I discovered that recently, it's a very fun way to contribute to OpenStreetMap, and the UI is really well-done, it's totally beginner friendly!
I wish there was a way to do more than labeling though, like add simple roads and footpaths
I have used it one (1) time in my life, ans it was my first experience with OpenStreetMap in general. It was pretty fun!
It's very intuitive and makes you learn just how detailed and specific map data can be. Can't say much about missing features since I don't event know what can be done.
Recommended experience, it's like playing Pokemon Go without the evil part :)
Usually if I need to add a footpath I use the "Create new track recording" feature to trace out the path with GPS, then come back to it later on desktop. Adding paths is pretty awkward to do on mobile, especially since there's no satellite overlay.
Strava doesn't have complete coverage, especially on newer trails, but more importantly: doing the trace via Street Complete attaches it to an OSM note with an optional (but encouraged) photo. This additional context makes it a lot more useful for editors than an ordinary trace, which can just as easily be an actual trail, a desire path, or someone deciding to improvise a shortcut through some brush. Even if the note just contains the word "trail", that helps us (though more detail is greatly appreciated, of course).
Though if you like StreetComplete and want aerial/satellite, there's SCEE, a fork of StreetComplete. I tried both Vespucci and EveryDoor, but neither is nearly as easy to use in my opinion.
I have my mapping spells where I do OSM mapping for a week or a month and then I might not map for a year or two. For mobile mapping I have all those you mentioned installed. They all are useful for something, except perhaps StreetComplete which is just a crippled version of SCEE for me.
I think adding things, instead of updating existing things with missing data is where you get into needing a more serious app. I keep Vespucci for when I want to initiate an edit, and StreetComplete for fun filling in missing information tasks.
Great app. There is also https://every-door.app/ that gives you slightly different set of tasks and allows you to place POI easily. I recently mapped a lot of trash cans and benches around my neighborhood while walking with my dog.
StreetComplete lets you place trash cans and benches too (among other things) using the "Things" overlay. IMO Every Door has a much more complicated UI, though it's also more of a full featured editor than StreetComplete. (Though still less so than something like Vespucci.)
Is that a new feature? I have over a thousand contributions on StreetComplete (casually using it during walks) and somehow I never noticed that button.
The amount things you can map in OSM is impressive. However I ran into two things that have no formal tags: time capsules (historic=time_capsule), and camera obscuras (camera_type=obscura). You can add the values, but they are not official. Time capsule is in the work [0].
The UX is really bad. POI loading is taking 10+ seconds to update, then any zoom or pan reorders the list of locations. Most of the missing info (around me) is just phone numbers and hours of operation, which are boring and should be trivial to collect automatically.
The thing is that the best way to get the phones and opening hours is to walk in person and look them up. Any source for the automated collection is way more likely to be outdated/wrong than what the sign or the person behind the counter tells you. And can also have non-permissive license not compatible with the OSM license.
Raw Information cannot be licensed, and I am not sure why OSM sticks to the policy that it can.
Google Maps does not hold the rights to which opening hours Bob's Bakery keeps. If someone entered them from Bob's Bakery their site onto Maps, you are free to type it off of Maps onto OSM. Legally anyway. OSM themselves still hold the policy you can't, so you should adhere to that.
I wouldn't be surprised if Google’s lawyer army could explain to some Google-paid arbitrator how it’s in their interest to find that such behavior violates Google’s database copyright under legislation of Google’s choosing.
That doesn't fly for several reasons, one of them another commenter already mentioned. See these pages for why we can't copy facts from proprietary sources:
It's too bad you guys aren't incorporated in the EU[0].
Looking at that, Google is only allowed to protect its content with database rights for 15 years after publication, with "substantial additions" getting the same 15 years from the moment of their publishing. I bet there is an interesting legal argument in if modifying opening hours or location of a PoI is considered a "substantial addition", because otherwise any PoI (including businesses) added up to July 2011 would be fair game now :). Not that OSM has the financial means to fight off a behemoth like Google.
Tbh, even then, OSM itself states:
"The project is not an exercise in copying maps while trying to avoid copyright traps. We create maps without copying at all! That is the challenge we have set for ourselves.", so the point is moot.
