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- Hacker News
- Maybe an alternate process could use streetcomplete? Make the imported data available in streetcomplete for validation, then include it only after x validations?by raphinou
- OSM needs a way to ingest "signals" instead of edits.by sampton
- Yes, the data source is clearly useful, so not having it is a loss. But an edit is large enough a privilege to require all these checks.
Perhaps it's not that OSM that needs a signal, but perhaps it's that there's an opportunity for an open map that has many signals, of which OSM and Book Corners are examples.
by farfatched - OSM has the notes feature which sounds like what OP should have used
> Example of a valid and useful note can be "a new road was constructed here" or "this shop is closed and does not exist anymore".
by Maxious - Is there a path forward to writing a guide for how users can contribute back to OSM if they wish? A "thank you for your contribution, if you wish to learn more about OSM and how our maps are built click here" => go to a blog post which describes the relationship with OSM, why Book Corners can't be liable for contributing data back to OSM, and how a user could do that if they wanted.by laserbeam
- I appreciate OSM for maintaining a higher data quality bar than other projects (Overture places are mostly junk outside of USA), but it's also just artificially limiting itself by not allowing streamlined paths to data contributions.by mips_avatar
- I try to create such a thing with https://mapcomplete.org ; StreetComplete.app is also beginner friendly (but a different approach)
Yes, you'll always need a user account
by pietervdvn - It is streamlined for individuals, and I have no interest in it being streamlined for anything else.
I'd rather no data than bad data. There is no seperate baby & bath water. If a bulk source of data contains an unknown mix of good and bad data, that is all one big single item of bad data that is of no use to anyone.
- It seems like the path is streamlined once they know who you are.
This sort of feels like a generational thing but I would have flown over.
by gopher_space - The streamlined path has always been to verify your contributions in the field. Everything else is of dubious quality.by phoronixrly
- I've always been confused why OSM doesn't design a cheap open source stereo imager, some finetuned modern YOLO neural network could detect and blur the glass parts of windows, doorbells, nameplates and humans in the scene.
It could use GPS for rough geolocation, and 3D models of all the scenery could be generated. New contribution traces would contain changes compared to the past. Volunteers could request new paths it would like to see explored, and OSM could propose paths that cut through or ride along segments of recently submitted recordings of other users, to check if those changes are real, without checking the whole suspected recording.
Separate ground truth recording from its interpretation into mappable concepts, going out to make a recording or observation is a different task from deciding how to canonicalize the content.
by DoctorOetker - Have you suggested this to the folks at Panoramax? https://panoramax.fr/
They're already covering the blurring, as well as detecting useful objects in imagery (traffic signs for a start).
by Rygian - OpenStreetMap is a 2D map with limited 3D features, not a streetview alternative. For crowdsourced street view there are services like Mapillary (now owned by Meta) and Panoramax, both of which are cleared for use in mapping in OSM (and in case of Panoramax which is self-hostable, often run by a local OSM community).by ponorin
- Well, first step here is to demonstrate that you can do that neural network part. I think that would be a really valuable tool for more projects than openstreetmaps - google might even want to buy it.by nemomarx
- Are you describing what Mapillary is doing ? It's a crowdsourced street level imagery provider (owned by Facebook since 2020, but still contributing to OSM), but they do auto-detection of feature (you can see that in the online OSM editor: Map Data > Photo Overlays > Mapillary > Map Features).
I vaguely remember a blog post about doing photogrammetry out of their images, but I'm not entirely sure about it.
by PetitPrince - It’s a volunteer org. Sounds like you’re volunteering to build that and pay for the imagery etc. Let us know when you’re done.by nullisland00
- I think the piece I’m confused most about is why the little free library website’s map isn’t the place to log little free libraries. That being said, it makes sense that OSM has guidelines like this in place to ensure the data quality stays, well, quality.
- I feel like having such a map at all is kind of antithetical to building community. Shows you don't care enough to take a stroll in your 'hood to find such a one by happenstance (or to find neighbors to populate yours) and are hunting them down to share your self-published slop or something. Besides, it makes things a hell of a lot easier for griefers and trolls.by argee
- Because you need to pay "Little Free Library Corp." to become an official LFL and to get onto that map: https://littlefreelibrary.org/stewards/registration/
Getting an official "charter sign" will cost you 50 bucks.
by pietervdvn - This makes sense, but I wish there was a generally accepted way to share geospatial data and POI data against OSM IDs. e.g. I want to be able to add overlays for noise level, etc. and I find the whole thing too fragmented. The OSM way seems to be the right way, but no one seems to do it. You just maintain your own DB with an optional OSM POI entity identifier etc.
