139 points
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All of you are invited on !openstreetmap@lemmy.ml

Also checkout the many editing tools, such as https://mapcomplete.org, https://streetcomplete.app,…

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34 points

I successfully used Every Door during my holidays to contribute

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22 points

There’s a small learning curve I wish some bothered to understand first. Does this app help? The part of this I don’t like is vacationers leaving useless names like ‘Mango lady’, ‘many street vendors’ for a block, or ‘local restaurant’ since they can’t read the sign as opposed marking up the cuisine type, maybe adding an English description, & leaving the name blank. Nobody expects uploads to be perfect but Bangkok is littered with this noise that makes it hard to follow or find things.

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14 points

It takes effort and knowledge to make good contributions, this app is just a tool to do that.

I can only say I myself try to make valuable contributions, some other people might care less.

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7 points

I think EveryDoor requires some relatively deep understanding of OSM before actually being a useful tool. So edits like this should be rare with that tool. Many of the edits like this are from when MapsMe was very popular and suddenly introduced editing, without enough nuance in the process. Bad edits do happen everywhere, you need a good balance between people who data curation and newbies making beginner mistakes. In some places, there’s a lack of experienced people maintaining the data.

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7 points
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Every Door

thank you for sharing, definitely the easiest for Android from my research :-)
Note: there is a comparison of editor apps here: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Comparison_of_editors

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5 points

Thank you for sharing the links!

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130 points

the biggest problem I have with switching is that Google Maps is a business directory. open street maps is empty where i live. it works okay for navigation, but not so much for finding a coffee.

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51 points

there are ways to make it easier; it’s been gamified:

https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete

Available on FDROID.

When my partner stops to play pokemon go, I complete some Open Street Map info quests…

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15 points

Street Complete is a great app for quests regarding existing features, but also consider the feature might not exist at all yet in OSM.

Map Complete is great for adding new features. It also asks a bunch of optional simple questions about the feature which gets converted into the relevant OSM tags. It’s browser based but you can just add a shortcut to your home screen to have it quickly accessible.

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5 points

@controlphreak @snrkl
Now that StreetComplete has overlay layers for places and things you can add most of the thing you’d want to add in person.

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4 points

I didn’t know about map complete, thanks!

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3 points

I’ve just installed this now, thanks for the tip!

So many quests right on my street!

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49 points
18 points

It says “page not found”, maybe because I’m not in EU.

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8 points

I’m in the US, also says page not found for me.

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3 points

Very strange. It doesn’t work. I shared directly from the f-droid client droid-ify

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/index.html

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2 points

Same in EU

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2 points

Link to fdroid next time

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9 points
*

Oh weird. That’s shared from droid-ify which is an f-droid client.

Here’s the proper link https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/index.html

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35 points

As many have already told you, you can contribute to OSM, I have put in it almost all the establishments in my area (Not at Big area but…). Although soon I have to update them

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12 points
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im on board with the idea in general, but im not going to do this. it would be an endless effort to the benefit of almost nobody. places go up and down so fast here that google maps is often out of date too. it’s filled with stale information and im flagging missing places constantly. every digital community in this country is a garbage pile.

the ride share apps here do use open street maps though, and im making corrections to building addresses when i find something isn’t right. it’s great.

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31 points
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Umm…it benefits loads of people.

On OSM you don’t have to just flag something. You can edit it directly, so it leads to more accurate information.

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31 points

You can contribute them!

There’s a pretty barebones editor in Organic Maps, but you can also check out Street Complete and Every door (more advanced and less user friendly, though insanely efficient)

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3 points

I use Vespucci, it’s advanced but still pretty easy if you just want to do basic editing. https://vespucci.io/

P.s. how do you link to an app on fdroid?

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9 points

Same issue here. I really like their maps in general, but my local area in OSM is about a decade out of date

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14 points

Yeah, it’s interesting to look through the edit history over the years. With StreetComplete I recently fixed ~8 stores that were many years out of date, during an hour walk.

It’s fun to find a real hole-in-the-wall that even google maps doesn’t have.

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6 points

That kind of contribution seems like a lower level of effort than making changes to source code.

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16 points

And there are apps that make it very very easy and fun. Check out street complete.

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6 points

I keep businesses in my area up-to-date, doesn’t take much time at all.

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5 points

I felt the same however Organic Maps did have many businesses. And with Street Complete I can correct any errors when I visit.

It may simply be my area, but I so recommend organic maps over Osmand for business and POI lookups

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3 points

Yeah trying to find anything on any of the competing apps is basically impossible. I mean ffs OSMand literally couldn’t do address lookup!

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3 points

I just recently learned this.

For OsmAnd, go to search, then the categories tab, and then hit “Online Search”.

Voila, address lookup.

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2 points

I have found Organic Map’s search to be far better than OSMand. OSMand has far more features though.