I do wish Apple would just incorporate OSM's PoI data. Right now their's is complete garbage compared to Google Maps and OSM, missing vast swathes of info (or being woefully out of date) in almost all cities.
We broadly aim to be legal worldwide since it's not very cool if we get outlawed in e.g. Australia and businesses there can't use OpenStreetMap for anything, can't download OsmAnd there, MapComplete is blocked from browsers, etc. Incorporating in the EU was actually a consideration due to Brexit (don't remember the reasons) but it sounds like the benefits didn't outweigh the effort of moving, seeing as it hasn't happened
Interesting though that there's this different (15 years) term where normal copyright is just about forever. That's going to come in handy somewhere for datahoarder me I'm sure :D
One thing missing on osm is pictures. Would defeats Google maps if it had some, where users would feedback and bad shots would get wiped to save space. We would get the best shots the world has to offer.
I had been using mapcomplete to add images of artwork, which in turn used panoramax. However I saw someone else use Wikimedia Commons, and to me that makes more sense. Wikimedia ties into more systems, so if you wanted to create a Wikipedia page about an artist, there will be readily available images to use.
On the flip side, panoramax can be used as an open source StreetView. Different sites for different purposes I suppose
Wikimedia Commons also requires more up-front work by the uploader to categorize the image properly, which can be daunting if you're new to how things are organized there. But yeah, for well-known objects, adding Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons links can be awesome and there are plenty of apps making use of it to show additional information.
Panoramax is still unfortunately very lacking outside a French instance. I've tried to contribute my street view images, but it's not used by anyone or anything as far as I can see.
In the app I'm developing, cartes.app, we acknowledged this lack of pictures.
We show local Wikimedia common pictures, osm tag pictures, og:image pictures of the website if any, Wikipedia article infobox pictures, Panoramax for street-view, and last but not least, any picture dropped by an ATproto place review.
Lots remain to be done, especially building the latter community of reviews.
I agree! It seems like their work on the iOS app would bring them a lot closer to web app support as well. In the iOS tracking issue, they say the main changes are moving to Kotlin Multiplatform and Compose Multiplatform, which both support web as a target.
Well, sort of. That'd be very bluesky. What's closer, actually, would be a desktop version, or rather, a version for Linux mobile like postmarketOS (would run like a desktop app in a JVM, but for a mobile target, the layout and UX wouldn't need to be changed.
SCEE adds a bunch of features on top of StreetComplete. One of them is that you can always open up the tags for a feature on the map and add or update, e.g., the website information. To do this, open up the appropriate overlay (such as "things" or "places"), tap the POI, and choose "Show/edit tags" in the options menu
Some editors like OsmAnd also let you do that. In OsmAnd you can enable the OSM development plugin (it's pre-installed, more like a setting to unlock expert options than a plugin) and use "Edit POI" to add or update website information
Just downloaded and made 15+ small contributions in the vicinity of my area. Very well built app. Super simple to use. And gamification is top-notch. Recommended.
I naively thought that Duolingo's gamification was for a good cause, helping you learn a language by addicting you, but now I know it's not only an extremely ineffective way to learn a language, but they're an advertising/social media/data broker company, which makes the gamification unethical.
I wonder if there are any other FOSS apps or websites with gamification that are for a good cause, like StreetComplete.
> an extremely ineffective way to learn a language
thats only if you use duolingo exclusively without things like reading news in the language (which is common unfortunately).
its a problem with their specific design using a weird hybrid of spaced repetition with traditional separate lessons. you only learn a couple words for each section but if they decide you know a word they never repeat it again so its easy to forget.
if they made it harder with more open questions and removed combos/perfect lessons to compensate it would be a lot more effective. non linear with multiple paths would also be great, like you decide you want to learn more grammar so you click on that instead of vocab exercises.
the addictive and social pressure parts are the whole point. its giving people motivation to learn and well designed interactive tools are always better than passively reading textbooks [1]. even the ui is made with lots of animation, colors, positive messages to make you feel good every time you get something right.
if streetcomplete added daily progress bars and fireworks every time your edit gets accepted it would probably have a lot more users. ive actually been thinking about making a new anki frontend with this type of addictive ux. that would be more effective and more general than duolingo but lose some of the features like open questions. would need to integrate a llm to fix that.
