I’ve made minimal corrections in OSM. It is nothing like working on code. If you can draw a line, point and click then even you can make difference.

I've fixed a few things in Open Street Map. But, for example, the city line for Redwood City CA at its western edge is totally bogus. That needs to be fixed by automatic reference to some authoritative source, like the USGS database.

i think there was an article a while ago about the OSM community not liking the idea of bots and automation, and how it’s a big problem for people “graffitiing” the maps because it’s manual effort to reset

It's not so much vandalism that is the issue, it's that rampant automatic edits can end up removing meaning from the data (by smoothing out meaningful differences and the like) or if they aren't careful enough, create a giant mess.

With code you need to be able to programme. For OSM you just need to know something about an area. Do you know what the name of that street is? That there's an italian restaurant on that corner? What the house number of that building is? etc etc

> Yeah, I’ve nothing better to do than roam around fixing maps. It’s not like I have a daily job or anything. /s

No one said it has to be your job or passion. I've fixed a couple of areas in OSM, but I've probably spent no more than a few hours working on it in total.

> It the same argument when someone talks about an issue with an open source software. The response is, “The source code is available, go fix it yourself.” It doesn’t work that way for anything but trivial issues.

Fixing a map for a locale you're familiar with is orders of magnitude easier than fixing a bug in an unfamiliar codebase potentially built with unfamiliar technology. That's assuming you know how to code in the first place.

> No one said it has to be your job or passion. I've fixed a couple of areas in OSM, but I've probably spent not more than a few hours working on it in total.

That doesn’t work unless everyone else is doing it. And for that to work, everyone should be using it in the first place. It’s a catch 22 problem. To be fair, it is possible that people do this where you live - which may be a reason why it is usable there, but I have not found that to be the case at the places I have visited.

Perhaps it is not as complicated as fixing a software bug, but the idea is same - the data is available publically, go fix it.

> That doesn’t work unless everyone else is doing it. And for that to work, everyone should be using it in the first place. It’s a catch 22 problem.

If that were actually true, Wikipedia would be no more than four stub articles written by Jimmy Wales.

The real barrier is people looking at a volunteer project and asking themselves "how can I take from this what I want?" rather than "how can I contribute to this, even in a small way?"

No one says anyone has to take on the herculean task of totally fixing all the problems they see in their area. But if you spend a little time fixing something, it will get better and perhaps even attain a high enough quality to satisfy you.

The most likely time for somebody to notice a problem is a) when they are on the move, and b) when it's a location unfamiliar to them. These are terrible circumstances to expect somebody to stop what they are doing and edit a map.

OSM is great for walking and cycling because pedestrians and cyclist are flexible enough to make small detours to map missing paths. In cities it's usually good enough if your destination is in the right spot, you can navigate by walking generally in the right direction. Finding potential shortcuts and getting to map terra incognita is just an added bonus.

And while I really like OSM I must say Apple got it right. The "report an issue" interface on iOS Map is easy to use on the go and requests are actually assigned to people who fix the map. I’ve signaled a few mistake and they all have been corrected.

It's not as complicated as fixing a software bug, but it's not trivial for the first-time user either.

Create an account, figure out how to navigate the interface, figure out what rules apply to your update, apply update, get reprimanded because you followed the explicit rule for "I'm not quite sure what to do with this".

__sr__ you're aware open source actually works. Largely because a tonne of people have entirely the opposite attitude to you for social tasks? Unless you haven't noticed Wikipedia exists... I worked on that long before it was mainstream or generally useful.

One of my besties is the OSM guru & evangelist (day job) and Ingress fanatic (that annoying friend).

He tried to dream up some notions to gamify improving OSM's data. While their current data quality trends are remarkable, better is better, right? (I don't have the gumption to find & link their conf proceedings slidedeck right now, sorry.)

I have interest and experience with GIS, location-based stuff, games. So we tried to brain storm some game ideas.

Sadly, we got nothing.

But I'm confident someone will divine a MineCraft-esque smash hit game. Something simple, fun, engaging, cultural, that with 20/20 hindsight will leave a lot of people facepalming.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingress_(video_game)

"The problem with open source software is that you have to fix it yourself". Unreal.