Clarification on note handling and resolution guidelines

Hello everyone,

I have noticed that some notes in OpenStreetMap are being closed or attempted to be closed without being fully resolved — this is the case for one of my own notes, for example:

In addition, I have submitted other notes pointing out issues such as:

  • a poorly mapped entire sports area,
  • a block of buildings mapped as a single object but that need to be split and corrected,
  • a note in my city reporting a displacement of all buildings by about 5 meters (Note: 1454730 | OpenStreetMap).

From my perspective, I believe notes should be kept open until the issue is actually resolved to avoid losing track of important fixes.

On the other hand, I understand that some mappers prefer to close notes sooner to keep the system clean and avoid note clutter.

Could you please clarify what the official guidelines or best practices are regarding the management and closure of notes? How can we best balance keeping the map data quality high while maintaining an effective note system?

Thanks in advance for your help and insights.

Best regards,
AndreaDp271

3 Likes

I would say that it depends quite a lot on local custom, especially on what people actually processing notes prefer. Especially if these are notes created by anonymous accounts or by accounts not fixing any issues reported by notes.

Situation is different in area where no buildings are mapped at all - there reporting “building is missing here” would be worthless and in area where nearly all are mapped and only few are missing.

It also going to depend on how many notes are there. Adding low importance notes is less fine where already there are many more important in this area and waiting for years. Then extra notes are pointless clutter.

And open ended notes about something known to be not mapped yet (such as opening note “not all shops are mapped in this city”) are sometimes closed as unspecific and pointless.

For example going to OpenStreetMap here and opening many notes “landuse is not fully mapped here” is not going to be really useful. And likely would get closed especially if multiple are opened. Anyone knows that this landuse is not mapped yet.

In the similar way opening in Poland 5 000 notes “Żabka convenience shop is missing here” would just get all of them closed. Though opening just one or two may be accepted.

Similarly, trivially detectable errors (“surface is missing for this road”) is unlikely to be considered useful and may be just closed.

if note was just unspecific “a poorly mapped entire sports area” and it was not obviously broken I would close it with request to be more specific what is broken.

makes sense as note, though it makes less sense if someone opened many such notes in area where it is a known unfinished work (maybe may be also treated as pointless note like that landuse example)

in this case someone disputed whether displacement is there, not closed note as unwanted despite reporting a problem - so it is a different reason for closure


I also seen some bad edits blindly trusting anonymous notes or closing valid notes just to close them, in some misguided inbox zero goal.

I also seen floods of pointless notes (see onosm note spam in Iran, these should be probably closed all as pointless flood).

And seen bad accounts both creating pointless/useless notes and ones mass closing valid notes.

I also seen many useful notes and opened many hopefully useful. But in the end one edit is more useful than 100 notes. We are not bottlenecked in terms of notes, adding more is of very limited utility (and I am saying that as person who opened many of them). So I would be fine with some limited silly note closing if that keeps local community happy.

And for specifically Note: 4747375 | OpenStreetMap ? Google translates gives it as “Missing sidewalks throughout the municipality” which is a borderline for me. I would not close it immediately as pointless, but if someone would do I would not protest. I would probably close it after mapping sidewalks in general area of note, interpreting it as “Missing sidewalks in this area”.

(I opened and closed many notes, and fixed many problems reported by valid notes, some of my notes were pointlessly closed and some were actually processed and helped people to improve map)

4 Likes

What I’d suggest in each case is to ask yourself before adding each note “how will it help?”.

In at least some of those cases, it probably doesn’t. If everyone can see that the sports area is poorly mapped then adding a note saying so doesn’t help at all - what would help would be to actually map it better yourself.

The sort of note that does help is something like “Is this shop long-term closed? It looked closed when I went past, but perhaps that was just temporary”.

6 Likes

it can help if there was unnoticed vandalism or serious data breakage

some bungled data is not noticed for long time for one reason or another, for example I created Note: 4743017 | OpenStreetMap on spotting obviously broken data that was not noticed for years (mangled access tags) because I had no time to fix all of such cases

1 Like

To improve the handling of map issues, I propose the following guideline:

  • For single missing elements: open a single note for each missing item.
  • For widespread missing features in an area (street, neighborhood, park, etc.): open one general note covering the entire affected area.
  • For errors or missing tags on existing elements: use the fix me tag directly on the object.

