To be clear to folks not familiar with OSM:

These restrictions are unique to projects doing automated submissions of mass data.

If you're an individual just trying to make the world a better place, you can make an OSM account, go to the website, click, add a thing, hit submit, done. Someone will review it.

Apps like CoMaps and Organic Maps make it super easy to contribute data for businesses, landmarks, and such.

▲ zx8080 12 hours ago | parent [-]

> you can make an OSM account, go to the website, click, add a thing, hit submit, done. Someone will review it.

I will share an unpopular opinion: thil will only make a freeworkforce for those projects who profit from using OSM. And the OSM has surprisingly unreliable data quality for walking around even in the popular tourist places like Tokyo or Kyoto, or New York. I've tried, and it's so worse than GMaps (or Bing) to being completely unusable. No work hours of Starbucks, no local dining cafe, no menu contributions.

It's great for the trail and hike outdiors, sure. But that's very different from the city map, as the nature featutes rarely change, not like city POIs.

▲ mikeocool 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

One of the nice things about OSM is you can profit from it from it if you want to.

I don’t think you’ll find even most the die hard OSM fan disagree with you on the POI data.

On the other hand, the road network in OSM is very high quality. As you point out, it’s used and contributed to by companies like Lyft and Amazon.

The fact that anyone can download an accurate detailed global road network for free is pretty crazy.

▲ nemomarx 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This is kinda what StreetComplete is supposed to help with, right? it asks me questions about opening and closing hours of cafes and things.

I would assume that tourist places don't have many locals going by and updating them and tourists don't want to fill in info on that kind of app, but that's mostly an adoption question. If more people contributed more info would be mapped.

	▲	ygra 9 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah, StreetComplete helps both with adding the data in the first place and then keeping is current, since it will also ask those questions again after a while (which also gives an opportunity to check whether a feature still exists). What's less visible there is whether a cafe exists at all – it's not as good to add missing objects as it is for filling in details of existing objects, at least for the casual user.

▲ MikeNotThePope 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's fine to make a project that will only be interesting if people choose to contribute, and it's fine if people want to contribute.

▲ boredatoms 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> No work hours of Starbucks, no local dining cafe, no menu contributions.

This moves the goal posts of OSM

	▲	kelnos 42 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		How so? They have a way of storing that specific information, so why shouldn't we (in part) judge it by the completeness of the information they allow people to store?
	▲	ygra 9 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Well, those things can be added: `- opening_hours=* - amenity=cafe - website:menu=*` But they can easily become outdated again. Still, local QA via StreetComplete, MapComplete, EveryDoor and a multitude of other apps is always needed.
	▲	emj 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It is a very good point though, Honestly we should have tried to solve that. It is badly needed in a map nowdays. At the moment there is no way to map or display these things and I think there should be.