OSM is the only implementation of maps that has been done with privacy in mind. It's a real shame that DDG chose to drop it for a much worse alternative.
OSM has been an absolute necessity when out hiking in the sticks, and knowing that someone has done work to map this trail out without expectations from me. It's also led to many useful derived maps like public toilets and parking and accessibility. I've always made it a point to try and contribute back whenever I can.
I believe they did it because OSM in most places is very outdated or even non existent for businesses, which was probably one of the top uses of it in a search engine.
Having contributed quite a lot to OSM, I can say though that it was generally a lot better for hiking tracks than Google maps.
Agreed. For up-to-date info on businesses I rely on Google Maps, but for hiking it’s totally useless compared to OSM. I still buy some "official" paper maps of the area I hike in because I’ve had bad surprises with OSM, mostly because some mappers sometimes invent some paths based on outdated, blurry aerial imagery, with no real experience of the area. I wish there were a tag like checked_at on paths to mark those that were verified vs. those that were only drawn on Bing Imagery.
Thanks for all your input! How long does it usually take you to complete a single update? I'm curious about helping out with the effort in my neighbourhood.
I use StreetComplete (mentioned elsewhere in this thread), and have added substantial amounts of data to my city. It just asks simple objective questions (Does this crosswalk have a light to tell pedestrians when to cross?). Very easy and quick to answer.
I installed it last night and their flow seems very simple, yeah. Does it allow you to, for example, add missing streets or paths that aren't marked as missing? Because it sounds like it only lets you contribute to things that are already marked as "needs more data"
StreetComplete is fairly limited in scope (which is a good thing, considering its focus on UX and doing that single thing really well).
But there are a bunch of more “expert” features, such as the overlays, which allow for more focused QA work. And there's also a way of recording a GPX trace for missing paths or streets that will be added as a note for others to add to the map (or yourself, just not from the same app). Just long-press the screen and you can start such a recording.
With the places or things overlays you can also add new POIs in a limited way. It's still not a full-fleded editor (and as mentioned before, I think it shouldn't be), but there are now ways of doing more edits that were not possible previously, while not altering the interaction that much.
Yeah it feels like having a very focused editor with a polished workflow could help OSM get more people to contribute, although it would be very nice to maybe have an advanced mode I imagine. Places get new neighbourhoods all the time so it would be great to be able to rigourously modify maps from the same place you contribute from otherwise, although maybe a desktop experience would be much better for this.
I've noticed StreetComplete focuses on details to fill in an already existing street layout, which makes it feel like there are clearly separated stages to the mapping process. First get the basic layout down, then fill in more details like zoning and buildings, and then more details. I like the idea of that so far.
I feel like they could do a little more in terms of promoting on their own website to add/update things. I use it, but so far never saw any "Something new here? Do xyz to add it to the map!". So I have no clue how to even start adding anything.
Alternatively perhaps they could allow users to add things to some staging ground, where authorized users could decide, whether to take it or not. But I guess that would result in lots of spam.
OSM has been an absolute necessity when out hiking in the sticks, and knowing that someone has done work to map this trail out without expectations from me. It's also led to many useful derived maps like public toilets and parking and accessibility. I've always made it a point to try and contribute back whenever I can.