Examples, please. There is bad info here and there, but it's minority (if you want 100% accuracy it's delusional, even Google Maps has a ton of crap, starting from skylights that AI recognized as buildings [3] to businesses you can't even tell they exist).

Also, for a long time now each changeset can be discussed. [1]

I have a hunch you may be from a country where the community has not took up too much [2]. These tend to have more dubious data.

[1] https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2014/11/02/introducing-change...

[2] https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries

[3] https://goo.gl/maps/knpT8eRR4YhB6Sm86 - look at the shopping mall in satellite and map view

Roads in rural areas are a HUGE problem. Particular in remote / forested places where logging roads were used in TIGER data. For example, places like this: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/46.6397/-87.7149

There's a number of us who use this kind of data for building back country cycling routes, and while it's great guidance, there's both the problem with roads being listed that are no longer passable (nor often even visible at ground level), or other routes available that don't exist.

Of course, this gets back to the way much of the data is crowd sourced... And we're working on that. :)

Anecdotally, in Northern Wisconsin, GMaps is only slightly better than OSM on abandoned logging roads. There are a lot of private gated or abandoned roads and logging tracks which Google Maps will use for route planning.

That's kinda how it is here. The best thing seems to be to bounce between Google Maps and OSM and an aerial view to get a sense of what's up.

For an interesting example, check out this place: Google: https://www.google.com/maps/@46.4133003,-87.5248774,5345m/da... OSM: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/46.4161/-87.5406

Neither has the actual current lake boundaries (as used as a retention pond), Google has roads where the lake is while OSM doesn't, etc.

3dep can be a huge help in figuring out how prominent tree covered roads are.

https://elevation.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/3DEPE...

It's listed as a Theme Overlay at https://viewer.nationalmap.gov/services/

Thanks, this is interesting. I checked a few spots and it doesn't seem to be quite helpful for what I'm looking for (seeing if a road has had brush grow back in over it making it impassable) but this would be quite useful for other things.

> Roads in rural areas are a HUGE problem

*in the US - it's a TIGER-specific thing (and certainly not exclusive to OSM). It doesn't affect the rest of the world.

Interested to learn what you're doing with cycling routes - I've been working on improving cycling directions in the US (for my site, cycle.travel) for a few years.

Yes, the TIGER problem is, but I don't think missing (or wrong due to physical abandonment) is a US-only problem.

For cycling stuff I'm mostly ensuring that mountain bike-specific trails are in OSM and properly tagged (eg: highway=path and NOT highway=cycleway as some are wont to do), with appropriate intersection markers, names, etc.

My goal is to ensure that these trails are in OSM so they'll flow down to Garmin, Trailforks, Mapbox / Strava, etc. I also use the OSM data, exported to vectors, to make PDF maps to support the local trail advocacy/building org that I'm part of.

As examples, check out my edit history: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/c0nsumer/history#map=7/44...

Here's examples of the print maps I've made. Versions of these hang at many trailheads in southeast Michigan:

1: http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/stonycreek/CRAMBA_Stony_C...

2: http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/pontiaclake/CRAMBA_Pontia...

3: http://www.cramba.org/storage/maps/riverbends/CRAMBA_River_B...

Print maps are made using osm2ai.pl to get the routes into Adobe Illustrator (AI) format. I then stylize things there. I know I could use GIS software, but QGIS is a pain to get things looking the way I want (similar to Michigan DNR maps) and ArcGIS is too expensive for unpaid volunteer work. It's also way more hand-off-able in AI format; I can send the files to any graphic designer and they can keep-on with it. GIS software requires far more specialized knowledge.

I wanted to use node data on shops, like if they take cash or not for example. Noticed there was already a lot of shops with data in there. But none of it was accurate.

Just one example is that an Apple store in Sweden was set to accept cash. Just for fun I called them up and asked if they take cash and they laughed at me.

It seemed to me that someone had automated input for businesses without actually verifying their data.

Not OP, but I'm in the UK and find the OSM data to be not all that useful. The streets themselves seem mostly accurate, but there is almost no building data.

If you had to rely on OSM data to get around, your best bet would be to live and work in northeast London, within the circular.

