While StreetComplete is very careful with the quests, my experience with SCEE was much worse. As an example, with current SCEE 58.2 the building color quest is still buggy. The brown, black and white choices are showing wrong colored illustrations.
Fdroid says that it is bound to jawg.io for tiles. What are the chances that we are giving our data to a company who will take it away from us, or is just using us for free labour?
It is free labor. However it benefits us all and there isn't any alternatives. I don't think OSM is going anywhere soon. It is has benefits for any people and industries.
StreetComplete is godsend. Editing OSM in JOSM, iD, etc, is not trivial and involves reading a lot of documentation and forum posts (if you care to do things right), which of course isn't anywhere near practical for small devices when you're on the go, surveying.
This app changed my whole routine. The interface is really solid and helps the community target important tasks, rewarding it with little prizes. Althewhile, the gamification is kept at a very healthy level, to avoid attracting leaderboard seekers and whatnot, which would certainly lower the quality of contributions.
I think the contribution day grid (akin to GitHub's thing) as well as the dynamic category explorer, the badges and the OSM-related projects it reveals to you bit by bit really bring everything together.
It's an incredible tool!
For the experienced (and this is not said lightly), there is the expert version, which adds more advanced editing features for those looking for a bit more control in regular SC.
It caused a lot of fake stuff to be added to OSM even though its update frequency was slow enough that very little of the fake stuff actually made it into Pokemon Go.
I think it did bring in a few good mappers too though so it wasn't all bad.
I love this app so much, also if you really get into it go to the open street map website and draw buildings, roads, etc to add missing places or update changes.
I cleared my whole walkable area of questions then added all the houses and it populates new questions about house number, shop name, etc which I then went and filled out while walking round. In the zone around me the open source map is now by far the best free to access map, Google house numbers are completely random and no where has upto data shops.
There's also a lot of cool projects devoted to mapping under-served areas, especially in regions where aid workers need information or natural disasters have changed landscapes. You draw in roads, towns, farms, etc based on areal imagery.
Yes, the gamification elements they've been adding lately are brilliant. I was really impressed when I first saw that. Really need to open the app more often..
I tried it when someone posted about it a couple of weeks ago. It is fun, my son and I go for walks and I include him in the tasks. Unfortunately, we get a lot of road surface questions which are a bit boring.
You can also add "little" objects like benches, recycling containers or trees in your near environment to the map that come with their own sets of questions
If I disable the 3 types of quest I get in my area (road surface, lanes, power pole type) then I get basically no quests, period
I've taken to adding buildings that I'm surprised they didn't already have on OSM and then filling in the quests that auto-populate with that, but its meh
Can I throw in that once you get your stride with Streetcomplete you'll love Every Door where you can add Shops and features pretty easily. They really complement each other.
I love this app, found it a bit ago on F-Droid. I'm moving to a very rural town up north and there's nearly nothing done there. Very excited to get up there and start working on it.
every time i find myself in a rural town, i go out for a walk with streetComplete. I'm often the first mapper of those areas and it's a pleasure to complete the map and see your entries on the updates a couple of weeks later. next time you're there, you have a detailed map of the area available and you know why :)
@VirtualOdour@sh.itjust.works had a great idea in their comment above - fill in what you can, then use OSM to add missing buildings etc. They explain it better here though
When first reading (or not actually reading) this post, I thought "What's the task? Go to the local bar and drink a beer, then enter the museum and scan a QR code to prove, you are there..."
But then, I realized what it's actually about: Collecting information to show others in OpenStreetMap, like "does the bus stop have a trash bin? Or what kind of asphalt does the street have?"
Friendly PSA that there is also StreetComplete ExpertEdition (on F-Droid only) which has more tasks and crucially allows you to directly edit tags. Very recommended if you know what you're doing and have some more familiarity with OSM. https://github.com/Helium314/SCEE
@MapComplete is only similar in that it is aimed at giving simple tailored forms to new users. It does not make it easy to contribute "all the low hanging fruit closest to me".
There's a web version, too. I haven't played around with it much, but it looks like you can at least comment or mark resolved other people's contributions
All of them use the same data (osm is actually a databasae) so if data like that is missing, you won't see that in other osm based apps, you (or someone else) have to add it first...
Magic Earth uses some extra overlays for hotels, and OrganicMaps had some controversial deal about adding 3rd party hotel data (basically that's an ad on the map, and a lot of people don't like that). OrganicMaps map data updates monthly, it became regular in the previous months, Magic Earth similar but sometimes they skip some months. OsmAnd can be updated hourly if you pay for it or if you are a regular osm contributor, monthly in the free tier
IIRC OrganicMaps adds an affiliate link to hotel listings that lets you search for them on Kayak. From what I remember it doesn't add any additional hotels to the map and in a quick spot check doesn't appear to hide any website links stored in OSM.
I use a mixture of Organic Maps and OsmAnd+. Organic Maps is more simple, while OsmAnd+ allows you to set up a lot of customization in different profiles to tailor the experience to different use cases (e.g. one for hiking, one for "I'M HUNGRY SHOW ME FOOD", one for biking etc.).
I use Magic Earth when I take my car, Organic Maps when I walk or use public transportation. I don't think there is a single "best app", it depends on your use case.
F-Droid is very strict with what it considers an anti-feature, and Android is very restrictive to properly work without at least one closed source library (thanks, Google), so I say you can ignore this, but it depends on you.
This Anti-Feature is applied to apps that promote or depend entirely on a Non-Free network service, or any service which is impossible, or not easy to replace. Replacement requires changes to the app or service. This antifeature would not apply, if there is a simple configuration option that allows pointing the app to a running instance of an alternative, publicly available, self-hostable, free software server solution.
Because you can't change it from using OpenStreetMap.org to an alternative self hosted site.
Because it tracks real time location and uses the internet. Unless it's an app like this where you explicitly want that functionality, that's usually a sign of some sort of tracking mechanism for advertising or nefarious purposes.
What do you mean exactly by organic maps editing tools? I was using organic maps before to add businesses, but now StreetComplete can also do that (and more!).
I sometimes use Vespucci because it is very powerful, but it's a bit of a pain to use.
When it feels too much, I go back to the building where I live, and set small but realistic goals. Like, I want this block to be complete with all the questions. Then I look around and add things that aren't in the map yet, until my block is as close to complete as I can get it. An island of perfect mapping surrounded by more incomplete mapping. Only then I move on to another well defined area, preferably close to home. Maybe other people will see this example of good mapping and think "I could do that with my local area too!" My personal opinion is that OSM needs many local experts, rather than a few overwhelmed people trying to do it all for everyone else. I have my eyes on where I live, and notice changes over time.
I'm getting that uncanny valley feeling from this comment section. Like, that dead internet theory... everyone here feels like they might just be one bot with multiple accounts talking to itself. What is happening here?
Overly positive attitude for me heckin open sauce app!!! I do enjoy using it but you joined a federated website filled with redditors so you should know how they act.