[HN Gopher] OpenStreetMap in Realtime ___________________________________________________________________ OpenStreetMap in Realtime Author : grey_earthling Score : 227 points Date : 2021-02-13 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (osm-in-realtime.jwestman.net) (TXT) w3m dump (osm-in-realtime.jwestman.net) | dubbel wrote: | If you want to show up in there, too, contribute data back to | open society or simply make your Sunday walks a bit more | engaging, then i can highly recommend the "street complete" | Android app [0]. | | It allows you to contribute by answering simple questions about | your surroundings, like how many stories a building has or if a | stairs has ramps for bikes or wheelchairs. | | And all that with great UX. | | [0] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete | diggan wrote: | As someone who recently jumped ship from FreedomDroid to | WalledGardenOS, is there any similar apps for iOS? There is | bunch of suggestions over at https://learnosm.org/en/mobile- | mapping/ but seemingly nothing as simple as StreetComplete | dheera wrote: | It seems from the way you worded that that you actually | preferred Android for the freedom aspect (I do as well). Why | did you jump ship, if I may ask? | | (I understand wanting to use new iOS-only apps like | Clubhouse, and for that I just have a really old test iPhone | that i got second hand that I use just for that purpose only | until those apps come out with Android versions.) | matkoniecz wrote: | Sadly no. | | https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/1892 | - "iOS version" | | "So, the estimation for a MVP could be as little as 2 months | for UI and 2 months for the core, so in total 4 months." | Aeolun wrote: | Go Map!! Is the best I've found for iOS so far. | _ph_ wrote: | Is there an iOS app available? | habi wrote: | Go Map!! (https://apps.apple.com/ch/app/go- | map/id592990211?l=en) is a full fledged editor for OSM on | iOS. | matkoniecz wrote: | Sadly no. | | https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/issues/1892 | - "iOS version" | | "So, the estimation for a MVP could be as little as 2 months | for UI and 2 months for the core, so in total 4 months." | ryandrake wrote: | I used to edit OSM quite a bit. It's an odd community though. | Some people can get very possessive about "their" regions. I | remember once spending a few hours "unbraiding" the | intersections on a few major dual carriageway avenues over 20 | city blocks or so, which I understand is best practice[1]. Well | a day later or so, someone sent me a message very upset and | demanding that I revert the changeset that ruined "their" work. | I did, and it kind of turned me off from editing. Like, OK fine | I won't try to help anymore, jeez. | | EDIT: I don't want to dissuade anyone else from trying editing | --it's fun. But, beware of the personalities, it can be like | editing Wikipedia. | | 1: | https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/3194/intersecting-d... | dheera wrote: | Why did you revert? It would seem to me that they were in the | wrong for being possessive, and assuming your efforts were in | good faith, perhaps one could take delight in watching them | running and squirming in anger. I would have probably just | ignored the message and kept making contributions, but I | understand the turn-off. | tsomctl wrote: | Speaking from personal experience, being a passive- | aggressive asshole doesn't solve any problems. | acct776 wrote: | But...they weren't. They were just continuing their good | work. | sedgjh23 wrote: | Neither does being a doormat. | dheera wrote: | Ignoring assholes, optionally having a laugh at them, and | moving on with your life and what you want to do isn't | passive-aggressive behavior. | [deleted] | politelemon wrote: | Definitely agree about the community, there's all sorts! I've | also encountered some very helpful individuals with immense | patience. | | I noticed during a large urban area mapping on HOTOSM, one | person was going around teaching everyone how to map tall | buildings, he'd track down each commit and comment there with | feedback, it was very nicely done in a non aggressive way. I | was quite happy to learn. | | It isn't obvious the first time you do it, for tall buildings | you need to map the part of the building that intersects with | the earth. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAPiGntG6fs | jmkb wrote: | OSM is like a bunch of volunteers refurbing a city park, all | working different schedules, with no manager. Alice starts | sanding off rust on one end of a swingset. Then Bob shows up | and starting painting the other end that hasn't yet been | sanded; consternation ensues. | | There are a lot of attempts to solve this problem with | documentation on exactly how things should be done. The wiki, | the stackoverflow-style help site, subreddit, tips in the | editor software, mailing lists, slack... There are too many | and they often don't agree. The information in some places | changes quite rapidly, or in other places goes stale over | time. | | So we're bound to end up with incompatible approaches now and | then. I've found it's often (certainly not always!) useful to | _politely_ communicate with other mappers. This works both | ways -- I 've stepped on toes, and I've had toes stepped on. | | When