this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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[–] [email protected] 137 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

All of you are invited on [email protected]

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

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I successfully used Every Door during my holidays to contribute

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago

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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[–] nutsack 129 points 2 months ago (28 children)

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.

[–] then_three_more 48 points 2 months ago (3 children)
[–] rolling_resistance 17 points 2 months ago (4 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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...

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] nutsack 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

But you can also just flag it if editing is not your cup of tea. Here's a convenient, non-techy tool to add notes for others to use when editing: https://www.onosm.org/

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[–] teolan 32 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 88 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 134 points 2 months ago

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

[–] [email protected] 58 points 2 months ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (5 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

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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[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 months ago (8 children)

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

[–] kameecoding 13 points 2 months ago (6 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago (5 children)
  • 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
[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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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[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (11 children)

Openstreetmaps has 8.75% of the contributors Google Maps has.

Organic Maps has 1% the user base Google Maps has.

[–] [email protected] 119 points 2 months ago (5 children)

The same can be said about Lemmy and Reddit, but look where we are.

We need to support open-source projects and stop being simps for bad companies like Google.

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago

And its still better :)

[–] asbestos 31 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

I just did 30 minutes of contributing to the osm database.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (6 children)

So? Every platform starts at 0%.

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[–] NutWrench 27 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Organic Maps is available on F-Droid.

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[–] Dezzorian 24 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I've used OrganicMaps in the past, but for searching POIs and ahead route planning its just unusable.

Meanwhile i've found GraphHopper, an open source search, route and (experimental) navigation app from Germany. Great thing: its blazing fast! Check it out on F-Droid.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

For the lazy: GraphHopper Maps (Online route planner and experimental GPS navigation) https://f-droid.org/packages/com.graphhopper.maps/

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[–] zer0bitz 19 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Just downloaded and installed Organic Maps from F-Droid. Looks really nice.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (10 children)

I didn't know about Organic-Maps. I used Osmand, which has a subscription fee for downloading maps.

Thx!

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Google maps is the last vestige of Google that I use. I was never a Google search user and I only use Gmail for 'official' stuff.

So yeah, I want this to work.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

Aside from saving places what else can you do with google maps that can be exported?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Reminder: As long as you don't get rid of "Google Play Services" running as "root" 24/7, removing/not using Google Maps doesn't mean so much to Google.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago

I disagree. It's a step in the right direction, even if there is still a long distance to go.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Organic maps is great and I wish I could use it more. I commute in a city and traffic data is very important to me when it comes to route planning. It can be the difference between an hour commute and a 15min commute. Due to this, I'm pulled back to using google maps as my default.

Is it not possible to anonymize traffic data so that it can be made available in google maps? I'd gladly contribute a bit of data in order to improve this app. I'd even pay a bit of money for a pro version.

Great app all the same.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (1 children)

These posts are motivating

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