Why Book Corners won't sync contributions back to OpenStreetMap

I agree that that's the ideal way to do this, but it's just not always an option.

I run valideparkeren.nl, a crowd sourced overview of all accessible parking spots in the Netherlands. Ideally, there should be a government-owned single source of truth, but the whole reason for starting this is because that source doesn't exist yet. I'm starting to work with the government to eventually hand this project over to them, which was the goal from the start, but the only way to make that happen is by first becoming the source of truth.

Edit: I was also planning to add my data to OSM at some point, but I'm reconsidering that after reading this. I completely understand that they only want high quality data, but in my case I'm convinced that high coverage and slightly lower quality is better than low coverage and high quality. Of course, transparency of how sure we are about the data is vital, so users can decide the risk they want to take.

Curious. You’re curating from the single point of truth (spot). You direct new additions for your site over to spot. How does a submission get into your subset?

Does the submitter add to spot and then shoot you a message to pull by some unique id (author, submitter)? If you’re curating from their database, then spot doesn’t have the schema features to resolve to your subset by filtering alone, right?

This way you get less contributions.

This is partially because they import into their own system, and then export->import into OSM. At that point, they're considered an integration which imports data.

If their apps instead submitted directly to OSM (letting submission trickle back down), then the flow would fit into "user submission". Book Corners simply becomes an app though which the user performed the submission, rather than an intermediary exporting data.

I get this perspective. But I also find the standards to be onerous. They were honestly fine until this one:

> Contact the relevant local communities affected by the contributions

Do I literally have to do new local community outreach every little town one of my bookcases shows up in? Ridiculous if so

That's not how I would summarize it. OSM is only giving them two options: apply to be treated as an automated sync source, or don't submit at all. They're willing to put in work and care but not to handle all the other complex barriers.

It's not really considered an import if a person is looking at all of the changes. They would just need a clear license from their users.

(an import is when there isn't complete review...)

>A project like OSM would be bombarded with spam and junk submissions if it didn’t have these barriers to submission.

I'm not sure about this. The barriers to submissions are honestly more likely to cause object and amenity level data to become out of date. Google is able to have such an up to date place database because it relies on a large quantity of crowdsourced submissions, and employs consensus to figure out the truth.

> you can make an OSM account, go to the website, click, add a thing, hit submit, done. Someone will review it.

I will share an unpopular opinion: thil will only make a freeworkforce for those projects who profit from using OSM. And the OSM has surprisingly unreliable data quality for walking around even in the popular tourist places like Tokyo or Kyoto, or New York. I've tried, and it's so worse than GMaps (or Bing) to being completely unusable. No work hours of Starbucks, no local dining cafe, no menu contributions.

It's great for the trail and hike outdiors, sure. But that's very different from the city map, as the nature featutes rarely change, not like city POIs.

    - opening_hours=*
    - amenity=cafe
    - website:menu=*

Have you considered making OSM itself the submission mechanism? This could be as simple as having a static guide on how to add bookcases to OSM. Your app could also act as an OSM editor specifically for bookcases (not a general one).

In the article, you claim:

> There are also important licensing questions. A user’s permission to send a library to OSM is not automatically the same as having a sufficiently clear right to release that factual information under terms compatible with OSM

which would imply that you could not make available your database available for download under ODbL. Yet you have made it available under that license.

Maybe that part of the article needs further editing?

Also, if the data of your tool is now available under ODbL, then the tasks related to importing it into OSM can be effectively performed by anyone, not necessarily you.

I feel like having such a map at all is kind of antithetical to building community. Shows you don't care enough to take a stroll in your 'hood to find such a one by happenstance (or to find neighbors to populate yours) and are hunting them down to share your self-published slop or something. Besides, it makes things a hell of a lot easier for griefers and trolls.

Can you simply write overlays as GOL files and load them from non-OSM URLs? Assuming you use the appropriate coordinate grid you won’t need POIs to layer the relevant data, and if you choose to annotate OSM’s POIs further, you can save those annotations as a personal GOL that you optionally share with others, and that also enables cross-referencing derivations if you use (unverified: trust isn’t the point, uniqueness is) signing key fingerprint as the GOL author GUID.

It’s a volunteer org. Sounds like you’re volunteering to build that and pay for the imagery etc. Let us know when you’re done.

Are you describing what Mapillary is doing ? It's a crowdsourced street level imagery provider (owned by Facebook since 2020, but still contributing to OSM), but they do auto-detection of feature (you can see that in the online OSM editor: Map Data > Photo Overlays > Mapillary > Map Features).

I vaguely remember a blog post about doing photogrammetry out of their images, but I'm not entirely sure about it.

Have you suggested this to the folks at Panoramax? https://panoramax.fr/

They're already covering the blurring, as well as detecting useful objects in imagery (traffic signs for a start).

Well, first step here is to demonstrate that you can do that neural network part. I think that would be a really valuable tool for more projects than openstreetmaps - google might even want to buy it.

It seems like the path is streamlined once they know who you are.

This sort of feels like a generational thing but I would have flown over.

The streamlined path has always been to verify your contributions in the field. Everything else is of dubious quality.

It is streamlined for individuals, and I have no interest in it being streamlined for anything else.

I'd rather no data than bad data. There is no seperate baby & bath water. If a bulk source of data contains an unknown mix of good and bad data, that is all one big single item of bad data that is of no use to anyone.

OSM has the notes feature which sounds like what OP should have used

> Example of a valid and useful note can be "a new road was constructed here" or "this shop is closed and does not exist anymore".

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes

Yes, the data source is clearly useful, so not having it is a loss. But an edit is large enough a privilege to require all these checks.

Perhaps it's not that OSM that needs a signal, but perhaps it's that there's an opportunity for an open map that has many signals, of which OSM and Book Corners are examples.

I highly doubt that. What tells do you see that lends to probability of it being llm generated content?

Is it possible that we (myself included) have become conditioned to think content is llm generated as the default opinion?

[flagged]

Those people traveling to them are probably just as likely to put something in as a more local passer by. And I'm not sure why I would care that someone the next suburb over read my book. As long as someone is enjoying it, that's the whole point of donating.

Recently it's seemed like (very roughly) half the Little Free Libraries I see aren't in OSM.

I sometimes edit OSM, so I'm wondering whether any public bookshelf omissions are intentional, and adding the shelves would be unwelcome by the people running them.