A great thing about OSM is that you can improve the data, specifically in your local area so that at the very least it will no longer have spotty coverage of the places you frequent.

I use https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete for doing this so I don't have to make the investment to learn the technical details of tags.

"You have to create the map to use the map" isn't as compelling of a feature for a mapping service as you think it is

OP talked about improving OSM using StreetComplete. So this is about adding missing speed limits, opening hours, roof shapes, recycling containers, tactile pavement at bus stops, etc. Hardly "creating the map".

When I travel to a place where OSM could need improvement I make sure that at least the hotel I will be staying at, nearby restaurants, bars and museums, etc are correctly tagged with phone numbers, opening hours etc. It is not much work and it gives me an opportunity to decide what I want to do before I leave.

When I get there I then have everything ready offline in OsmAnd. In a way I just update OSM instead of adding my own bookmarks/favorites.

nelgaard got the gist of it. I've never encountered an area where OSM didn't have the roads and buildings already mapped. I have encountered areas where it didn't have the speed limits and house numbers of those structures (and, once or twice, places lacking a road name, but that's pretty rare).

But, my personal perspective was a little different. It's more like: I want to use OSM, and get others to use OSM instead of proprietary mapping solutions like Google's, for moral reasons. In that context, being able to make sure my friends can always get to my house using OSM is a great boon.

I realize I didn't share that perspective in my original post, which is probably the source of the confusion here.

YMMV really. OSM in the UK has orders of magnitude more cycling and walking data than Google, for example, but fewer buildings. I don't generally find I need buildings in my day-to-day mapping needs but everyone's different I guess.

I have found this in the U.K., Canada, Japan and Taiwan - OpenStreetMaps is way better as a pedestrian or a cyclist in my experience, at least in relatively built up areas.

Its the same in many parts of the USA. For example in a college town with 50k students / 50k permanent population, streets are complete with sidewalks and bike trails etc., but good luck trying to find nearby restaurants by looking around the map, like you can do with google maps. Even the buildings which are marked with their name and type usually lack operating hours, phone number, website url and other sorts of info that GMaps has. But the situation is much better - close to GMaps level - in big cities here.

> lack operating hours

If you have an Android phone - I want to plug StreetComplete app here. I never mapped opening hours before I started using it.

It asks simple questions, there is no requirement to learn anything OSM specific.

Registration at OSM website is probably the biggest hurdle.

(disclaimer: I am one of contributors to that project)

The great thing about OSM is the currency. New developments will be added more qucikly. But for completeness and consistency Ordnance Survey data will just be better. And they do have a free building dataset, and even pre-generated vector tiles.

Even the OS data -- at least what I can see in Aurora -- might not be as complete as where someone has taken an interest in a new development, such as one near here. The OpenData building shapes are a good start, but they appear to have been auto-generated, and usually need correcting from up-to-date satellite imagery, if not a survey.

Whether buildings are mapped, and in what detail, just depends on the area; detailed mapping definitely isn't confined to London. The main utility of mapping buildings for navigation might be to tag them with postcodes, even if that's not ideal. Roads are typically at least as accurate as OS OpenData where I've looked.

This kind of statements are useless without specifying what kind of data was wrong and where.

In my city (Kraków, Poland) road data, bicycle infrastructure, pedestrian infrastructure is extremely well mapped. Shops? Probably about 3% of them are mapped.

China? You can find entire cities not mapped at all (for multiple reasons, starting from fact that mapping in China is illegal without permission from government).

If you spot any wrong data (or very, very important missing data) - please report it https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes#Adding_notes

Or even better, map it if you want - feel free to ask for help, for example here (or elsewhere, see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Contact_channels https://community.osm.be/ )

It sounds like a good plan, however, there is the question of how you want to validate the map information.

Someone adds a street. What do you want to do to validate it? Is there some international OSM team, which goes to all the locations and checks, whether there is really a street? With Wikipedia articles it is simpler, because you can check sources mostly online or you have experts on subjects world-wide, not bound by location mostly.

