.e. not tracking).

etimberg 6y ago

Is what you consider a driveway actually a driveway legally speaking? In rural areas even if you own all the property around the roadway, the road itself might be a public easement.

maire 6y ago
The driveway was put in by my father - so no it is not a roadway. I think there was wishful thinking since many of the OSM maintainers are mountain bikers and the Santa Cruz mountains has some desirable mountain biking paths. The back part of our property is on The Soquel Demonstration Forest which has an awesome mountain biking path. They were pretty good about fixing the issue when I pointed it out.
- Reason077 6y ago
  You know the best thing about OSM? It's in the top left corner, right next to the OpenStreetMap logo. The "Edit" button. You could literally fix this issue yourself in under 5 minutes, and that includes the time to set up an account.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Not necessarily. If the address lookup is making a wrong inference from correct data, then there wouldn't be anything to fix in the data.
    - Reason077 6y ago
      That case sounds like a bug/algorithm issue with address lookup software. If the OSM data is correct, then it would make the same mistake with any other correct map data source, right? But in this case, it sounds like the issue is that a private driveway is mis-labelled as a public route. This sort of thing is trivial to fix in OSM.
      - maxerickson 6y ago

matkoniecz 6y ago

> I suspect there is some bad code sharing between OSM and Google. It is possible that both suffer from incorrect entries in the official database or some insane addressing scheme that requires special handling. Chance that Google Maps copied some buggy code from one of OSM software seems unlikely. And chances that OSM software copied GMaps code is even lower.