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1 point

You’ll need to first download the relevant section of the map downloaded to be able to search it, though.

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3 points

i think openstreetmaps only works in big countries honestly

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-2 points

What does the size of the country have to do with it? Which good big and bad small countries are you talking about?

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3 points

Most people don’t use openstreetmaps on these small countries like with low/medium population it feels like apple maps on there

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0 points

You can add the POIs and fill the gaps!

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3 points
*

And then in the web app, you need to do this complicated hold-LMB-then-select-from-list to select something, making just browsing really difficult.

Or is there a better way of doing that? I lack a good way to just browse Openstreetmap.

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1 point

openstreetmap.org is a mappers website, not a map users website. It works great for mappers, but is horrible for people who want to use the map to find their way around.

I think the openstreetmap ecosystem really needs a better website for map users.

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92 points
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137 points

Yeah but it demonstrates googles unwillingness to cooperate and give fair warnings.

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59 points

You seem pretty active with OSM, so I’ll propose this here since I don’t have time to make it.

OSM is very, very popular with hikers and cyclists, and I’d argue rhey drive a lot of it’s use, especially via third-party systems. However, it’s one failing is “gravel” roads. While they support many different gravel road types, they admit on their Wiki that use of the proper terms is low.

Given the heavy use of Garmin devices, especially among gravel cyclists, mountain bikers, and bikepackers, where terrain definition is important, it would be outstanding to have an app in the Garmin store for Edge devices that could report the exact terrain type (compacted, dirt, etc) with a button mash as you ride it.

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20 points

Check out StreetComplete (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.westnordost.streetcomplete)

It does more than just road surface type, and incorporates location-based OSM editing in a very user-friendly way!

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8 points

F-Droid link: Street­Complete (OpenStreetMap surveyor app) https://f-droid.org/packages/de.westnordost.streetcomplete/

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2 points

Yea, I’ve used that, but it’s a phone app. Riders need a one-touch solution on Garmin (or other bike computers, but Garmin dominates the market right now).

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3 points

It also doesn’t seem to let you edit anything more then a mile away from your physical location. I get that they want accuracy but it’s preventing me from editing incorrect information to a place I have just been.

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14 points

I will add as a narrowboater.

I found towpaths also have this issue with definition of surface.

I am legally blind. (Some vision but bad)

I have a few times tried to add more ditail to areas of towpath that will help the others like me know what to expect before mooring.

Seems anything that improves this will help in your issues as well.

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1 point

Not sure if you’re the one to ask, but are there any good alternatives to Strava built on OSM? I don’t need all the fitness analysis and social features, I just want to track my walk route and get basic info like miles traveled, elevation change, average speed, etc

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1 point

So for the tracking and planning part, you could use OSMAnd. It’s UI is a bit confusing but it does work welll. My typical setup is:

  • Plan route in OSMAnd
  • Record route with a garmin
  • Upload GPX to self-hosted Fittrackee or Wanderer

However you may be asking for something more like RideWithGPS.com?

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46 points

OrganicMaps is amazing. Strong recommend to everyone. I only recently found out about it.

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13 points

Any details on why it’s amazing? What does it do or doesn’t?

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42 points
  • It has the map corpus from OpenStreetMap, so one of the best in the world
  • It works offline - just download the desired maps onto the device
  • That makes it really, really fast. Google Maps is slower
  • You can also use it in areas with bad reception. I’m using it for hiking in the woods where there is no cell phone connection available
  • I really like the UI - they are f.e. better at displaying house numbers and street names than Google.
  • No ads
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17 points

On the hiking note, it also shows a lot of trails. I used it to navigate to a trail head and was pleasantly surprised to see a rough outline of the trails I would be using plus some others I didn’t know were there.

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4 points

Google’s maps are decent and can also be downloaded to be offline…? But yeah, it seems like it’s a nice alternative, especially if you want to be free from Google’s grips.

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2 points

Maybe it’s iOS specific but I had to go to a region and download the map to be able to search it, which is not great

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1 point

It shows me where the speed cameras are :)

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0 points
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Waze does that too + reported police, hazards

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11 points

Same, I have recently installed LineageOS on my phone and was looking for various replacements for Goggle apps. What I really like about OrganicMaps is that it downloads the maps locally, so you can view it even if you aren’t connected to the internet.

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0 points

google maps can do that too though

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4 points

@yetiftw @ILikePigeons

IIRC At one point Google Maps would let you download a map for browsing, but you couldn’t do offline navigation. Don’t know if that’s still the case.

Organic Maps does the routing on the device.

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3 points

Thanks, I wasn’t aware of that. I should have really had this information a year ago when I was constantly screenshotting Google Maps, LOL.

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2 points

The feature looks made ugly on purpose though (compared to organic maps where you can just download the whole country or select more precisely what you want)

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