this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2023
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Everything #OpenStreetMap related is welcome: software releases, showing of your work, questions about how to tag something, as long as it has to do with OpenStreetMap or OpenStreetMap-related software.
OpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license.
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https://mapcomplete.org is an easy-to-use website to view, edit and add points (such as shops, restaurants and others)
https://learnosm.org/en/ has a lot of information for beginners too.
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I have consistantly wanted to move to openstreetmaps over something like waze but I am continually dissapointed that it cannt find basic stteet addresses. If I search the address I want, all it finds is the street name. Dissapointing.
I mean, that was the same with paper maps only a couple decades ago. Buildings are supposed to have prominent street numbers for a reason.
Also, anyone can contribute! I find the app "StreetComplete" to be really helpful for seeing what needs to be added whereever I go.
I agree that paper maps were the same, but we are obviously beyond that now. I am thinking that I am going to start contributing, eventually most of my local addresses and stores I commonly visit will be built up!
StreetComplete is actually heaps of fun. Pic4Review is another great one for contributing.
I understand your POV, but OSM has proven to be useful for me very often. For other stuff like GPS maps for driving, I use something else, but even that solution is far from flawless
For things that are missing, you can contribute the changes
I agree and it's one of the biggest places where OSM is completely outclassed.
I hope OSM reaches a point where house number datasets are imported on a large scale, even if only for major cities. Adding numbers by hand is possible but very tedious, and unlike most mapping done for OSM you can't just go off of what sat imagery shows.
15 or so years ago I did a rough and dirty implementation of approximate addresses using the idea of just dividing street segments up by the address numbers on them and going from there. For instance, in the Canadian Road Network Files, they provide smallish segments of streets that usually line up to things like cross streets in metro areas, and they come with the ranges of the street numbers in the metadata, so you’d get something like a starting value of say 200 and and an ending value of 212 for a section of, say, Yonge St, and you could just divide that segment up across those values directly. You’d generally get within a few metres of the correct address. Close enough at the time for our use cases, at least. For more rural areas it didn’t work out so well, but for metro areas it was actually pretty decent. This could all be done via a single Postgres/PostGIS query with the right inputs and address parsing in front of it.
It wasn’t perfect and later came various APIs and whatnot for doing this sort of stuff, but it was pretty decent for such a relatively simple implementation.
I’ve been trying to use openstreetmaps more recently. When I come across the same issue as you, I add that address/building/shop so that it can get updated into Magic Earth (my personal favourite at the moment)