In my opinion, gamification that makes one addictive is very unethical.
So, any measure that aims at keeping users engaged (as the duolingo icon for example) should be viewed cautiosly.
Also, specifically with apps with which people provide real data, the more they see it as a game, the more the system will be gamed. When users start to guess, without really confirming it on-site, this leads to outright incorrect data.
What's fine, in my book, is to make the experience more gratifying, more "fun". That's probably what you meant, with firework animation etc..
The progress bars however already fall somewhat in the former category.
By the way, edits are accepted immediately. There is no verification step by the community (just like in wikipedia), all the more important it is that people don't start seeing it as a game first and as a way to contribute to a libre map second.
You can edit OSM from its main site [0], although there's a much steeper learning curve when using the site (as you have far more freedom and it's not super easy to figure out the standard way to tag some situations).
MapComplete is made by someone from Belgium with the aim of making a website that's at least as good as a native app could be. It's both a data viewer and editor but generally that sounds like it's what you're looking for!
I have yet to get into it myself (I already have established workflows in StreetComplete and other editors) but from a quick demo that the author gave on CCC ~1.5 years ago it seemed perfectly usable already
This is very cool, I wish there was some way to use it on a bicycle though. For example, when moving into a street it could ask (using voice) if this street is paved, and I could answer it using voice too.
I enjoyed the simulated phone screenshots, particularly the choice of House of the Trembling Madness, a great beer stockist and drinking establishment on Lendal in York. I would like to think that the name in the input field is deliberately slightly wrong, ready to be fixed by someone. (It's "House of the Trembling Madness" rather than "The House of Trembling Madness".) Gamification at another level :-)
Wherever you are and need to wait for a minute, there are quests to be solved there.
I recommend SCEE for those who are already familiar with OSM mapping or are in an area where the most common tasks are already covered: https://github.com/Helium314/SCEE
It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps, but we can't do vice versa. OSM should change their license to something like if you use our data, you have to make yours open as well.
> It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps
If only. Maps are still super broken around where I live. I personally mapped everything in OSM (which thankfully is used by most third party services these days) a couple years ago, but Maps is still people's primary source for routing and traffic related stuff.
As evil as they are, it's hearting to see the delivery platforms are embracing OSM when they could probably afford to just pay for Google's Maps API.
It gives hope that Google/ESRI won't always be the dominant mapping platform, however OSM is still missing a lot of local businesses which the delivery platforms don't need as urgently as house numbers so there's less focus there.
Many companies do. Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, TomTom, Über, Komoot, VKontakte; I see German, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish local governments mentioned; Austrian emergency dispatch; USA school bus operator...
It's almost surprising at this point that Google isn't getting in on the fun, at least taking the good bits and calling their own data a 'separate layer' so they don't have to contribute anything back. (And of course no Chinese companies, since accurate maps are illegal there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...)
> It gives hope that Google/ESRI won't always be the dominant mapping platform
Are they? I get the impression that only consumer-facing stuff is Google, to give people a familiar color scheme¹ as well as allow terribly formatted search queries to still work (if google can do one thing it's search). However, anything using geo data in a back-end fashion seems about evenly split between government base maps, OpenStreetMap, and a collection of misc providers that Google is one of
¹ conversely, I struggle to find my home town on Google Maps. It's all about vague, washed-out shapes, besides the bright shop icons and, nowadays, advertising pins. It's a matter of what you're used to so I can very much understand that the average consumer, who's less familiar with maps than me, is totally lost when getting Carto as a map
OSM is actually perfectly sufficient if you just want street and address data. This stuff gets pulled in from official government sources so it's all present and up to date.
Where it's lacking is business info since this has to be entered manually and changes much more often than streets or buildings change.
The thing lacking even more is a good search engine. Doesn't matter how complete the database is when search keeps missing text appearing verbatim in a label.
This is the problem with using vector search for everything: there is no “verbatim” when the corpus and the search are both converted to a vector, and not necessarily using exactly the same transform.
