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I’m a contributor to OpenStreetMap, but what I find very lacking is the POI data It’s only updated if there’s someone like me in the local area, or if it’s a t

by eisa01 3y ago

I’m a contributor to OpenStreetMap, but what I find very lacking is the POI data It’s only updated if there’s someone like me in the local area, or if it’s a tourist destination. But even then it can be sparse (eg just visited Merida, Bacalar and Valladolid in Mexico), and it’s worse in “non-western” countries Tellingly, Overture Maps that use OSM for the street data to not use the POI data. A lot of people pointed out that the POI data of Overture had mediocre quality. While that is true, they do at least have coverage in places OSM do not. If you know the name of the place you can at least find it I’m not sure how this can become better, I’d think that a prerequisite would be that corporate users like Grab, DiDi, Uber start contributing But that may not happen as they are not allowed to combine datasets [1]. Hence you have a chicken and egg problem: The dataset is not usable until it is complete… The street data fundementally have the same problem, but that is easier to edit remotely and may be more stable in contrast to POIs So I’m starting to question if it’s really worth it to continue update POIs in OSM, but I also would not know how to contribute to Overture as it does have quite some errors :) [1] https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/discussions/102 https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/discussions/102 edit: Or maybe it is possible to conflate them, but that is not planned - https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/issues/96 https://github.com/OvertureMaps/data/issues/96