you're staring at something ugly in OSM, the last person | to work on it might have finished 5 minutes ago, or 5 years. | But the tools to find out do exist. As the map gets more and | more filled in, I expect that documentation aimed at new | mappers will need to focus on communication and cooperation | as much as direct editing of the map data. | andrewmcwatters wrote: | It makes me wonder if individuals like these should be | limited from contributing, because they force a multitude of | others out of the total pool of contributors. | | Maybe they're doing more damage through their obsessive | behavior as compared to a larger group of less enthusiastic | members. | maxerickson wrote: | At the extreme, people who are outright counterproductive | or consistently refuse to collaborate are blocked from | contributing. | | There's a public log of it: | https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks/ | LeoPanthera wrote: | Edit: Comment removed, I'm an idiot, the list is | paginated. | maxerickson wrote: | It's paginated. There's 20+ pages of multi year blocks. | | (There are many instances of a single person having | created multiple blocked accounts though) | | Mostly it's a lot of effort to be a barely visible | vandal, so people just go away. | celsoazevedo wrote: | > There are literally 20 users on that list | | It lists 20 per page. The navigation is at the bottom of | the page. | | There's 230 pages, so that's about 4600 banned users. | Black101 wrote: | As much as I don't like Google, this is the kind of app that | Apple would block. | pugworthy wrote: | As someone who recently started one of those "Can I walk every | street in my city?" endeavors, I've become much more aware of how | OSM works, and have gained a lot of respect for it. | | This literally shows crowdsourcing of updates in action, and | makes me want to contribute more where I can. | politelemon wrote: | I remember a similar site, or was it this one, also a 'live'-ish | OSM showcase, where it showed the changesets being drawn, or | appearing as they were submitted. Does this sound familiar to | anyone? | | Edit: I found it! https://osmlab.github.io/show-me-the-way/ | | As is typical I couldn't find it until I said that I couldn't | find it. There must be a term for this. | yorwba wrote: | Fascinating, thanks for the link. | | What I don't understand is how the duration each changeset is | shown is determined. I got to spend a while watching someone | circle individual yurts in Mongolia, but some other places | disappeared so quickly that the satellite tiles in the | background hadn't even started to show up yet. | jorams wrote: | I think the duration for each changeset just depends on the | number of map elements it touches. Every map element gets 1.5 | seconds. Every individual yurt is a map element so that | changeset gets a lot of "airtime", but a changeset that just | adds one building is only visible for 1.5 seconds. | politelemon wrote: | There's also a number, top left, which is counting down as | each change occurs. It doesn't seem related to one place. I | can't tell what it is. | jorams wrote: | The element ID for it is "queuesize". I think it just | fetches a batch of recent changes then queues them up. When | the queue gets empty enough it fetches a new batch, and the | number still in the queue is what you see. | tmcw wrote: | I worked on this ages ago :). It's replaying the last | minute's edits, and since all of the editing tools just file | a changeset (like a commit) all at once, it has to | reconstruct what it looked like to draw those features. That | timing is just based on a fixed count of seconds it should | take to draw a line, a point, etc. The code's here: | | https://github.com/osmlab/show-me-the-way/blob/gh- | pages/js/s... | politelemon wrote: | Hello there, nice work. I like how relaxing it is... | Watching someone somewhere contributing. I'm going to leave | this running on my 2nd monitor full screen. | RHSeeger wrote: | That is kind of fun to watch. Thanks for this. It might make an | interesting screensaver. | macintux wrote: | > As is typical I couldn't find it until I said that I couldn't | find it. There must be a term for this. | | Rubber ducking? | teddyh wrote: | "L'esprit de l'escalier" is also similar. | agumonkey wrote: | old school shower comeback I see | pcthrowaway wrote: | Damn, Canadians and Aussies are allergic to open data apparently. | mtmail wrote: | 10am in Vancouver, 5am in Syndey, I wouldn't read too much into | that. Map of all OSM nodes, it's somewhat close to population | density | https://twitter.com/phil_osophie/status/1357728257316126722 | UncleBen wrote: | Any reason why North America has such little activity compared to | Europe? | maxerickson wrote: | Mostly just less contributors. | | Also time of day. | | Why there are less contributors is a harder question. | ac29 wrote: | I assume because Google Maps and Apple Maps are good enough | in the US, and Americans have less of an objection to using | products from big American tech companies. | Mediterraneo10 wrote: | One reason of probably many: a lot of Europe has been mapped by | cyclists. Much of Europe has distances that are relatively | small enough that people can often go on some pretty productive | mapping expeditions from a city. In the US there is less | leisure