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0xbadcafebee • today at 2:53 PM • 4 replies • view on HN

OSM is still too difficult to contribute to for mass engagement. I spent an entire day trying to figure out how I could contribute fixes to the map for my corner of the country. There are 30 roads nearby with inaccuracies that would take me weeks to correct by hand. That could be fixed easily if there was a convenient app that recorded my driving and uploaded it to a central source, processed it, and converted that into edits for me to confirm. Such a system might exist, but I wasn't able to figure out where it was or how to use it. If they want more users to contribute the system needs to be easier. Same for Wikis.


Replies

Freak_NL • today at 3:18 PM

Do you have suitable aerial imagery available? Because if it that's the case (and this is the case in most countries) aligning 30 or so roads is an evening of mapping once you've bitten the bullet and learned to use JOSM (which is really not hard for most people with some technical background).

Did you ask for help in the community group for your country?

> That could be fixed easily if there was a convenient app that recorded my driving and uploaded it to a central source, processed it, and converted that into edits for me to confirm.

Mapping requires more than that. GPS traces can be useful in areas where no recent aerial imagery is available, but automated importing of that would cause a lot of errors.

hasbot • today at 3:42 PM

Record your driving using any app that can export a GPX file (e.g. Strava, RideWithGPS, or Komoot). Import that GPX file into the standard OSM web editor and trace the displayed tracks.

striking • today at 3:09 PM

https://streetcomplete.app/ I think is a pretty good example of OSM making it easy to contribute. Maybe try it as an on-ramp? It doesn't record driving or anything, just gives you little quests for your area

The full list is at https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editors

armchairhacker • today at 3:10 PM

Unironically, try asking Claude to make it for you.

Then please publish it. Others can ask Claude too but it's stupid, and one central repository will have everyone's bugfixes and feature recommendations.