3 ms·

It's a network effect and most of the good data is on Google Maps. In every place I've lived, OSM has terrible POIs years out of date. Not sure about Apple. I

It's a network effect and most of the good data is on Google Maps. In every place I've lived, OSM has terrible POIs years out of date. Not sure about Apple. I edit OSM on occasion but it's just so bad it's not really usable for me day to day. On the other hand, it's super rare for a Google Maps listing to be totally wrong (vs the pin just being off by a bit), and their corrections UI is way way better than the OSM editor. It takes me like half an hour to edit a feature in OSM that would take about 1 min on Google Maps.

habi 3y ago
> It takes me like half an hour to edit a feature in OSM that would take about 1 min on Google Maps. You could use one of those two apps, editing a POI with them does not take half an hour. - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Every_Door https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Every_Door
- solardev 3y ago
  OK, on your suggestion, I just tried both of these apps. StreetComplete seems to be gamified and only wants to show me "quests". I couldn't figure out how to edit a specific business that wasn't a current quest. I poked around for a few min and then gave up. Every Door didn't show me anything at all until I manually downloaded the data, then had a pretty bad UI for editing the operating hours, not even localized to my time locales (12hr time). The time picker is horrendous too. I don't think I can stand this UI, sorry. And when I tried to edit actual vector features on the web-based OSM editor (both of them, or whatever the difference is) it was a much more annoying experience than doing the same thing (like editing a road) on Google Maps. The GMap editor is just much more polished and doesn't require me to go out of my way to make a trivial edit -- as you'd expect from a company with nearly infinite resources. I'm sorry, I get that OSM is a great project, but it's just not something worth my time to try to fix. I've checked in on it (and contributed here and there, once in a great while) since its founding nearly 20 years ago, but I've never found it to have good enough data for day-to-day use, nor easy enough editing features to be worth the hassle. I'm happy it exists, but it's just not something I care enough to regularly contribute to... with limited time, it's just more useful for me to use Google Maps. Sorry, it's selfish, and not idealistic at all, but just being pragmatic. Nobody else I know uses it, either. Everyone I know uses Google Maps, so fixing it there has a cascading effect of usefulness for my entire social circle, like when we want to go to a shared location, I can make sure the pin is where it's supposed to be.
  - habi 3y ago
    I'm on iOS, so cannot test StreetComplete, as it's Android-only. I just know that a lot of people use it, but didn't know that it can only do quests. Every Door has a very good UI for editing `opening_hours` in my opinion, as it can do pretty arbitrary complicated hours easily. But I also get that it's not for everyone. I also get your last point, about useful- and pragmaticness. I live in a country in Europe where roaming is prohibitively expensive, so use offline OpenStreetMap abroad a lot, with different apps, mostly https://organicmaps.app https://organicmaps.app This has been really useful in Europe, but I have no idea on the status/freshness of OpenStreetMap data in other regions.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> In every place I've lived, OSM has terrible POIs years out of date. We're the ones responsible for it being great or terrible. Somebody's gotta input that data into the map. By somebody I mean us, it's not gonna be there if we don't put it in there. It's a lot of work but it benefits everyone. If you see outdated information, update it!
- solardev 3y ago
  I do, but there's not enough of a critical mass there :( Google has the bulk of businesses and editors. It would be nice if there was a system/app that can correlate POIs across services, normalize their schemas, and then update all of them at once with one edit.
  - matheusmoreira 3y ago
    There's no technical impediment to the existence of those systems. The problem is legal. Unfortunately, maps are copyrighted. We must collect and input the information independently.

habi 3y ago

> It takes me like half an hour to edit a feature in OSM that would take about 1 min on Google Maps. You could use one of those two apps, editing a POI with them does not take half an hour. - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Every_Door https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Every_Door

solardev 3y ago
OK, on your suggestion, I just tried both of these apps. StreetComplete seems to be gamified and only wants to show me "quests". I couldn't figure out how to edit a specific business that wasn't a current quest. I poked around for a few min and then gave up. Every Door didn't show me anything at all until I manually downloaded the data, then had a pretty bad UI for editing the operating hours, not even localized to my time locales (12hr time). The time picker is horrendous too. I don't think I can stand this UI, sorry. And when I tried to edit actual vector features on the web-based OSM editor (both of them, or whatever the difference is) it was a much more annoying experience than doing the same thing (like editing a road) on Google Maps. The GMap editor is just much more polished and doesn't require me to go out of my way to make a trivial edit -- as you'd expect from a company with nearly infinite resources. I'm sorry, I get that OSM is a great project, but it's just not something worth my time to try to fix. I've checked in on it (and contributed here and there, once in a great while) since its founding nearly 20 years ago, but I've never found it to have good enough data for day-to-day use, nor easy enough editing features to be worth the hassle. I'm happy it exists, but it's just not something I care enough to regularly contribute to... with limited time, it's just more useful for me to use Google Maps. Sorry, it's selfish, and not idealistic at all, but just being pragmatic. Nobody else I know uses it, either. Everyone I know uses Google Maps, so fixing it there has a cascading effect of usefulness for my entire social circle, like when we want to go to a shared location, I can make sure the pin is where it's supposed to be.
- habi 3y ago
  I'm on iOS, so cannot test StreetComplete, as it's Android-only. I just know that a lot of people use it, but didn't know that it can only do quests. Every Door has a very good UI for editing `opening_hours` in my opinion, as it can do pretty arbitrary complicated hours easily. But I also get that it's not for everyone. I also get your last point, about useful- and pragmaticness. I live in a country in Europe where roaming is prohibitively expensive, so use offline OpenStreetMap abroad a lot, with different apps, mostly https://organicmaps.app https://organicmaps.app This has been really useful in Europe, but I have no idea on the status/freshness of OpenStreetMap data in other regions.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> In every place I've lived, OSM has terrible POIs years out of date. We're the ones responsible for it being great or terrible. Somebody's gotta input that data into the map. By somebody I mean us, it's not gonna be there if we don't put it in there. It's a lot of work but it benefits everyone. If you see outdated information, update it!

solardev 3y ago
I do, but there's not enough of a critical mass there :( Google has the bulk of businesses and editors. It would be nice if there was a system/app that can correlate POIs across services, normalize their schemas, and then update all of them at once with one edit.
- matheusmoreira 3y ago
  There's no technical impediment to the existence of those systems. The problem is legal. Unfortunately, maps are copyrighted. We must collect and input the information independently.