this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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I've tried using it over the years but I never liked it because there was no information. So last night I looked at my local city and there is almost no information at all. I spent a few hours last night adding buildings and restaurants and removing incorrect items. It was actually kind of fun and therapeutic and I plan to do more of it tonight. My girlfriend thinks it's dumb and I'm wasting my time because Google maps and Apple maps and Bing maps exists but she just doesn't understand open source.

Edit: Apologies, I just realized this question is not Linux specific.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Just have faith. We'll get there eventually 🙏

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I'm honestly very confused by OSM. I always wanted to use it as an alternative to Google Maps, but it's so hard to use.

Anyone got some tips or good ressources to share?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Contribute! The info will bubble up into there other products as they all supplement and enrich their data from OSM if applicable.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I'll sometimes contribute when I'm travelling to more rural areas which are less likely to be well mapped. The experience in my country has been that cities are very well mapped on OpenStreetMaps with a lot of detail, often having more up to date information than Google Maps. Less populated areas usually don't have as much detail, but the basics, like roads and buildings are usually well mapped.

I've also noticed OpenStreetMaps is awesome for trails and smaller roads used by hikers, usually being much more useful than Google Maps.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I have, using OSMAnd on iOS. Here in Puerto Rico there are quite a good amount of map details already.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Awesome, thanks for the post! I've been aware of OSM for a long time, but haven't thought about it in a while. After a couple of good app recommendations from the comments, I am surprised how far it's come. Definitely going to start using/contributing as much as I can.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I enjoy editing my hometown and have been doing it for about twelve years. But my town is already pretty complete, so I check in every six months or so to change minor details like shops or adding a new bench in the park. In total I'm not even at 200 edits, but I always enjoy seeing those edits back in major tools that use OSM.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I live in an area that was next to perfect when I first learned about OSM, so I had no real reason to contribute. I have seen their maps used by our public transport to show the way to/from stops (or even inside them on the particularly large ones).

This just reminded me that I can in fact contribute and I will check out the iOS options for doing so.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Contributed a very little. Been using it ina Top metro city for .ore than a year. Heavily reliable.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Omg great idea! Probably a stupid question but how did you contribute - through an app or from desktop, through the website?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I've not contributed to the main one, but I have for the humanitarian osm team, you get recently disaster stricken areas and copy roads and buildings and the like

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I love the idea of OSM, been trying to use MagicEarth on iPhone which leverages OSM, but I run into similar issues that your describe. I’ll be honest tho, I never even thought of trying to contribute, may look into it as a little hobby in my free time.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We update it a lot. We also have a product (for walkers in the British Isles) called WayMaps (used by a variety of walking web sites in the UK and also our own demo site https://waymaps.the-hug.net/) which uses the geodata from OSM and other Open Data to produce our own map tiles. We love OSM.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I’ve contributed a lot of places around the country–though mostly missing cafés & restaurants because that’s what I’m interested in.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes. It is the most up to date map in my area, in point of fact, other maps copy their data from osm for my area.

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