A map of the world seems like sooo much work to keep updated, while many Wikipedia articles can stay as they are, if they are OK now, because they treat historical topics for example, or mathematical things. There are new developments in those areas as well, but no one will take a wrong road when driving, because the Wikipedia article was not updated. Or at least it is not likely to happen. By introducing additional barriers, the update frequency on OSM might be even lower. I wonder how many contributors there are for OSM maps. I have personally never updated a map there and have been too lazy to read up on how to do that.

One would have to find a clever way to validate map information, which does not inhibit participation.

There is no validation team, however everyone can check the latest edits [1]. If there's a developed community in a location, say someone in your city, you can validate it yourself. Someone can use Notes feature [2] and report that the street has inaccurate information - by linking to some photo proof.

Thankfully many (not all, like POI) edits can be checked via satellite imagery [3], of which OSM has permission to use many - global ones being Bing, Maxar, Esri, Mapbox. With so much sources of imagery, the update rate is acceptable for most places.

All in all, the result is not as bad as you'd expect. From normal people I hear that OSM is "very accurate" (at least here in Europe). Oddly enough, nobody says anything about blatantly fake info, which indeed does very rarely slip, but apparently gets reverted.

Now as I am thinking, there is "validation team" of sorts, that's Mapbox data team, which uses OSMCha [4] to flag suspicious changesets and checks them (albeit not by physically going there).

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Quality_assurance#Monito...

[2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes

[3] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Aerial_imagery

[4] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSMCha

In many regions any bogus data will be spotted fairly quickly. New mappers are monitored by the community and guided to documentation if necessary, and real abuse is dealt with (either by just reverting vandalism, or blocking the user outright via the Data Working Group).

Areas with local mappers will be watched even more closely.

All in all OSM often reaches a level of detail Google Maps can only dream of. In the Netherlands the number of outright errors is really quite small, and at least everything is pretty much up-to-date. Google Maps is still showing (and routing over) a trunk road in my home town that closed over a year ago.

> A map of the world seems like sooo much work to keep updated

It's really not that bad. Major infrastructure draws the attention of people who are fascinated by highways or railway tracks. The same goes for national cycling networks and the roads and cycleways these use. Major administrative rearrangements (changes in the borders of municipalities etc.) also draw a particular group. And finally, local mappers care about their local piece of map, often down to the newest projects. As a local mapper myself I find it a joy to be the first to map a new street or add a newly assigned name to some unnamed way.

It's also a nice hobby, because you visit parts of your town to survey you wouldn't ever come otherwise.

> I wonder how many contributors there are for OSM maps. I have personally never updated a map there and have been too lazy to read up on how to do that.

I was linked to OSMstats [1] earlier - was fun to look through, and the "Contributor to Elements Created" ratio made me proud to be a Canadian contributor :)

[1] https://osmstats.neis-one.org/?item=countries

The answer is crowd sourcing. Everything one person creates or modifies needs to be voted on by multiple people. After x votes and y percent in favour of the change it‘s visible to everyone. The x and y numbers could change depending on the user‘s reputation etc.

Think of it like the stack overflow „tasks“ you are asked to do all the time: review this question, do this, do that ...

Because of the OSM data model, changes can't be really held in "unaccepted" state. One would run into editing conflicts[1].

On Wikipedia withholding edits until review works in some language versions [2], but because Wikipedia pages are "atoms" that stand on their own, they have it easier.

[1] https://learnosm.org/en/josm/josm-conflict-resolution/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_revisions/Si...

This would not work, in nearly all cases there is not enough of mappers to handle this.

And anyway real problem is a stale data - especially shops. Data that was wrong from start is rare, OSM has nearly no vandalism.

Making easier to verify data is much better idea (one of nicely working things is a StreetComplete Android app - about 20% of shops where I am asked to add opening hours are gone, so I open a note, take a photo and later me or some other mapper removes no longer existing shops)

It depends.

In the outskirts of Lübeck, Germany, Google tried to tell me to walk through a private company area with a gate. OSM not only knew about this, it had far (far, far) more details about everything.

In Waterkloof Heights, Pretoria, South Africa OSM was roughly 7 years out of date and had barely any information even then.

