How can OpenStreetMap better collaborate with businesses seeking to provide information such as opening hours?

General talk
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I’m still pretty new here, so forgive me if this has already been discussed to death somewhere else, but a while back I came across a post from a HN user claiming that currently, the process for companies looking to import data such as opening hours into OpenStreetMap is unworkable.

For convenience sake I will re-produce the post here:

The reason why OSM doesn’t have [business opening time information] and Google does isn’t because Google crowdsources it. It is because Google is straightforward to work with for the companies who provide that data, and OSM is impossible.

Yes, there are companies whose job it is to get opening hours to various sites. Someone like Walmart will write a contract, and send a regular spreadsheet. The company then processes the spreadsheet, and pushes data out to Google, Facebook, Apple, and so on.

I know this because I was the lead developer at one of those companies for a while. Everyone except OSM is happy to accept an address, maybe a suite number, and then information about phone numbers, opening hours, holiday hours, and so on. OSM insists on detailed geolocation data. If you don’t have it, then they won’t take your data. Period.

You have the name and address of the mall, and a suite number? Facebook will just report that. Google will take your data and separately figure out how to map out where it is in the mall if it is important. OSM refuses to take the data.

You have data from Walmart with every Walmart address, and every department’s phone number, opening hours, holiday hours, and so on? Apple, Yelp, and so on will love you for it. OSM tells you that they need the store layout.

We asked OSM about it. Their answer? I kid you not. “Send someone to the store and map it out then.” They really have no clue about how much sending someone to the store costs, and how little these intermediary companies get paid to provide the data. What they demand. Will. Not. Happen.

What OSM should do is provide a way to accept that data in a feed, then let any volunteer tie the feed to the geomapped location. That way between a local volunteer and the companies that supply everyone else, they’d get the standard data that everyone else has.

They don’t. After looking at the economics, we had to go hat in hand to Walmart and apologize. “We know that you wanted to be on OSM, but this is what it will take to do it. We can’t do that, and we’re going to have to take the penalty in the contract.”

Yeah, you heard that right. Walmart wanted to cooperate with OSM. But because OSM put roadblocks in place for us, it didn’t happen. Not due to lack of popularity to crowdsource information. But because OSM developers have their heads firmly up their asses when it comes to figuring out how to deal with businesses who actively want to deal with them.

I understand the difficulty of accepting opening hours for places that aren’t mapped on OSM (such as, for example, individual departments at a Walmart that don’t already have a node on the map), but is there anything the OpenStreetMap Foundation, developers, or larger community could do to make the process more workable for businesses seeking to provide this information?

Maybe its not feasible to just bulk import the information directly in all cases, but could we at the very least provide a way to make this information available for editors, and link nodes to data sources in cases where there is a corresponding node (or area) already mapped?

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Very much [citation needed] on some of those direct quotes “… OSM said” I think.

I can’t think of an occasion where a company was told “you are not allowed to add data to OSM” where that data was (a) accurate and (b) not unverifiable spam (e.g. “The best Tire Company in Springfield” or worse).

However, I can think of plenty of examples where company-added data was reverted because it was out of date, or spam, or because the thing in OSM already existed and the company had duplicated it.

I’d suggest, as a first step, that anyone who has data that they’d like to add to OSM that they post about it here - not just “I have a spreadsheet” but “my spreadsheet has fields X, Y, Z and example data would be A, B, C, and here’s how I plan to combine my spreadsheet with what is already in OSM and here is how I plan to upload it”.

Edited to add: Another source of reverts is where the location is obviously inaccurate - for example just adding “store X near the node for town Y” instead of where store X actually is in town Y. It sounds ridiculous, but companies have done this.

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It sounds to me like at least part of the problem is they didn’t have location data for some of the departments whose hours they wanted to import; just an address + suite number with no coordinates.

That’s still valuable information, but its not something that necessarily can be imported to OSM automatically (e.g. if there’s not already a node with that address + suite number), and as the HN user pointed out, it may be too expensive for the company to manually survey the locations of all those individual departments by itself. (Satellite imagery won’t help since these are often indoor locations that are part of a larger building.)

I was just wondering if there might be something we could do to still accept the data feed in that scenario and make it available to editors, even if it can’t all be directly imported.

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AllThePlaces looks like potentially usable source, but there are many problems to solve before this data will be safe to import even in a small part. See alltheplaces/DATA_FORMAT.md at master · alltheplaces/alltheplaces · GitHub

Lets take opening hours… For start, either Opening hours: should hours ranges for a day extend past midnight? · alltheplaces/alltheplaces · Discussion #4959 · GitHub needs to be fixed in ATP or someone can write a code that would fix format (or detect that such entry in not in OSM syntax and should be skipped).

There are also some other issues described there that would need to be resolved.

who was specifically asked? OSM is not a hive-mind. I see that this person provides some contact info on their profile

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The way this should work is that all businesses publish their opening hours in a common open format, all the same way, so that applications can tap into that.

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Probably a moot point now, since it sounds from the user’s comment (“I was the lead developer at one of those companies for a while”) like this was some time ago. I’m more interested in discussing whether there’s a way we could do this better in the future than trying to dig up dirt from the past.

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Normally I’d say that’s wishful thinking, but if companies are actively reaching out to OSM to collaborate on getting this data into OSM then it seems like there could be an opportunity here for OSM to define just such a standard format. If we could get everyone on one page responding to such requests with: “Thanks for your interest in contributing! Just publish your data in <x standard format> and we’ll do the rest.” that would probably go a long way.

