Fifteen days in

Fifteen days into the year and the first UK quarterly project of 2023.

I’m quite encouraged by the early progress we’ve made on notes. As noted in the wiki page, there were just over 30,000 open notes at the start of the year. Right now that figure is 29,327. About 700 new notes have also been opened in that time, so that’s around 1500 notes closed already!

My own mapping efforts comes in peaks and troughs like I suspect many of ours do. Personally I’ve found this project quite fun. An open note can motivate me to help update the map as it gets me looking at the sources available whilst addressing the issue in the note.

So far my preferred way of browsing notes is using ResultMaps by Pascal Neis.

Types of notes

A few types of notes I’ve seen.

Nonsense, or notes used for non-mapping purposes

A fair few notes are clearly non-mappers who dropped a note on the map to share where they were planning to meet up, where they found random stuff or were otherwise planning work. Clusters of notes such as ‘Site Location’ ‘This is the place’ could be found in some cities, or ‘fungi?’ up a hill side.

Stuff that is already mapped

Many notes are highlighting new amenities, houses, roads, etc. These are then found to have been mapped since but the note not closed. An easy win for this project.

Partial info

A note that just says ‘closed’ or ‘paths missing’ is a good cue but would be much easier if it includes the business name that might have closed, or the vector of the missing paths at least - particularly in areas where some paths are already mapped. Or worse, a note that just says ‘Name changed’ with little indication of what was the old name, let alone the new one.

Street Complete generated

… See full entry

Building the map up

Thinking about how data is contributed to OSM, an interesting problem is how the detail and level of information is increased over time. Some things are quite easy to refine, but others are definitely not.

Adding basic data

This appears to be straight forward. OSM makes it easy to add some data. Things like tracing aerial imagery to add roads, residential land use, parks. It’s rough data quality, but is not a problem, as to put assumed detail in would not be so helpful.. In the UK, it is increasingly rare to have a totally blank canvas to start with. It feels like most of the coarsest data of roads and villages have been mapped.

Improving data

Once new data sets are available, like street level imagery, further granular detail can be added. The ability to refine the coarsely entered data varies a lot, depending on what it is. A building being determined as a place of worship, or simply a detached house is easily done. change the tag, draw the outline or adjust the bounds if needed. Adding an address.

You can do this on one building on a street and it is an improvement, even if you haven’t done the rest of the street.

Some cases where it falls down

A few examples I’ve seen through my own experience or via talk-gb is where useful data could be added, but unless it is entered to a high level of detail throughout the vicinity, and in its entirety, instead of enriching the map, it can hinder its use.

Sidewalks and pavements

… See full entry