I suppose if you want something badly enough you have to do it yourself, but it's not that the thing doesn't exist though it doesn't seem to. It's that I want others to want it too :)
by arjie - Can you simply write overlays as GOL files and load them from non-OSM URLs? Assuming you use the appropriate coordinate grid you won’t need POIs to layer the relevant data, and if you choose to annotate OSM’s POIs further, you can save those annotations as a personal GOL that you optionally share with others, and that also enables cross-referencing derivations if you use (unverified: trust isn’t the point, uniqueness is) signing key fingerprint as the GOL author GUID.by altairprime
- This is trivial to navigate. Use the notes API to post the likely presence of a public bookcase with details (link to image, description, etc); and the community will slowly ingest the contributions.
Or set up a maproulette challenge with much the same detail.
Or just a geojson dump under an ODBL licence and share with with relevant communities. The third one or something very like it is required if you have mixed ODBL with non ODBL content.
by florkbork - Hello folks, author of Book Corners here. I just made the whole libraries db available for download (it's OBDL licensed).
It's available from every users dashboard (it's a ~2 MB compressed GeoJSON file). It includes both libraries orignally imported from OSM and additional libraries added by users.
While I still think the whole OSM process to submit back is a bit too much for the time I have available (but I still understand and respect), at least I want to give users an additional option to retrieve the data (in addition to the public API).
If you have any other advices, I will be glad to hear them and, compatibly with my spare time, I will try to implement them (if they make sense and are useful for users) :)
Thanks
by andreagrandi - Have you considered making OSM itself the submission mechanism? This could be as simple as having a static guide on how to add bookcases to OSM. Your app could also act as an OSM editor specifically for bookcases (not a general one).by zaik
- How would you feel about integrating https://mapcomplete.org/bookcases.html? (which I make) as means of contribution?
This one sends data straight to OSM. I don't have my own database to "moderate", pictures are saved into a Panoramax-instance.
As users authenticate by logging in with OSM, the boring, risky legal stuff is handled by OpenStreetMap. Uploading images has a small print that says that their images will be reshared under CC-BY-SA.
The part where I suck is in creating a nice, polished website with extra pages, SEO, ...
by pietervdvn - In the article, you claim:
> There are also important licensing questions. A user’s permission to send a library to OSM is not automatically the same as having a sufficiently clear right to release that factual information under terms compatible with OSM
which would imply that you could not make available your database available for download under ODbL. Yet you have made it available under that license.
Maybe that part of the article needs further editing?
Also, if the data of your tool is now available under ODbL, then the tasks related to importing it into OSM can be effectively performed by anyone, not necessarily you.
by Rygian - To be clear to folks not familiar with OSM:
These restrictions are unique to projects doing automated submissions of mass data.
If you're an individual just trying to make the world a better place, you can make an OSM account, go to the website, click, add a thing, hit submit, done. Someone will review it.
Apps like CoMaps and Organic Maps make it super easy to contribute data for businesses, landmarks, and such.
by ryukoposting - > you can make an OSM account, go to the website, click, add a thing, hit submit, done. Someone will review it.
I will share an unpopular opinion: thil will only make a freeworkforce for those projects who profit from using OSM. And the OSM has surprisingly unreliable data quality for walking around even in the popular tourist places like Tokyo or Kyoto, or New York. I've tried, and it's so worse than GMaps (or Bing) to being completely unusable. No work hours of Starbucks, no local dining cafe, no menu contributions.
It's great for the trail and hike outdiors, sure. But that's very different from the city map, as the nature featutes rarely change, not like city POIs.
by zx8080 - In summary: Because OSM requires work and care to be put into the data submission plan, which isn’t worth it.
A project like OSM would be bombarded with spam and junk submissions if it didn’t have these barriers to submission. Understandable.
by Aurornis - >A project like OSM would be bombarded with spam and junk submissions if it didn’t have these barriers to submission.
I'm not sure about this. The barriers to submissions are honestly more likely to cause object and amenity level data to become out of date. Google is able to have such an up to date place database because it relies on a large quantity of crowdsourced submissions, and employs consensus to figure out the truth.
by greyb