And I agree with @Mateusz_Konieczny that AllThePlaces looks like a very good starting point for this sort of thing.

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We already have a (somewhat) standard format for specifying opening hours, don’t we?

Asking businesses to publish their hours in that format is probably a lost cause though.

My take on the problem is that OSM just hasn’t reached the “critical mass” needed for it to be worthwhile for businesses to maintain their info in it. Businesses won’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts, they’ll do it if they have reason to believe it will drive more sales.

Consumers in most places overwhelmingly use Google/Apple Maps when trying to find businesses. The same just isn’t true for OSM-powered apps.

So unfortunately I feel like we’ll need to continue relying on surveys and imports until OSM reaches that critical mass of usage.

(I hope I’m wrong about this, and there is actually an easier solution waiting to be found :crossed_fingers:)

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A real simple way would be for the business involved to create their own OSM account, then just add themselves to the map!

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OP mentioned Walmart specifically. I’m pretty sure Walmart already has added themselves to the map, because I checked several in my local area and they were all in there already with store number, phone number, address, opening hours, and others all specified exactly the same way for every store. If they had been added by separate users, there would have been some differences. So it looks like Walmart itself has added their stores’ information.

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Sorry, I read it as “businesses” across the board?

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Apple Maps is OpenStreetMap-powered, although it’s not their only source, it seems it’s the most important one, judging by the prominence of attribution.

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I counted more than 70 different credits for “Business Listings data”. Do we know if Apple uses OSM for business listings in any way? Looking at my own area, I think probably not. Where OSM and Apple have the same business, they are usually not in exactly the same place, with OSM placement being much more consistent. I saw a lot of Apple businesses placed on the wrong side of the street, or one street away.

(And some that seem completely random: unless the Catholic Church has drastically changed its approach to funding recently, I don’t think there is a parcel collection service operating lockers inside this Basilica)
image

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Maybe that explains my observation above about Apple (and I’ve noticed similar with Overture). Again, I have only looked at my local area, but I observe a clear difference between OSM and Google on the one hand (usually POIs are in a location that will leave you standing at the shop entrance if you go there), and Apple + Overture on the other hand (you’ll often have to look across the street or around the block).

I would hate to lose the relatively accurate geolocation of OSM. Any method of receiving datasets from businesses that don’t know their own geolocations would need to discourage the mapping of approximate locations. It would be very tedious for local mappers to have to tidy up that kind of thing.

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Some companies may be reaching out, and they can keep and maintain their opening hours in OSM, the format is there, with tools for easy entering. We can help with that so they learn how to maintain their data (and monitor changes by other mappers).
A service dedicated to providing opening hours online might also use OSM to store and maintain their data, and monitor changes by other mappers.

Point is, the OSM ecosystem by itself does not guarantee accuracy, completeness, actuality and such. In fact, data mapped fresh gets stale very fast. And the world of businesses and opening hours is not very stable.

Which is why I say: let the businesses take care of their need by setting up a common format, a service, a user interface, a feed, that sort of thing, manage by a dedicated team, and if they want to use OSM for storage, so they need assistance from OSM mappers, ask mappers to advise, help and teach the team.

My guess is that this will not happen any time soon. Of course Walmart can do it for themselves, and maybe a mall can do it for themselves, fine. I don’t think that will spawn a movement.

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I think it depends on the area where the POIs come from, Apple is indeed using a lot of different sources, (thank you for counting business related ones :wink: ), if they are not using OSM in some areas it is likely because other sources are better there, and you cannot mix OSM with other data sources within the same POI class and region.

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I noticed the same with visualisations of Overture Maps’s POIs (mostly from Facebook and Microsoft) - lots of the them were inside York Minster**. I think that the common factors are:

  • Cathedrals are often large, and in the centre of a city
  • Businesses (or the people being paid to add POIs for them) don’t bother checking locations.
  • The platforms (Facebook, Microsoft, and whoever provides Apple’s POIs) either don’t do any geographical quality assurance or take the view “never mind the quality feel the width”

** you can’t blame the Catholic Church for that one :slight_smile:

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A tool for business owners would be https://www.onosm.org/ for example.
It’s a good start but far from perfect. Especially since the information doesn’t get added directly but left as a note.
Has the advantage that we prevent spam and someone can check before adding. But also means that some of these entrances just sit around for years without actually being added to the map. This can probably be very discouraging for business owners.

Anyone aware of other services?

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https://osmybiz.osm.ch/
This one allows editing the map data itself (with an OSM account).

I guess both of these are aimed mainly at adding a small number of business, whereas the original observation was more about companies/brands wanting to add a long list of locations.

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I think it all boils down to cost. Of course a big company is allowed to add their data to OSM. Hire a person, train them properly, maybe have them write a small script that compares their own data to OSM’s, update manually and carefully where the discrepancies are. Or use one of the existing conflation tools. Liaise with the OSM community. This requires skilled labour. You can’t just dump a CSV file on OSM and think it will magically work, nor can you expect people in a sweatshop in a low-wage country whom you pay a pittance per edit to produce the quality that OSM is looking for. Enough examples of low-quality data have been mentioned in this thread. If your data is not good enough then that is hardly our problem, and whining on the Internet won’t make your data better.

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