If you are a delivery company or such paying for mapbox you can build your own solution and get better quality than the open source general purpose apps.
I'd like to point out that it only "gets pulled in" if the data is actually made available by the government, and there are dedicated volunteers who work on getting the data, massaging it into the right format and importing it into OSM, and that is not the case in many countries.
> It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps
No way they are doing this deliberately globally. My city has a lot of pedestrian stairs interconnecting roads, and not a single one is on GMaps. If you navigate on foot, it will send you on walks 2x-3x longer than necessary.
OSMand and CoMaps reliably find the shortest way. And can tell you the pavement type, number of steps, stroller ramp and hand rail situation of every single one of those stairs.
Google has a really hard time adding roads without frequent car traffic, I think.
StreetComplete is cool, fun and useful, yes. And there is its companion app StreetMeasure which makes it easy to add measurements like the width of a narrow street, for example.
Thank you for the reminder! I got out of the habit of checking StreetComplete since my previous neighborhood was well populated in OSM, but having just moved, I should check it out again.
Reminds me of when Microsoft released a new Flight Sim, and people immediately started spotting buildings and things that were out of the norm in the game, which in turn started getting reported to OSM for corrections.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 55.7 ms ] threadIt's very intuitive and makes you learn just how detailed and specific map data can be. Can't say much about missing features since I don't event know what can be done.
Recommended experience, it's like playing Pokemon Go without the evil part :)
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SCEE
Is that a new feature? I have over a thousand contributions on StreetComplete (casually using it during walks) and somehow I never noticed that button.
[0]: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposal:Time_capsule
You can use https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Any_tags_you_like on OpenStreetMap. Many of the used tags are simply "in use" and not formalized with a proposal.
Google Maps does not hold the rights to which opening hours Bob's Bakery keeps. If someone entered them from Bob's Bakery their site onto Maps, you are free to type it off of Maps onto OSM. Legally anyway. OSM themselves still hold the policy you can't, so you should adhere to that.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Copyright_Easter_Eggs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_right
Looking at that, Google is only allowed to protect its content with database rights for 15 years after publication, with "substantial additions" getting the same 15 years from the moment of their publishing. I bet there is an interesting legal argument in if modifying opening hours or location of a PoI is considered a "substantial addition", because otherwise any PoI (including businesses) added up to July 2011 would be fair game now :). Not that OSM has the financial means to fight off a behemoth like Google.
Tbh, even then, OSM itself states: "The project is not an exercise in copying maps while trying to avoid copyright traps. We create maps without copying at all! That is the challenge we have set for ourselves.", so the point is moot.
I do wish Apple would just incorporate OSM's PoI data. Right now their's is complete garbage compared to Google Maps and OSM, missing vast swathes of info (or being woefully out of date) in almost all cities.
[0]https://intellectual-property-helpdesk.ec.europa.eu/regional...
Interesting though that there's this different (15 years) term where normal copyright is just about forever. That's going to come in handy somewhere for datahoarder me I'm sure :D
Feel free to contribute that, if you think it's so easy! Just make sure what you're scraping is also correct.
[1] CoMaps – FOSS Offline Maps | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808928
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Panoramax
I use https://mapcomplete.org/ to add images of artworks to OSM objects.
On the flip side, panoramax can be used as an open source StreetView. Different sites for different purposes I suppose
- https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:wikimedia_commons
- https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:panoramax
- https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:mapillary
Mobile apps can use this data to either give links to them (e.g. CoMaps) or display them in the app (e.g. OsmAnd)
We show local Wikimedia common pictures, osm tag pictures, og:image pictures of the website if any, Wikipedia article infobox pictures, Panoramax for street-view, and last but not least, any picture dropped by an ATproto place review.
