[HN Gopher] StreetComplete: Easy to use editor of OpenStreetMap ...
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StreetComplete: Easy to use editor of OpenStreetMap data
Author : rjzzleep
Score : 368 points
Date : 2021-06-18 11:26 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| SteveCoast wrote:
| I find it puzzling how random OSM things go to the top of HN on a
| seemingly monthly basis. I imagine some vast conspiracy network
| promoting these links and wonder who's in charge and what their
| motivation is?
|
| :-)
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| As an avid contributor to OSM I must say that I am impressed.
|
| It is an excellent tool for normal users, I would need to check
| what it suggests in areas that are not well mapped (my
| surroundings only miss some unimportant elements)
| teknopaul wrote:
| Like this lots. Best thing is the can't answer buttons. Need a
| name for that feature. The number of times I have aborted a form
| because some incompletable entry is "required" is almost
| certainly an unreported stat :)
|
| Hats off, top tool.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| I think anybody developing open source / collaborative commons
| software that targets non-technical users could learn some tricks
| from streetcomplete. It has managed to lower barriers to entry
| and seems to get many people engaged in what is quite a technical
| area. Some UI expert might be better able break it down but here
| is my braindump of some key factors:
|
| * at a basic level, generally smooth handling of drawing of a
| legible map and basic UI functions (esp. compared with some other
| foss openstreetmap apps, no need to name names :-)
|
| * considerably narrows down the map editing options. by
| presenting controlled choice lists the novice editor feels "safe"
|
| * uses simple and innocent gamification (scoreboards, "unlocking"
| websites etc)
|
| There are ofcourse glitches and indeed a keen openstreetmap
| enthousiast may "outgrow" it relatively quickly but assuming the
| devs get further support and build on the initial success it
| could be a reference point for highly usable open source apps
| targeting larger audiences
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > There are ofcourse glitches
|
| If you notice something not covered by existing
| https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues - feel
| free to report it.
|
| Some glitches in map rendering are
| https://github.com/tangrams/tangram-es/ bugs, but in the worst
| case issue will be transferred/closed.
| progbits wrote:
| I can recommend installing this and opening it while you are
| bored on a walk somewhere through your city. The questions are
| very well phrased, come with intuitive pictures to help you
| answer.
|
| I'm not sure how useful the edits are in practice but I've
| contributed hundreds of questions about wheelchair-accessible
| sidewalks, street lighting etc and hope that this is helping some
| people make better navigation decisions.
| blargpls wrote:
| Amazon uses it for deliveries and also contributes to OSM.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > I'm not sure how useful the edits are in practice
|
| Heavily depends on a question, some are quite niche.
|
| But even backrest quest has some use - thanks to it I detected
| and deleted some no longer existing benches.
|
| See comments in
| https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/blob/master...
| and below for some additional context.
|
| And note that some not-yet-used data will be more likely to
| become used as OSM coverage improves!
| mtmail wrote:
| StreetComplete can create Notes, too. [edit] I think that's
| default when a question cannot be answered.
|
| For those not aware: On https://www.openstreetmap.org/ you can
| leave comments on the map, so called Notes
| (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes). It's like bug
| reports but on a map, with comment thread. Local mappers look
| at those. Or that is the idea, I've seen notes open years and
| others resolved within hours.
|
| The answers with new information are useful for local mappers,
| even "this shop no longer exists" answer (examples
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2659780 ,
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2641050) when asked about
| opening times. Many notes need a local mapper to verify (visit
| the place, find secondary information).
| easyKL wrote:
| Notes also come from other services that make use of OSM
| data, like MapsMe. There are lots of them.
| andrewshadura wrote:
| Correction: MapsMe - Organic Maps
| windthrown wrote:
| I prefer Organic Maps too, but it isn't incorrect to
| state that MapsMe "makes use of OSM Data".
