Near where I live there are a lof of OSM notes. Some of these mark things that someone should survey on the ground. Others mark things that need to be mapped from a computer. Yet others mark things such as developments where there’s nothing to be done for now, they are just a reminder that eventually when the construction is finished the building should be mapped.
The map of notes on openstreetmap.org would work great as a to-do list (or a to-survey list) if it wasn’t for all the notes that I can’t do anything about right now.
Is there an app that I can use to mark some of them as “don’t show again until 2024” just for myself?
There is NotesReview which allows you to filter notes by time, user and text. Unfortunately the text and user filters do not have some kind of not filter that would allow you to exclude notes that are likely to be useless for you.
Ideally tags on notes would be implemented. Then you could categorize notes and others could benefit from that.
Kind of. For example, StreetComplete mobile app can be configured to only show you OSM Notes, and you can press on each of those unwanted notes and choose No, hide to hide those you’re not interested in. Thus you will only see notes that you want to remain, and can comment on them when you want.
Then later in 2024, when you want to show all Notes again, you can go in Settings and click Restore hidden quests to show them all again.
I don’t know about desktop app with such functionality, though. It should not be too hard to make a website that does that, but what I would really like to see instead is improvement to JOSM Notes pane which would allow me to hide some notes semi-permanently in local JOSM database - that would be nice.
For myself, I usually comment on notes I intent to solve myself (in hope authors would respond to them with extra requested information), and then use https://my-notes.osm-hr.org/ to show all unresolved notes that I created or commented on, and solve them myself if nobody else did. (But I would not advise leaving a meaningless comments on notes just so you can relate them to yourself, of course!)
Thanks for all the suggestions! I think StreetComplete comes closest to what I’m looking for, because I don’t want to comment on other people’s notes just so I can organise them better for myself. Of course if everyone started using hashtags or tags on notes that would help.
I’ve been using SC for a while but didn’t know that it could do that! In case anyone else is wondering: I’ve also had to create a new preset that hides all quests. If I switch to that and tick ‘show all notes’ it shows only notes.
On desktop, a browser extension might be the most straightforward way to build something like this. It could store locally which notes are hidden and when until. And then when the construction is finished or the new shop is supposed to have moved in, it could pop back up and remind me to check it out.
Because OSM notes are shared with everyone else and most of my “notes to self” won’t make any sense to anyone else, it doesn’t seem fair for me to use OSM notes for that. Different mappers have different things that they are interested in - I might be interested in the exactly legal signage on a footpath; another mapper might want to check the roof shape of a house. Neither of us would benefit from seeing each other’s “notes.to self”.
I use a combination of Garmin waypoints and this to keep track of those. Here is an example GPS trace with waypoints in it, but it’s a bit cryptic - for example the comment “COXWOLD S CAMS-HEAD W” on an “information” symbol eventually got mapped as this.
Different mappers have different things that they are interested in - I might be interested in the exactly legal signage on a footpath; another mapper might want to check the roof shape of a house. Neither of us would benefit from seeing each other’s “notes.to self”.
these examples could fit in the interest spectrum of other mappers as well, maybe there’s a mapper C who is also interested in roof shapes or legal signage and could help one of you.
Well, yes (Sybil Fawlty mode) if something might be of interest to other mappers I’ll add it as a note or a fixme as appropriate - but I don’t want to clutter the map with stuff that would only make sense to me.
If people are interested in alternate ways for “note to self” functionality (e.g. for leaving short cryptic comments not understandable for anyone else), SCEE (formerly StreetComplete Expert Edition) fork of StreetComplete does implement that. When opening a note you have an option to store it locally instead of publishing it, and then under Settings / Notes / Get GPX notes and attached photos and tracks you can download them and use them elsewhere (like in JOSM etc.)
Or if using OsmAnd, for private notes one can use Audio/Video notes plugin (for pictures/audio notes), and/or Add track waypoint (for text notes) from Trip recording GPX plugin; they don’t get publicly uploaded either.