This is unfortunate and surprising. In my experience (mostly UK/Europe) the quality of street data in OSM matches, and in some cases exceeds that of Google Maps. (Points-of-interest data does not, however).

If you do notice errors and omissions, fixes can be made in seconds by getting an OSM account and clicking the "edit" button on OpenStreetMap.org. In recent years the development of the "ID" editor has significantly lowered the barriers to entry of editing OSM.

> "map data that seems manipulated for game advantage"

Perhaps OSM needs some sort of Wikipedia-style spam detection/prevention if this is happening on a wide scale.

This is the same argument that keeps every year from being the year of Linux on the desktop.

"My computer crashed!" "Oh, just become a Linux kernel developer and fix it yourself."

The same happens with an OS. Most people don't want a free labor-intensive solution. They want something that just works, runs their software and stays out of the way. People don't want to think about what OS they use.

Contrast to Google Maps, where the process of getting a change made can take weeks or months - if the fixes ever show up at all.

There really is a lot of power in having a map of the world that we can all "just edit".

The OSM licence requires that people using OSM data attribute OSM, i.e. that their users are aware that the data comes from OSM. In theory this means that the final user should know that OSM is where they should go to fix data issues.

But, alas, it's often not followed that well...

Really, it’s not even an age thing. I work in tech. I visit HN on the regular. OSM, Google, and Apple all have inaccurate data about my daily commute to work. They all say a path that exists doesn’t. Have I don’t anything about it? Absolutely not.