Contributing to Open Street Map has given me a ton of satisfaction. Knowing that my somewhat minor efforts to correct one address, add one feature, correct one trail will propagate to so many different places and help other people not get lost, find something new, or just be able to navigate more safely in the world makes me feel like I am leaving the world a better place more than a decade of working at FANG ever did.
True, I use mapcomplete or streetcomplete to kill time when traveling. I use public transport a lot. I've racked up thousands of minor edits, addi g opening hours, accesability info and what not to the map. It's been very satifactory.
I work in public service and I've grotten so many people on board that the map in my region is pretty darned good.
THIS. My comment is somewhat tangential but I thought still relevant. I used to work for huge financial investment company with over a trillion dollars of assets for over 10 years. I never thought I was making positive difference in people's lives. However, my job offered me so many opportunities to volunteer and I would jump on every single one of those, and that made working there totally worthwhile. I still work for another huge company these days, which offers similar opportunities to make a difference in the community and that is what keeps me going here too.
There is something to be said about building tools out of kindness and not for greed. Thank you for your contributions to OSM and Thank you OSM developers too - big fan and user!
I absolutely love OpenStreetMap. Back when I first started building (legal) mountain bike trails I realized that without a map they aren't the most useful. OSM gave me the system in which to document them, and then from there I was able to reuse the data to make print maps and eventually my current project: https://trailmaps.app
If you want a fun and easy way to contribute to OSM I recommend StreetComplete. You get a bunch of game-like quest icons for things like "what is the surface of this path?", and "does this road have a cycle path?", then you walk around and fill them in.
Very satisfying and feels like you're doing something actually useful. Also nudges you to visit parts of your neighborhood you might never have been to before.
I used OpenStreetMaps to create a map with a theme that fits the website theme. There were no other free options that I could find to accomplish this goal. Moreover, the map works on just about every browser under the sun. Great work by their team.
Weird little quirk I've recently encountered, somewhat related to OSM: the `mkgmap` tool used to convert OSM data to Garmin map files display Chinese pronunciation as English names next to POI names in Japanese, due to 1) Japanese OSM maps have a lot of entries written in Japanese without indication of language, 2) no one is doing anything about it, due to Wikipedia style community nuances or something, and 3) the tool have no "--assume-language=$LANG" style of options(plus Japanese script->pronunciation mapping isn't even remotely bijective).
e.g. There's a bicycle parking next to the parkside exit at Ueno station, "上野駅公園口自転車駐車場". This is:
meaning: Ueno station park entrance bicycle parking ground in English,
read IRL: ue no eki kouen guchi jitensha chusha jou in Japanese, but written
on the map: shang ye yi gong yuan kou zi zhuan che zhu che chang as Chinese(in Pinyin but I don't know how to type it).
...I would imagine that utility of that is limited for non-Japanese users. Makes me wonder what are the reasons why master OSM data hadn't had missing pronunciations autogenerated or mkgmap tool given an auto selected language flag, but I'm not intending to be OSMian nor am I wanting to be the one to define national borders for bunch of nation states, so there's that...
The President of the United Stated doesn’t actually have the authority to tell anyone besides the executive branch what to name geographic places. So the order only forces official US government maps created by USGS and the like to be updated. Other maps can choose to update if they want to.
Open Street Map tends to reserve the “name” tag for what things are commonly called by the local community. It appears that for the Lake Ontario and The Gulf of Mexico they’ve added an “official_name:US” tag to capture the names in the executive orders.
It's up to the renderer what to display. OSM tags data according to global consensus, they use Gulf of Mexico for 'name'. There is an attribute for 'official_name:en-US' that returns Gulf of America. Same approach for other disputed names/places.
"Few if any renderers consume official_name=* or any of its subkeys; in practice, the purpose of this key is for geocoders to find the feature when a user searches for the official name."
It’s interesting how the “preserve traditional historical names - don’t change the names on things for political reasons” role flipped to the left when that particular person started renaming things. In this case especially - a body of water that is between two countries has no “correct” namesake. It merely has a “traditional” name justified by “that’s just always what we’ve called it.” Tradition suddenly became very important to the American left wing when that rename happened.
Well, when you visit it https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=7/23.765/-87.100 there's no naming of that area at all. At least when looked at from a US IP. And when you search "Gulf of America" it returns "Gulf of Mexico". So take from that what you will.
Also https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=8/43.622/-78.852 shows "Lake Ontario". But it does carry the tag "official_name:en-US": "Lake America", so search will find Lake America and a mapping app could decide to show the official name
Though generally official names are the names nobody uses. For example the country labeled "France" also has the attribute "official_name:en": "French Republic"
good to know both parties apparently feel that “petty renaming of things” is a good use of time for the government. So we’ll just start every change in party control with a raft of renames to thumb our noses at “The Former Guy.” Productive.
I work in public service and I've grotten so many people on board that the map in my region is pretty darned good.
There is something to be said about building tools out of kindness and not for greed. Thank you for your contributions to OSM and Thank you OSM developers too - big fan and user!
Very satisfying and feels like you're doing something actually useful. Also nudges you to visit parts of your neighborhood you might never have been to before.
I used OpenStreetMaps to create a map with a theme that fits the website theme. There were no other free options that I could find to accomplish this goal. Moreover, the map works on just about every browser under the sun. Great work by their team.
e.g. There's a bicycle parking next to the parkside exit at Ueno station, "上野駅公園口自転車駐車場". This is:
...I would imagine that utility of that is limited for non-Japanese users. Makes me wonder what are the reasons why master OSM data hadn't had missing pronunciations autogenerated or mkgmap tool given an auto selected language flag, but I'm not intending to be OSMian nor am I wanting to be the one to define national borders for bunch of nation states, so there's that...Open Street Map tends to reserve the “name” tag for what things are commonly called by the local community. It appears that for the Lake Ontario and The Gulf of Mexico they’ve added an “official_name:US” tag to capture the names in the executive orders.
Interesting that he changed the name to that of the entire continent, so Mexicans and Venezuelans can feel part of it.
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:official_name:en-US
"Few if any renderers consume official_name=* or any of its subkeys; in practice, the purpose of this key is for geocoders to find the feature when a user searches for the official name."
Though generally official names are the names nobody uses. For example the country labeled "France" also has the attribute "official_name:en": "French Republic"
If they ask what the rules of the game are, they've just lost again.
They didn't invent being deliberately obtuse.
Now, I'd love for each geographical region to take their very worst area, and rename it after a certain politician for the lulz.