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| No need for that correction. The issue is that while
| MapsMe got sold to a dodgy company and now has some
| respectable FOSS forks, the Notes layer on OSM is still
| full of notes that were created from Maps.me over the
| last several years and clearly state that.
| Aachen wrote:
| > I'm not sure how useful the edits are in practice
|
| It depends on who you ask!
|
| For me, things like opening hours or paid parking indications
| are very helpful.
|
| My girlfriend was doing some running training a while ago and
| in summer during the day it can be quite hot. But at night, how
| do you know which roads are lit if you want to plan your route
| ahead of time to have the right distance? Easy: OSM has the
| data, OsmAnd and others can display it... except our area had
| almost no coverage at all. StreetComplete made it super easy
| for me to map that, so now it's there. She stopped running in
| the meantime but... hopefully the next person can make use of
| it, the data is there to stay :)
|
| For the wheelchair questions, there is of course another
| audience that might like to plan routes without finding
| inaccessible steps in the middle.
|
| I can also imagine if you drive trucks, having good
| weight/width/height limit data is also useful. Right now I
| think this data is quite incomplete (though I didn't do a
| comprehensive study) and I have no idea what those companies
| use instead (maybe they just drive a route before sending
| trucks down it?), but at some point a free worldwide uniform
| dataset is going to be easier than whatever they use now.
| progbits wrote:
| > She stopped running in the meantime
|
| Made me laugh!
|
| Thanks a lot for sharing. These are all great usecases and it
| is good to hear people make use of that. I didn't have the
| need for it, and while I can see the intrinsic value in
| having this data widely available in OSM the fact people do
| actually use it for something makes it more "real"!.
| windthrown wrote:
| In addition to the wheelchair ramp example, there are a few
| navigation apps for people who are blind which use OSM data
| - crucially features like tactile paving and crosswalks
| with voice prompts:
|
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_for_the_blind
| blendergeek wrote:
| If you like Street Complete, please consider sponsoring it on
| Libera Pay [0], Github Sponsors [1], or Patreon [2]. For the last
| year, it was funded by OSMF by a grant to help develop
| alternative OSM editors. This grant has come to an end so they no
| longer have funding other than donations.
|
| [0] https://liberapay.com/westnordost
|
| [1] https://github.com/sponsors/westnordost
|
| [2] https://www.patreon.com/westnordost
| matkoniecz wrote:
| To be more exact, OSMF funding was 3000 euro (
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Microgrants/Microgrants_...
| )
|
| There was also funding from The German Federal Ministry of
| Education and Research "between 09.2020 and 02.2021"
| https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete#sponsors
|
| (I am one of contributors, and small part of my work was also
| grant-supported by NLnet foundation - I also definitely
| encourage to consider sponsoring the app author)
| starsep wrote:
| Great app :). I recommend it to my friends to introduce them to
| OpenStreetMap. Ease of use, good UX/UI is a game changer.
|
| Those things matter a lot but most OSM Editors/Maps suck in this
| area. Usually it's caused by a design made by developers for
| other superusers.
| mdip wrote:
| Very cool; I don't work with OSM in my "day job" but took an
| interest early last spring.
|
| It's amazing how far things have progressed in the mapping space.
| I think back to my first "serial-port attached" Magellin GPS
| device that only worked plugged into a laptop and stored
| seriously outdated maps on a CD-ROM. Taking just the advances
| since the first time I saw a "Google Earth-like Product" (called
| Microsoft TerraServer[1]) to Earth, Maps, and OpenStreetMap and
| it really is mind-blowing how far the geo-* space has come.
|
| I was (inappropriately) disappointed when I saw that it was a
| mobile app. Of course it is. It's a mapping app. I'd still want a
| laptop version, but then I dug into what they were trying to
| solve and the details of how their app works and, I'm genuinely
| impressed. It appears you identified a real problem: lack of
| current, complete metadata on OSM[2] and gave me a way to update
| it semi-passively, or at least with the "thing I have available
| to me right now" while standing "near the thing I'm trying to
| capture information about". Since map data is relied upon for
| anything from leisure to outright safety, accuracy is really
| important, and the design[3] seems to nail ensuring that accuracy
| can be easily accomplished.
|
| My interest stems from my purchasing of a OneWheel. I put more
| miles on that than I did my car last year and I noticed that
| neither OSM, nor Google do very good with sidewalks. They'll get
| the ones that showed up well in the last satellite pass, provided
| there's a road next to them, and they'll get a lot of trails.
| They miss a few _really_ helpful things. Where I live, most
| elementary /middle schools are located within a cluster of
| subdivisions (often 1-2 miles from a main road). In my
| neighborhood, the school is on the far side, and our subdivision
| borders two other neighborhoods, a large apartment complex and a
| trailer park. To get from my home to a home in one of the three
| bordering subdivisions -- by car -- I will drive at least one
| mile and have to make a couple of ugly turns onto main roads --
| our subdivision does not connect to the trailer park, apartment
| complex or the other bordering subdivision.
