@Msiipola OSM wiki is a good place to document this lacking UX. I took the existing User Diaries page (which was a redirect) and wrote some content there about diaries in general, and how to search for them using DDG. Please help improve!

I chose 2008-01-01 initially because for the USA, we were in the middle of the TIGER import. You see a lot of stuff like this. By 2009 most of this had been cleaned up, although a lot of garbage remained. Which is the case even today… Plug: if you want to help clean up, search MapRoulette for ‘TIGER’ :)

That is awesome. Thanks for making this available!

I understand and respect that principle. However, DuckDuckGo is a very well established service, and aligns with our user privacy principles. And even if DDG were to go away, a search box would not be a deep integration, and this would be pretty easy thing to revert.

Those are great suggestions!!

The search engine option is interesting! I am guessing not many people know about this.

Perhaps there is a way to create a search box that parses whatever the user enters and redirects (new tab) to search engine results. So a user would enter, for example openstreetcam and this would open a tab with https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Aopenstreetmap.org%2Fuser+diary+%22openstreetcam%22.

As an added bonus, it would expose more users to a privacy-centered search engine.

Would something like that potentially be merged, TomH?

Yea I wonder about that. I am sure there are people who would rather sit at their computer and add info to OSM based on a picture someone else took than go out and survey. To each their own :)

My thinking about this goes in the direction of creating connections. Linking the mapper who took the picture with the mapper who added the data to OSM using the picture. Even if it’s just clicking a button that says ‘give thanks’ (like you can do on the OSM wiki for example. Then, a relationship is created that makes both contributors feel good, and encourages them (hopefully) to keep doing what they are doing.

MapRoulette in its current form may not be the best ‘platform’ for this, but I am thinking about the next major version of MapRoulette, and I am open to it looking quite different from what it is today.

sorry for the dupe. browser and me acting weird at the same time?

I’ve started to use Every Door a little bit and like it a lot. Ilya is right, it takes bit of getting used to. But I don’t see another way currently existing that can do more to ensure we’re going to 1) get all the POI in OSM and 2) important! keep them updated.

About “later never happens”, I think you’re generally right, if you’re just speaking for yourself. For MapRoulette I have the idea to connect the “now” of mappers out on the streets with the “later” of armchair mappers. That can be a different person. The mapper on the street would, for example, take a picture. And the mapper at their desk, using MapRoulette, could add the information from the photo to OSM in turn. I’m not sure about this feature yet but would like to get some opinions on why it would (not) work.

I’ve started to use Every Door a little bit and like it a lot. Ilya is right, it takes bit of getting used to. But I don’t see another way currently existing that can do more to ensure we’re going to 1) get all the POI in OSM and 2) important! keep them updated.

About “later never happens”, I think you’re generally right, if you’re just speaking for yourself. For MapRoulette I have the idea to connect the “now” of mappers out on the streets with the “later” of armchair mappers. That can be a different person. The mapper on the street would, for example, take a picture. And the mapper at their desk, using MapRoulette, could add the information from the photo to OSM in turn. I’m not sure about this feature yet but would like to get some opinions on why it would (not) work.

Huh, the embedded mov doesn’t show up for me (it did in preview mode!) but you can see it here.

Also I should give a shout out to the OSM tile server docker project that does the heavy lifting!

Thanks for reminding me to write up a diary for my docker-based approach. Just did that!

Welcome to OSM! If you’re looking for some mapping tasks, you can check out maproulette.org

Great to read your impressions, thanks for sharing!

Thanks for sharing, Hawa! Great photos. And you’re right about volunteering :)

I love the photos and your summary, thanks for sharing!

And good to see you again as well!

Thanks for sharing your summary! Glad you enjoyed my talk :)

Great to hear you are using MapRoulette! Let me know if you need any support with it.

Thanks for sharing your impressions, Matheus! Great photos too.