Hey there! Have been using OSM and mobile app Magic Earth that utilizes OSM for a while now. But this is about the OpenStreetMap website. I would like to know if there is any official way to send suggestions to developers?
Because there is one thing about the website that just drives me crazy, and that is that searches are not spell corrected in any shape or form.
For example: Query: “Pastoor Kuipersstraat Waalwijk” will yield 0 results, whereas the correct spelling “Pastoor KuYpersstraat Waalwijk” will yield the correct result.
Google Maps (and it appears also the Magic Earth app) will automatically correct this mistake for you. Sometimes people mistype addresses or you may not know the exact name, and Google Maps is incredible in that case. But OSM seems to have no feature like this making using it sometimes a bit painful in my opinion.
That particular bit of the website is controlled by Nominatim, and the relevant issue seems to be this one. There are various links out from there to things that are related to solving the problem.
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Interesting, that appears to be what I was looking for. Am a bit surprised that while it has received attention no updates have been provided. Thank you though!
Once per week PSA: openstreetmap.org is not the web version of osmand, magic earth, organic maps and so on, it is the contributor portal that needs to be run within the current constraints.
If you want to use a more general purpose website osmapp.org might be to your liking.
Further pointing to that nominatim issue is a bit misleading, photon has provided a fuzzy, typo friendly search on top of nominatim data for ages. The problem is that fuzzy, typo friendly is very language specific, and photon currently doesn’t support any where near enough languages that it would work as a complete replacement frontend for nominatim on openstreetmap.org (but nothing stopping you from working on it).
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Thank you for your suggestion! I have started using osmapp.org from now on whenever I need to just find an address or navigate.
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