|
| On foot, because of the elementary school, there are paved,
| fenced side-walks, meaning I can roll 1/4 mile and reach any home
| in the other subdivisions. Similarly, our neighborhood does not
| have a road leading out to one of the main streets that it
| borders because the residents feared it would be used as a bypass
| during high-traffic times to get from one popular main road to
| another _ridiculously busy_ main road. To solve this, they
| brought the road all the way to the parking lot of a McDonald 's
| and then built a large, brick, wall covering that whole side of
| the neighborhood. McDonald's takes the same amount of time to get
| to _by car_ as it does _by onewheel_ because at the end of that
| street, if you look really closely, there 's a second fence, and
| the home-owner bordering it put pavers down and knocked part of
| the wall out, so you ride right through to the parking lot,
| avoiding lights/busy roads/anything else -- and that main road
| has many retail businesses.
|
| This pattern exists in almost every subdivision in my township,
| and the schools as side-walk nexus points connecting
| neighborhoods is state-wide (it allows for more students to walk,
| less busing [mandatory through most of my state]), but I've had
| to add each one to OSM, myself -- and I'm happy to do it, except
| that the online map editor, as amazing as it is, lands in on the
| "intimidating" side, resource-heavy [expected] and just generally
| not as pleasant as I wish it were. I run Linux and last I looked,
| that was the best options of the choices I could get working
| (easily, anyway) with my current configuration.
|
| Does anyone have any _non-Android_ OSM map editor
| recommendations? Or even any mobile versions that are
| particularly pleasant for adding the kinds of paths I 've
| described? And hey, if you know of any good source data for
| discovering those paths? For instance, I have a link bookmarked
| around here that takes me to a heatmap produced using the phones
| of people who have a particular biking app installed and have
| enabled public logging. It was super-useful in finding trails
| that are seasonal/hidden/otherwise not well mapped.
|
| [0] I've done a mess of things with Google Maps API a while back,
| but even in those cases it was _really simplistic sorts of
| things_.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraserver.com
|
| [2] Not a knock to OSM; to clarify, considering their largest
| alternative is ... Gooble ... it's pretty amazing that even on
| the metadata side, OSM is more complete in many categories than
| Guh'Maps.
|
| [3] I'm going on screen shots, I will be installing this in the
| afternoon but have not installed it, yet so if some of the things
| I like (or dislike) aren't actually the way I think they are "in
| the app", my apologies.
| blargpls wrote:
| > For instance, I have a link bookmarked around here that takes
| me to a heatmap produced using the phones of people who have a
| particular biking app installed and have enabled public logging
|
| Could you post this link, please?
|
| > Does anyone have any non-Android OSM map editor
| recommendations?
|
| JOSM. It's no beautiful and the UX is clunky, but it's java
| based and therefor works on a lot of operating systems.
|
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/JOSM
|
| https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editors
| c0nsumer wrote:
| It's Strava's Global Heatmap, and here's a writeup I did on
| how to use it as a layer in JOSM:
| https://nuxx.net/blog/2020/05/24/high-resolution-strava-
| glob...
|
| Note, you need a paid account to access the high-res data.
| troccu wrote:
| Ok
| kawsper wrote:
| I've considered asking if any of my friends have an old Android
| so I could use StreetComplete, I hope we will one day see an iOS
| version.
| emaro wrote:
| Does anything similar exist for iOS?
| blargpls wrote:
| The project is looking for help porting it to iOS:
| https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/1892
|
| Some preparations and refactorings were already done in
| anticipation, but there's still a lot left to do.
| ygra wrote:
| It doesn't seem like it, no. The sheer number of custom UI
| things (basically a well-designed custom UI for each and every
| question that can be answered) is probably the most challenging
| aspect to redo on another platform. And that's precisely the
| part that makes StreetComplete so good. I often edit with
| Vespucci as well when outside, but for the things that SC
| covers, I don't even bother fiddling with the tags, as long as
| I know the feature will generate a SC quest.
| jmkb wrote:
| Not really. I'm a very happy user of Go Map!! for iOS, which is
| a much more full-featured map editor but doesn't have the
| streamlined workflow of StreetComplete.