> In Waterkloof Heights, Pretoria, South Africa OSM was roughly 7 years out of date and had barely any information even then.

I did some mapping on the Garden Route years ago. When I later went and looked back at those communities, I was disappointed to see that little work had been done since my own edits long ago. And in general, much seemed to have been added by other foreign overlanders like myself, and not any kind of local OSM community. I wondered if this is because those demographics in South Africa that are affluent enough to be interested in nerdy tech things like OSM, have also grown up in a culture that always warned them of idly walking around towns with phone in hand?

Meanwhile, tiny Lesotho (a landlocked enclave entirely within, and distinctly less affluent than, South Africa) has a passionately active OSM community uniting locals on the ground and international mappers who use satellite imagery. Last year it was officially declared[1] the first country to be "completely mapped" in OSM -- a moving target obviously, but impressive nonetheless.

[1] https://maplesotho.wordpress.com/

Very possible. Waterkloof Heights is a very rich area, the only white people I’ve seen walking besides me were joggers. The black people were all there to work at the mansions.

When driving to a beach in Europe, google once tried routing me through a small two-story house. And possibly into a cliff wall, the house sort of blocked the view of how "the road" went from there...

I edited OSM for 10 years and in my opinion it depends of the zone. In my zone the comunity it's organized, the people checks strange edits and also have comunity projects. For example we detected that there was a lot of streets without name some years ago and we made tools to control the streets without name and worked on it, now about the 90% of the streets have a name. As I said for me the problem it's that the quality of information it's not homogenous

You've hit on the central conundrum with OSM: it's a good enough proposition to make it interesting (free as in beer for many uses, acceptably accurate in many places etc), but a long long way from being a reliable, authoritative single source of truth. Which - let's be honest - is often true of Wikipedia as well, moderators notwithstanding.

Improving OSM is an area of active research I believe, but I'd suggest the scale of the challenge is of a different magnitude than can be met by the type of ideas you mention. Think about something like Google Maps, or in the UK OS MasterMap. Each of these likely has hundreds of millions of R&D invested in tools, techniques, processes and infrastructure behind them, as well as an ongoing budget in the hundreds of millions, and numerous, well organised, skilled, full time staff. There's a critical mass behind such efforts that as yet OpenStreetMap has not been able to muster, which is no criticism of OSM, but just an acknowledgement of the reality of the situation. We're talking about setups that take dedicated organisations years to develop - the history of the Ordnance Survey for example goes back to 1747!

> authoritative single source of truth

This is NOT a role for the OSM[0]. In many cases it is the best source of map data, but it will never be the sole single authoritative source of truth.

Treating it as one is horrible idea and will end in tears.

[0]or Google Maps

Of course, a map will never be the authoritative source of a territory -- hence the saying. But what sets OSM apart from many other mapping projects is its focus on local knowledge and actual people. If people in an area call something by a name, then in OSM, that's its name, even if there's no official name for it, or if nobody really uses the official name.

sometimes people use “authoratative” to mean “what [government] thinks” (e.g. “authorative borders”)

I agree, see my other comment - it's some organisations that have an expectation of OSM that is unreasonable.

Arguably a complete topographic map is an outdated concept. Trying to create a single picture that can fit on one piece of paper excludes a lot of information. And it is not a constraint we have anymore.

And often the things you want to map are better mapped seperately in their own dataset. Just consider woodland. Should that block of trees be mapped as individual trees, a block of woodland, or as a linear hedgerow? Different people would answer that question differently. A topographic map forces everyone to have the same answer.

I think that citizen mapping should move to focus on particular subjects and themes that the individual is interested in. And try and get closer to the underlying phenomena that is being described.

I should have qualified what I said with 'in the enterprise GIS world' or something similar. I'm talking about numerous occasions I've had organisations say they want to use OSM but then complain about the quality, as if (as someone advising them about geospatial) it's something I have control over!

If you want discussion, look at regional mail lists, perhaps, if the UK one is anything to go by. I don't share that impression of the data in the UK.

Anecdotally, I've always found really up-to-date information. Worst thing was that some rural areas had not a lot of data (so I added it, at least a bit).