mpol 3y ago
An idea might be to have an "Adopt Your Own Neighbourhood" campaign. I don't know if this is seen as wanted in the OSM community, it might attract a lot of low-effort contributions which might wear out longtime volunteers. The way I started contributing to OSM is when I was tired of seeing old or no POI data and thought "enough is enough". I first started editing the shopping mall in my neighbourhood, then the schools, and so forth. It is now 5 years later and I can quite keep up locally with POI.
- eisa01 3y ago
  Same, 95% of my edits are POI data in the past two years and I fixed two of the main shipping streets in my neighborhood But yeah, not sure how scalable even such a campaign would be. I’m the only user I know that use EveryDoor to confirm/update POI in a city of 500k people… You’d probably need at least 1 out of 1000 people globally to actively contribute. That’s almost 10 million people, quite a bit more than the 1 million Organic Maps users and 250k OSM contributors in 2022 :)
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  local mappers interested in mapping their area are highly welcome! if anyone here is interested and unsure how to start, feel free to ask at https://community.openstreetmap.org/ https://community.openstreetmap.org/ (official forum, requires OSM account) or at one of other contact channels ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels ) - there is Slack, IRC, Discord and so on. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ may help but it is sadly suboptimal for someone completely new. If you just click edit you will get tutorial for default in-browser editor.
Rygian 3y ago
> So I’m starting to question if it’s really worth it to continue update POIs in OSM, but I also would not know how to contribute to Overture as it does have quite some errors :) It's not a chicken-and-egg situation. Here, the egg is clearly OpenStreetMap data, and the chicken are other maps (such as Overture) that benefit from OSM. Contribute to OSM for better eggs, or contribute to Overture to make your chicken look better.
NewsyHacker 3y ago
In my OSM career, bike-traveling the world, I have added POIs in all kinds of unlikely places in the developing world. But a real challenge is adding more than just the indication that there is, for example, a shop there. It’s hard to add a name= tag when the shop has not hung up a sign with a name. It’s hard to add an opening_hours= tag when the shop has not posted opening hours, and even if I ask the owners, they might say hours are totally fuzzy. Such clear information is largely a feature of the developed world. In some parts of urban Latin America, the challenge in adding POIs is that it is ill-advised to slowly, aimlessly walk down the street with your phone, because it could get snatched.
- Reason077 3y ago
  > “It’s hard to add a name= tag when the shop has not hung up a sign with a name. It’s hard to add an opening_hours= tag when the shop has not posted opening hours” Even Google Maps has this problem. There’s a lot of “great noodle shop second on left” type business names in some parts of the world. Owners often live above/behind/in the shop/restaurant and they open more or less on demand. Hours will change seasonally - if there’s customers they’re open and if there isn’t they close. The real trick with POI data is not just the data itself but the metadata that tells you how important it is. If you know how many people are searching for a place, visiting a place, reviewing it etc then you can boost its prominence in map rendering and search results, greatly improving UX. An ideal solution would be for all the travel, mapping apps, etc that compete against Google (TripAdvisor, Yelp, Apple Maps, Facebook, all the in-car apps, etc) to share some kind of global OpenPOI database on top of OSM that aggregates reviews, photos, metadata, etc. And also gives owners a single source of truth to update their business data, keep it updated in real time, and have it disseminated everywhere…
szszrk 3y ago
What do you think about Street Complete [0][1][2]? I know it doesn't let you provide all and any data, but I find it super friendly. It lets you add details to objects that already exist in OSM. It looks very polished, has nice map, icons, and this default style of sticking to your actual location like some location based games for crazy people (I'm a former Ingress player, Enlightened FTW). My neighborhood has all details about building size, roofs, street lights, you know if there are markings on the ground on street crossings (for people with poor vision), each path has clear info of what's it's made of, and stores has open/close hours provided. Super cool, easy to use and has real impact. [0] https://streetcomplete.app/ https://streetcomplete.app/ [1] https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/ https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/ [2] https://play.google.com/store/search?q=street%20complete&c=apps https://play.google.com/store/search?q=street%20complete&c=a...
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  > I know it doesn't let you provide all and any data, but I find it super friendly. But shops can be added (using shop overlay). (I am one of people developing StreetComplete)
  - szszrk 3y ago
    Didn't realized.l, thanks! Kudos to you, as you can see I love the app.
  - JeremyNT 3y ago
    I adore this app and it makes it even more fun to wander around new areas on foot. One thing I ran into is that there are buildings that aren't shown in Street Complete. I tried adding a note but there seems like no way to add them in. If there was some easy way to flag a property as having a new building and relying on desktop users to fill in the details that would be super helpful!
    - matkoniecz 3y ago
      long tap to create note, attach photo of location, is the best StreetComplete specific solution You can install Vespucci to draw buildings directly on smartphone
dn3500 3y ago
I live in Mérida. The POI data on Open Streetmap is pretty bad. I've been updating it on OSM but my changes never seem to make it to Organic Maps.
- stereo 3y ago
  I was in Mérida a year ago and used OpenStreetMap to get around. I thought the quality was quite good! Thank you!

by eisa01 3y ago

mpol 3y ago

An idea might be to have an "Adopt Your Own Neighbourhood" campaign. I don't know if this is seen as wanted in the OSM community, it might attract a lot of low-effort contributions which might wear out longtime volunteers. The way I started contributing to OSM is when I was tired of seeing old or no POI data and thought "enough is enough". I first started editing the shopping mall in my neighbourhood, then the schools, and so forth. It is now 5 years later and I can quite keep up locally with POI.

eisa01 3y ago
Same, 95% of my edits are POI data in the past two years and I fixed two of the main shipping streets in my neighborhood But yeah, not sure how scalable even such a campaign would be. I’m the only user I know that use EveryDoor to confirm/update POI in a city of 500k people… You’d probably need at least 1 out of 1000 people globally to actively contribute. That’s almost 10 million people, quite a bit more than the 1 million Organic Maps users and 250k OSM contributors in 2022 :)
matkoniecz 3y ago
local mappers interested in mapping their area are highly welcome! if anyone here is interested and unsure how to start, feel free to ask at https://community.openstreetmap.org/ https://community.openstreetmap.org/ (official forum, requires OSM account) or at one of other contact channels ( https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels ) - there is Slack, IRC, Discord and so on. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/ may help but it is sadly suboptimal for someone completely new. If you just click edit you will get tutorial for default in-browser editor.