| leokennis wrote:
| That's interesting. Go Map!! is the only OSM editor for iOS I
| know about, but even moving an existing street a few yards
| left or right is an almost impossible chore in it...
| jmkb wrote:
| When it comes to that sort of fine tuning, there's no
| substitute for JOSM, which is the all-powerful java-based
| desktop editor with a hundred plugins and a somewhat
| inscrutable UI. But it's great because it can load several
| sources of aerial imagery at the same time, and quickly
| cycle between them or set transparency levels. This gives
| good perspective when it comes to precise alignment of map
| features to imagery, and to each other.
| TuringTest wrote:
| Is there a way to _add_ elements to the map, such as a missing
| store, a one-way road, a construction work blocking the
| street...? Basically, to create new bubbles from a limited
| subset; or to classify notes by (a limited subset of) its
| possible type of street elements.
|
| This would make this app a perfect entry-level editor to
| contribute on poorly mapped areas. Other editor apps are too
| complex for that, but this one feels somewhat limited without a
| possibility to add freeform content, not just following exisitng
| prompts.
| morsch wrote:
| You can't do those things with StreetComplete, but you can add
| notes which other editors can -- and in my own experience, will
| -- address.
| donalhunt wrote:
| OSM Contributor (android) is quite good for the set of POIs it
| supports. I believe Go map! is the go-to on iOS.
|
| There are also imagery capture apps (Mapillary, Kartaview, etc)
| which allow you capture a lot of data on the ground and then
| process it later (either yourself or by utilising other members
| of the community).
| edwcross wrote:
| OSM Go! (Android app) allows adding point-based POIs, so mostly
| stores (if you point to the entrance) and fixtures, not so much
| path-based things (e.g. crosswalks, which are bound to a path).
| But it's quite easy in my opinion, and offers several
| templates. It's open source (on GitHub) even though not on
| F-Droid, so you have to use Google Play to install it.
| pwg wrote:
| If you want the ability to do full editing on the go, then
| Vespucci (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.blau.android/)
| provides the ability to edit, on Android devices, everything
| you can edit with the desktop OSM editors.
| xyzelement wrote:
| Oh man the power of branding. The first few times I saw the
| headline I assumed it was about StreetEasy because that's how my
| brain is conditioned to recognize the word Street followed by
| another word in CamelCase I guess!
| aaronax wrote:
| The recent update which re-architected the internal systems was a
| great improvement for my uses of the app, based on a few minutes
| of testing at least. Very nice to be able to immediately put in
| the house number after choosing that a building is a house.
|
| - 7876 contributions over the last few years, #19 rank in USA and
| #248 globally
| ygra wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, how quest-less is your vicinity? Because
| for the village I live in there's almost nothing left by now
| and I had to resort to micro-mapping street lights, hedges,
| fences, walls, trees, entrances, building/roof colors and
| materials, etc. when outside, instead of using StreetComplete.
|
| (I'm only #263 in Germany and #714 globally, though.)
|
| It's a really great gateway into OSM, I have to admit. Even
| though my previous work had to do with maps and I've had an OSM
| account since then, I've never mapped gain after the first few
| changesets until I found StreetComplete this winter.
| qwertox wrote:
| I once added a bench to OSM just to see how the process
| works, and it all feels pretty tedious, specially when you
| want to update it in order to add some properties.
| edwcross wrote:
| There's the Android app OSM Go! nowadays
| (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm_Go!), made by a
| French developer so it might have some local bias, but it's
| the easiest app I've seen to add point-based POIs, like
| trash cans, shops, playgrounds, billboards, etc. It's not
| perfect (some templates miss optional properties), but it
| enables adding POIs in a few seconds, so you can do it
| while walking.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > Just out of curiosity, how quest-less is your vicinity?
|
| I have still thousands, maybe tens of thousands quests within
| walking range. Despite systematic use of StreetComplete for a
| long time.
|
| But I live in a city that is well mapped in OpenStreetMap -
| Krakow, Poland
| https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/50.0621/19.9431
| aaronax wrote:
| I have lived in a lot of different places over the past three
| years so have improved each area as I pass through. Now where
| I am settled down most of the city's buildings aren't even
| traced so there is a lot to do. I'm busy with substantial
| home improvement projects for probably the rest of the year
| but I will get to it eventually.
| dockd wrote:
| How did you find your ranking?
| progbits wrote:
| Shows up in [Hamburger menu] > [My profile].
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