This approach helps reduce note clutter and makes it easier for mappers to address issues efficiently.

The sports area I am talking about did not have any playing fields, it was without the various pedestrian paths, the fountains, the trees, the fences, the gates. Without a note, no one knew of the absence of such elements.

in this case it is about distinct buildings but one next to the other, imported as a single block from government maps in osm. So the “building” area is wrong, I don’t know if a fix me or a note would be more correct.

I’d propose before any of that “actually fix it yourself if you can” :smile:

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in the whole municipal area the sidewalks have not been mapped; the note was to report an absence of all the sidewalks in the hope that someone could solve it, since I am following other projects and I can’t do it, for now.

Some context is missing here. When he refers to a wide area in the note he linked in the original post, he’s talking about the entire city. So, stating that the scope is limited to a single street or neighborhood is misleading. Because we are talking a really huge area!

sure, but sometimes you don’t have the time (for personal reasons or because you are following other projects and you notice the lack by chance) or maybe you are not local, so better to leave a note or a fixme in these cases and not ignore the problem.

The municipality is not that big, the fact is that it is a lack that had to be resolved or reported. I myself have almost finished mapping my city starting from almost 0. my city is at least 3 times this

not really, mappers typically are well aware of many areas missing extreme detail

opening such notes is valuable only for parts much much much less detailed than nearby area and even then it is dubious

I could easily open 10 000 notes going “more detail can be added here” and it would bring basically no value

opening notes about individual trees not being mapped makes sense only if in given area nearly all trees got natural=tree nodes and so on

(I would consider notes about already mapped data being broken as more valuable)

6 Likes

Whether it’s larger or smaller than a city you’ve already mapped, the note has a range of 30.64 km² (according to Wikipedia), which is not exactly as small as a park/street or whatever.

If there are no sidewalks mapped anywhere, it means the note is pointless. Everybody can see there are no sidewalks mapped. In most places we do not have the sidewalks mapped, it is “normal”.

I think a note for missing sidewalks would only make sense if the general picture is that of complete sidewalks, but at one spot it is not mapped despite there is one. Or somewhere there is a tag “sidewalk=no” and instead there is a sidewalk.

I agree with @SomeoneElse, if there are missing features, rather than adding notes, add the features.

IMHO not, every information is optional, there is no strict requirement to add anything. To put this into perspective, in Italy there are currently 1 155 472 highway=residential streets, 60800 of them have a sidewalk tag (5%), there are also 110000 footway=sidewalk tags for separately mapped sidewalks (regardless of highway type)

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it is not a question of details but of areas mapped to a minimum and the elements that are there are badly made. I never said to open a tree note, but consider a general note for the whole area and in the deccription make a summary list of what is missing

in fact it is a municipality but, compared to other cities, it is small with few sidewalks. I know it is a big job but it is done with patience and dedication. However, this is not the point of the matter

Needless to mention the massive absence of something? (Marciapiedi or other …). If I point it out, someone who has time and does not know where to start to map, starts from this job. I would have added them but I am already managing a big job somewhere else

in my experience such general “something can be mapped better here” notes are neither helpful nor motivating nor needed nor welcome by mappers

the same goes for “would be nice if all sidewalks here would get mapped” or “would be nice if all shop in city would get mapped”

this is useful, for example “bridge is was build here and it is missing” seems useful

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Yes, exactly like this, needless to mention the massive absence of “something”. Notes are not the instrument to tell others what to map, they are here for people who can’t map to give local information to mappers, so the mappers can act. We do not want notes about generally missing things, rather they can be opened for specific missing things, e.g. this hairdresser is now a bakery called “…”, or here is an office building, and it has 5 floors. Or this point has the address …, not “here are addresses missing”. If you don’t have specific information to give to the mappers, do not add a note.

We do not have the problem that we do not know what to map. We have fewer workforce than we have work. Pointing at work that should be done is not helpful, doing the work is. Pointing out actual errors is helpful, but “missing” detail information is not an error.

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it can be also useful to report some very clearly invalid things that local mappers can verify (many of my notes or of this variety - I often find broken OSM data but lack local knowledge to fix it)

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