Rygian 3y ago

> So I’m starting to question if it’s really worth it to continue update POIs in OSM, but I also would not know how to contribute to Overture as it does have quite some errors :) It's not a chicken-and-egg situation. Here, the egg is clearly OpenStreetMap data, and the chicken are other maps (such as Overture) that benefit from OSM. Contribute to OSM for better eggs, or contribute to Overture to make your chicken look better.

NewsyHacker 3y ago

In my OSM career, bike-traveling the world, I have added POIs in all kinds of unlikely places in the developing world. But a real challenge is adding more than just the indication that there is, for example, a shop there. It’s hard to add a name= tag when the shop has not hung up a sign with a name. It’s hard to add an opening_hours= tag when the shop has not posted opening hours, and even if I ask the owners, they might say hours are totally fuzzy. Such clear information is largely a feature of the developed world. In some parts of urban Latin America, the challenge in adding POIs is that it is ill-advised to slowly, aimlessly walk down the street with your phone, because it could get snatched.

Reason077 3y ago
> “It’s hard to add a name= tag when the shop has not hung up a sign with a name. It’s hard to add an opening_hours= tag when the shop has not posted opening hours” Even Google Maps has this problem. There’s a lot of “great noodle shop second on left” type business names in some parts of the world. Owners often live above/behind/in the shop/restaurant and they open more or less on demand. Hours will change seasonally - if there’s customers they’re open and if there isn’t they close. The real trick with POI data is not just the data itself but the metadata that tells you how important it is. If you know how many people are searching for a place, visiting a place, reviewing it etc then you can boost its prominence in map rendering and search results, greatly improving UX. An ideal solution would be for all the travel, mapping apps, etc that compete against Google (TripAdvisor, Yelp, Apple Maps, Facebook, all the in-car apps, etc) to share some kind of global OpenPOI database on top of OSM that aggregates reviews, photos, metadata, etc. And also gives owners a single source of truth to update their business data, keep it updated in real time, and have it disseminated everywhere…

szszrk 3y ago

What do you think about Street Complete [0][1][2]? I know it doesn't let you provide all and any data, but I find it super friendly. It lets you add details to objects that already exist in OSM. It looks very polished, has nice map, icons, and this default style of sticking to your actual location like some location based games for crazy people (I'm a former Ingress player, Enlightened FTW). My neighborhood has all details about building size, roofs, street lights, you know if there are markings on the ground on street crossings (for people with poor vision), each path has clear info of what's it's made of, and stores has open/close hours provided. Super cool, easy to use and has real impact. [0] https://streetcomplete.app/ https://streetcomplete.app/ [1] https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/ https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/ [2] https://play.google.com/store/search?q=street%20complete&c=apps https://play.google.com/store/search?q=street%20complete&c=a...

matkoniecz 3y ago
> I know it doesn't let you provide all and any data, but I find it super friendly. But shops can be added (using shop overlay). (I am one of people developing StreetComplete)
- szszrk 3y ago
  Didn't realized.l, thanks! Kudos to you, as you can see I love the app.
- JeremyNT 3y ago
  I adore this app and it makes it even more fun to wander around new areas on foot. One thing I ran into is that there are buildings that aren't shown in Street Complete. I tried adding a note but there seems like no way to add them in. If there was some easy way to flag a property as having a new building and relying on desktop users to fill in the details that would be super helpful!
  - matkoniecz 3y ago
    long tap to create note, attach photo of location, is the best StreetComplete specific solution You can install Vespucci to draw buildings directly on smartphone

dn3500 3y ago

I live in Mérida. The POI data on Open Streetmap is pretty bad. I've been updating it on OSM but my changes never seem to make it to Organic Maps.

stereo 3y ago
I was in Mérida a year ago and used OpenStreetMap to get around. I thought the quality was quite good! Thank you!