StreetComplete: Fixing OpenStreetMap, one tiny quest at a time

I was once on a trip in Åndalsness, one of the most scenic places in Norway. Fjords, mountains, you know it.

On the walk to our cabin, a little outside of town, I was checking something on OSM, might have been just learning to use it and read it (it has some learning curve when switching from G-maps).

To my surprise, I saw a shortcut/walking path exiting from the road we were walking on. Already used such paths twice that day for a nice shortcut that didn't show up on G-maps. But there was nothing there.

I told my friend that I'd like to check what this strange hacker map is showing. When we looked again, we noticed that there actually was a trail uphill, what at first sight seemed to just be a forested hillside.

As we went up, the trail started to be more evident. We climbed for a couple minutes, went past a cabin with no road leading to it (pretty normal in Norway), and a few more minutes after it we arrived at a semi-top, with a big boulder and a picturesque view out from that viewpoint.

Very cool memory on the last day of the holidays, made possible thanks to somebody marking that trail on OSM.

I got into OSM and StreetComplete to flesh out intersections, stop signs, and sidewalks in my area. I always felt like I was doing something wrong though. I created crosswalks, then OSM would prompt me to connect the crosswalk to the road via a crossing. In StreetComplete, it felt like I was filling in duplicate data. I had to add whether the crossing had crossing lights not only at the middle crossing, but on the sides as well. This probably doesn't make any sense.

Basically, I am never confident I am editing OSM correctly. Am I supposed to manually draw out sidewalks, or tag the road as having a sidewalk? After adding sidewalks in my area, StreetComplete is now asking me if roads have sidewalks, which I clearly see on the map. Reminds me of editing the various Wiki pages. There's several ways of documenting something, only one way is correct, and it's undocumented.

edit: after playing with StreetComplete more, I noticed you can mark sidewalks as displayed separately. This is tagged as "sidewalk:both=separate" on the road. Whether this is the right way to do things I do not know

I discovered that recently, it's a very fun way to contribute to OpenStreetMap, and the UI is really well-done, it's totally beginner friendly! I wish there was a way to do more than labeling though, like add simple roads and footpaths

It sucks that Google is probably using OSM data to check what they are missing and adding it to their maps, but we can't do vice versa. OSM should change their license to something like if you use our data, you have to make yours open as well.

Are there other similar apps to stimulate soft "crowdfixing" ? I'm sure there are plenty of other aspect of society that would benefit from a light way to know where someone can contribute or notify so other can fix things (forest dumps, random trash). Homeostatic apps to ensure our surroundings are close to a good state :]

Reminds me of when Microsoft released a new Flight Sim, and people immediately started spotting buildings and things that were out of the norm in the game, which in turn started getting reported to OSM for corrections.

https://hackaday.com/2020/08/21/microsoft-flight-simultors-d...

Great app. There is also https://every-door.app/ that gives you slightly different set of tasks and allows you to place POI easily. I recently mapped a lot of trash cans and benches around my neighborhood while walking with my dog.

Just downloaded and made 15+ small contributions in the vicinity of my area. Very well built app. Super simple to use. And gamification is top-notch. Recommended.

This is very cool, I wish there was some way to use it on a bicycle though. For example, when moving into a street it could ask (using voice) if this street is paved, and I could answer it using voice too.

One thing missing on osm is pictures. Would defeats Google maps if it had some, where users would feedback and bad shots would get wiped to save space. We would get the best shots the world has to offer.

Hi! Is this yours? Would you like help porting this to iOS?

StreetComplete's trick is hiding the tagging model until you actually need it. Most contributor tools expose the schema too early.

I downloaded this, and I'm slightly amazed at how much detail there is. What material the utility poles are made of?

Some more info in an earlier thread [1]

[1] CoMaps – FOSS Offline Maps | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48808928

Does it have to be a mobile app? Id love to do this when im bored at work but i dont wanna make it seem like im just sitting on my phone.

Thank you for the reminder! I got out of the habit of checking StreetComplete since my previous neighborhood was well populated in OSM, but having just moved, I should check it out again.

StreetComplete is cool, fun and useful, yes. And there is its companion app StreetMeasure which makes it easy to add measurements like the width of a narrow street, for example.

I really love this - fantastic that it's open source too as would love to contribute. Is there an opportunity to add fresh new sites on this?

I love this tool.

It brought me back to mapping on OSM.

Wherever you are and need to wait for a minute, there are quests to be solved there.

I recommend SCEE for those who are already familiar with OSM mapping or are in an area where the most common tasks are already covered: https://github.com/Helium314/SCEE

Is there something equivalent for iOS?

See also, https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/SCEE

Every day I take a 2 hour walk and contribute as much data as I can to OSM using this app.

This is such a great idea. Are there ever any plans for a web app?

I enjoyed the simulated phone screenshots, particularly the choice of House of the Trembling Madness, a great beer stockist and drinking establishment on Lendal in York. I would like to think that the name in the input field is deliberately slightly wrong, ready to be fixed by someone. (It's "House of the Trembling Madness" rather than "The House of Trembling Madness".) Gamification at another level :-)

If anyone is interested in where StreetComplete is used or which quests are the most popular, you can check out: https://piebro.github.io/openstreetmap-statistics/stats/04_s...

See also:

https://gurumaps.app/

Been using this for my dog walks too. There's something oddly satisfying about turning a boring loop around the block into "wait, does that bin have a lid?" Never thought trash cans would be the thing that got me into mapping.

Muy bien