cycling culture (people who do get out on bikes are | often aiming for speed and exercise, not quietly spending a | whole day out doing something), and the distances are much | vaster so one cannot get to some places from the city and | return in the same day. | | If you notice, even in Europe the completeness and up-to- | dateness of OSM data starts to break down in areas (e.g. | Lapland) where distances and remoteness approach that of North | America. | Aachen wrote: | Nah, cycling is virtually nonexistent outside of the | Netherlands and Denmark. E.g. Finland sees it as a hobby more | than a transportation method, Germany doesn't see it at all. | A train station just across the border in a town where most | people work in the next city over (namely where that train | goes) has three loops as their main bike parking and on a | regular working day there is an average 0.5 bikes making use | of it. | | From what I see and hear about being your kids' taxi until | they get a driver's license (at 16yo already), I'd assume the | difference is pedestrians. I'm nearly 30 and never owned a | car, coming from a village and living in a town. Shops are | walking distance, I take the bus to work (non-covid times) | for environmental reasons, and I think a small majority of | people I know do the same (most of my friends/acquaintances | are in NL). | | Germany is already quite car-centric by my standards, yet | they have the most contributors. There's still a lot of | pedestrian traffic for the short distances inside of towns | and cities, just no medium-distance cycling traffic. So why | do they have the most contributors? | | Living in Germany, the mentality is different. I have been | trying unsuccessfully for three years to find a good | definition or concise explanation. There's something that | drives use of Threema (paid), PGP and Linux (relatively hard | to use), and OpenStreetMap (when sugar daddy Google gives you | free maps already). Certainly Google's map here is worse than | in their home market, but it's not bad either. | | Everyone in Germany will tell you that by the end of | secondary education, they're just so done with the whole | hitler thing. It's a huge topic throughout the educational | system. So I guess morals and things like why privacy matters | gets ingrained as well? But that doesn't hold for other | European countries, in NL the Linux/Threema/OSM/PGP usage is | similar to what I hear on HN. | | So a combination of factors, with as biggest common | denominator probably pedestrians, plus the mindset in | Germany, and maybe a tiny fraction the cyclists (which is | literally everyone in NL, by the way, it's not a subgroup but | a state of being, or at least I learned that "cyclists" is a | laden term in North America from someone who is from there | and moved here, but anyway OSM contributorship in NL isn't | that huge). | rpadovani wrote: | What? | | This is far from my experience! People in Bayern are crazy | for bikes, they do long rides on the weekend to lakes and | pre-Alps: there are a lot of bike shops, and possibilities | for any kind of budget. | | People go by bike also in these days, while the temperature | is way below 0. | | Also in Italy there is quite a culture, especially outside | the big cities. All the Alps area has amazing tracks, also | cross countries | Doctor_Fegg wrote: | OSM mapping in Britain has been absolutely driven by | enthusiast cyclists and walkers. That's not to say cycling | is a mainstream mode of transport on Britain - if only - | but there is a very high correlation between OSM mapping | and cycling. | chki wrote: | To contradict your suggestion that Germany does not see any | bike usage at all: In a somewhat recent survey (2019) 44% | of people claimed that they were using their bicycle as a | transportation method more than once a week (up from 38% in | 2015). 61% were using their car as a transportation method | more than once a week (70% in 2015). There were more sales | of bicycles last year than diesel cars. | pella wrote: | check the osmstats : https://osmstats.neis-one.org/ | | (by country): https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries | Pinus wrote: | Right now, it's evening in Europe, meaning that those who have | been out collecting data during the day have now come home, had | a shower (or brushed the snow off, in my case), relaxed a bit, | downloaded their GPX tracks to their computers, and started | editing. In the US, those doing boots-on-the-ground mapping are | still out. | fancyfish wrote: | My guess is historically North America has had better coverage | from Google Maps and the lie, so less incentive to build a | crowdsourced alternative. | tux1968 wrote: | Noticed that too. I just signed up and added a few points of | interest here in North America. Was surprised that I could | create an account and see my updates appear on the realtime map | moments later. | petespeed wrote: | Cool. A derivative thought: If we observe the dots versus time of | the day at that location, it might give us interesting patterns | of engagement. | | For example, for few minutes I ran, I saw more contributions from | Saturday evening locations compared to Saturday morning. | | Its fun to see causation of common life patterns via data. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-02-13 23:00 UTC)