Hi all,
I'm actually happy that Jan raised this issue. As he noted we've had an
exchange of a few OSM messages about how he has viewed my notes use and my
responses to his thoughts.
As Rafael commented I'm a somewhat active OSM contributor (with Haiti and
Nicaragua having been my biggest territories of contribution but also in
various HOT projects as well as my former home in DC area and my native
Finland). I've been super thrilled about OSM notes as you can read from
below.
I'm copy-pasting below the exchange of message I've had with Jan about the
use of OSM notes as I think that given the young age of the map notes there
should be discussion about the use of them -- and also how to make
notes-related tools better.
This should explain pretty well my main views about the issue -- I'd be
very interested to hear of others' thoughts.
What is obvious, as I comment below, is that as things are the notes system
does _not_ provide very good tools for filtering (nor searching, etc
handling of) notes and this can cause problems to some per others' more
active use of the notes. The current situation does require responsibility
from those adding a lot of notes (to resolve them too).
As for the thought of : Don't use it like that I actually beg to
disagree. The notes allow sharing of field observations that others can use
to improve the map - or just highlight problematic areas.
But yes, there are things and ways of working that could be improved.
I'm all ears for any / all thoughts about this. (Including Jan who didn't
answer to my replies and questions in them.)
Cheers from Fuengirola where I'm spending my holiday until tomorrow,
-Jaakko
Ps. I've actually thought that some sort of standardized acronyms for
notes while on the go would be really good / help create notes faster and
help others understand acronyms that are used (in which I'm currently not
the only one, btw).
-
# Lübeck
29 April 2014 at 14:06
Hi !
you added some notes in Malaga for traffic-light etc. OSM-Notes is not a
editor-alternative.
please edit the data by yourself and close the notes.
reagards Jan :-) Germany
## Lübeck
1 May 2014 at 04:50
Hi Jan,
Thanks for your message. I've resolved the few Map notes I had created
while in Malaga and observed missing traffic lights in the OSM db (..
obviously adding those to the db).
I think that we have a little bit of a different understanding of what the
notes can and can't be used for. First off, I don't see any remark at the
OSM wiki page that you couldn't also add notes about missing less
important objects in the OSM db (
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes#Using_notes) -- to which I must
add that traffic lights not being on the map can be a bigger issue to
others than it is to you.
Secondly, the wiki page (and my opinion) is not alone. There was an
interesting session about using the Notes in mapping at the recent SotM-US
(albeit I actually missed it and only heard from others that it was
interesting). .. The point is, in any case, that people are increasingly
using the notes for mapping and not merely adding a (major) bug such as
that a highway is missing. I (too) have thought about the clutter that
increased use of Notes might (actually somewhat evidently) bring about --
but I think that it's more of a filtering and classification problem. I
hope that we'll get some possibility to highlight those notes that are more
critical than others and perhaps mark also less important ones. Hopefully
also query more powerfully notes e.g. viewing or not viewing some users'
notes. Or user groups for that matter.
Lastly, as you can see (http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-notes) I have
used (and likely to some people's opinion abused) the Notes quite a lot and
I have a pretty decent ratio of opened vs. closed notes. .. That is to say
that I also put a good amount of time into resolving Map notes (both my own
and others').
This said, I encourage you too to use the notes a bit more as they are an
absolutely wonderful way of making, well, notes on what things are not
quite how they should be in OSM while moving around. If you are using an
Android device I very warmly recommend OsmAnd's editing plugin as that
makes adding, commenting and also closing notes a breeze (albeit closing
them makes more sense through a proper editor). The editing plugin also
makes adding POIs directly through mobile quite simple (which I mostly use
for objects that don't need to be integrated into other OSM data, e.g.
traffic lights must be integrated, of course).
As a sort of last thought on the topic: Since I started using the Map notes
more through OsmAnd I've probably added a few hundred traffic lights to the
map in Nicaragua, Miami, DC, Brussels, and Malaga area. Without using notes
I wouldn't have added more than a few handfuls. I think this is very
clearly in the best interest of the OpenStreetMap, eih?
Thanks again for your message. I'll get to fixing my other Malaga area
Notes hopefully sooner than later
