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It's a cool project, but I've used it, and man is it not going to be a replacement for Google Maps anytime soon, as much as I'd like to get to a FOSS alternative. I can't use it to navigate to a building down the street lol
It's not dumb to contribute though because it's already okay, so it can only get better than okay, and the way that happens is contributions
The goal isn't to replace gmaps, though? If it was, I don't think they would care to allow me to map the species of tree of the height of a curb. Some apps are trying to use OSM as a base layer to provide a gmaps alternative, but the real goal is just to map the world, at least to me
Contribute! The info will bubble up into there other products as they all supplement and enrich their data from OSM if applicable.
Contributed a very little. Been using it ina Top metro city for .ore than a year. Heavily reliable.
Just have faith. We'll get there eventually 🙏
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.
I use it and contribute when I can.
I edit with JOSM and OsmAnd. I learn by doing and keep things very local: adding street numbers, marking shops as disused, updating opening hours, Facebook pages, etc.
I also find it calming. I might do some tonight now that you mention it.
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.
I think I used to wardrive around and add open wifi hotspots to that system when I was like 18/19. I had Linux on a laptop and had gotten a crazy wifi antenna and a USB GPS module (along with some less than legal software to crack WEP encryption) and would drive around in my van looking for routers I could hop onto and map which ones worked and had internet.
I'm not sure what map software I was using though. It was some open source thing, and the name sounds really familiar.
I do a lot, we also use the OpenStreetMap data for my work. I enjoy it but it's definitely lacking in some areas, and there's no app that really comes close to being a Google Maps replacement sadly.
I have, using OSMAnd on iOS. Here in Puerto Rico there are quite a good amount of map details already.
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
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.
Omg great idea! Probably a stupid question but how did you contribute - through an app or from desktop, through the website?
I have added some nearby forest paths to OSM and added some bicycle paths alongside roads which were already mapped, using OSM mostly for outside of road network since other maps do not show forest paths and the like at all while OSM has decent coverage
Yes
Started contributing aswell when I saw that my city was really outdated and it's actually really fun to do it
I gave up on it after finding the only useful front end on android is 100$ per year
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.
I rarely use any maps, but OpenStreetMap is used by Rate Your Music to show where artists you've rated at least once came from.
I’ve contributed a lot of places around the country–though mostly missing cafés & restaurants because that’s what I’m interested in.
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.
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?