Lots remain to be done, especially building the latter community of reviews.
https://api.panoramax.xyz/en/index?focus=map&map=1.24/0/-0.6...
and: https://www.mapillary.com/
https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/5421
Some editors like OsmAnd also let you do that. In OsmAnd you can enable the OSM development plugin (it's pre-installed, more like a setting to unlock expert options than a plugin) and use "Edit POI" to add or update website information
Or simply use the website at https://osm.org/edit
StreetComplete doesn't ask for websites specifically. It's pretty restrictive in what they'll allow as 'quests' to avoid overloading new users
I wonder if there are any other FOSS apps or websites with gamification that are for a good cause, like StreetComplete.
thats only if you use duolingo exclusively without things like reading news in the language (which is common unfortunately).
its a problem with their specific design using a weird hybrid of spaced repetition with traditional separate lessons. you only learn a couple words for each section but if they decide you know a word they never repeat it again so its easy to forget.
if they made it harder with more open questions and removed combos/perfect lessons to compensate it would be a lot more effective. non linear with multiple paths would also be great, like you decide you want to learn more grammar so you click on that instead of vocab exercises.
the addictive and social pressure parts are the whole point. its giving people motivation to learn and well designed interactive tools are always better than passively reading textbooks [1]. even the ui is made with lots of animation, colors, positive messages to make you feel good every time you get something right.
if streetcomplete added daily progress bars and fireworks every time your edit gets accepted it would probably have a lot more users. ive actually been thinking about making a new anki frontend with this type of addictive ux. that would be more effective and more general than duolingo but lose some of the features like open questions. would need to integrate a llm to fix that.
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11933506/
So, any measure that aims at keeping users engaged (as the duolingo icon for example) should be viewed cautiosly.
Also, specifically with apps with which people provide real data, the more they see it as a game, the more the system will be gamed. When users start to guess, without really confirming it on-site, this leads to outright incorrect data.
What's fine, in my book, is to make the experience more gratifying, more "fun". That's probably what you meant, with firework animation etc.. The progress bars however already fall somewhat in the former category.
By the way, edits are accepted immediately. There is no verification step by the community (just like in wikipedia), all the more important it is that people don't start seeing it as a game first and as a way to contribute to a libre map second.
[0] https://www.openstreetmap.org/
I have yet to get into it myself (I already have established workflows in StreetComplete and other editors) but from a quick demo that the author gave on CCC ~1.5 years ago it seemed perfectly usable already
It brought me back to mapping on OSM.
Wherever you are and need to wait for a minute, there are quests to be solved there.
I recommend SCEE for those who are already familiar with OSM mapping or are in an area where the most common tasks are already covered: https://github.com/Helium314/SCEE
https://gurumaps.app/
If only. Maps are still super broken around where I live. I personally mapped everything in OSM (which thankfully is used by most third party services these days) a couple years ago, but Maps is still people's primary source for routing and traffic related stuff.
It gives hope that Google/ESRI won't always be the dominant mapping platform, however OSM is still missing a lot of local businesses which the delivery platforms don't need as urgently as house numbers so there's less focus there.
It's almost surprising at this point that Google isn't getting in on the fun, at least taking the good bits and calling their own data a 'separate layer' so they don't have to contribute anything back. (And of course no Chinese companies, since accurate maps are illegal there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...)
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activi...
Are they? I get the impression that only consumer-facing stuff is Google, to give people a familiar color scheme¹ as well as allow terribly formatted search queries to still work (if google can do one thing it's search). However, anything using geo data in a back-end fashion seems about evenly split between government base maps, OpenStreetMap, and a collection of misc providers that Google is one of
¹ conversely, I struggle to find my home town on Google Maps. It's all about vague, washed-out shapes, besides the bright shop icons and, nowadays, advertising pins. It's a matter of what you're used to so I can very much understand that the average consumer, who's less familiar with maps than me, is totally lost when getting Carto as a map
Where it's lacking is business info since this has to be entered manually and changes much more often than streets or buildings change.
No way they are doing this deliberately globally. My city has a lot of pedestrian stairs interconnecting roads, and not a single one is on GMaps. If you navigate on foot, it will send you on walks 2x-3x longer than necessary.
OSMand and CoMaps reliably find the shortest way. And can tell you the pavement type, number of steps, stroller ramp and hand rail situation of every single one of those stairs.
Google has a really hard time adding roads without frequent car traffic, I think.
https://hackaday.com/2020/08/21/microsoft-flight-simultors-d...
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:smoothness