such note is extremely unclear and incomprehensible
I would likely close with comment “closing as incomprehensible” but I would not consider closing it without comment as rude
Are other closed notes as unclear as this one?
If it is about signed bicycle route it is also not actionable without survey, so of limited utility
For “road closed” it would be also useful to know more - attach a note or give info. Roadworks? Entire road destroyed by landslide? Protest blocks it? Fallen tree blocks it for cars? Military checkpoint?
I agree that my notes could be clearer (again, extremely limited time and difficult to write something more detailed on a motorcycle gps while trying to get places - often with detours and delays). But my question regards etiquette around closing other peoples’ notes. If the community finds it acceptable to close “incomprehensible notes” without a comment, then fine. I’ll make notes for myself and won’t bother uploading them anymore. Sad that the community appears to value “comprehensibility” above etiquette and working together to keep the maps up to date and more useful.
FWIW, the “closed road” was, IIRC, a road closed with a gate and a sign; I can’t read japanese, it was in a no-signal area, so I have no idea why it was closed (seasonal, road-works, private access, …?) point is; it was closed when I tried to go through that area. If it is no longer closed, it would be nice to say so on the comment.
In general, my strategy would be to accept whatever is preference of local editors. Though if remote mapper or brand-new-account starts telling people how to create notes I will give it more limited weight.
And to remember that there is a greater benefit from making a single edit than from making 100 notes requesting such edit to be made.
–signed, person who creates absurd amount of notes (hopefully overwhelmingly useful ones)
yes, though I would also advise to always (or nearly always) explain why note is being closed
For the most part I’d avoid adding and leaving open** notes that aren’t actionable by anyone else, and “icycles tour” isn’t something like “road was closed here on (date), does anyone know why?”.
Doesn’t OsmAnd have some sort of bookmark functionality that you can use for personal notes?
** plenty of people add notes on the go and close them within a few days when they’re back home.
I find the easiest thing to do with OsmAnd is to just add them as an OSM note, but don’t upload them. They can then be exported either as an OSC file or as waypoints in a GPX.
The downside of the OSC version is JOSM doesn’t really have a proper way of distinguishing between closed un-uploaded notes and open un-uploaded notes (or even an easy way to delete them as you go along) so it’s often better to take the GPX route and convert to data layer so they can be deleted when dealt with … of course then you need to make sure you don’t accidentally load real data onto your scratch data.
Then after that you have to do the whole exercise of figuring out which notes are already dealt with and deleting them from OsmAnd.
Personally when I see an unclear note, I leave a comment asking what it refers to, and I wait usually until a week before I take an action.
Closing notes just few days after they were created, without even leaving a reply? That’s a really bad practice imo.
The sad truth is that in many places, “the community” is drowned by incomprehensible notes that get no follow-up for five years and their creators often don’t respond to questions. A spree of closing seemingly low-value ones is often the only reasonable way of dealing with them. You just got caught up in it.
In OsmAnd, you can also make a custom bookmark category (in “My Places”) and make the notes-to-yourself there. Those can then be reviewed on your phone when editing at a desktop, or exported to a GPX file.
We have many cartographers in Russian community who leave short notes like this. If someone doesn’t contribute garbage and resolves at least some of their notes, we’re fine with it.
On the other hand you can also reopen then and ask what was unclear
I did.. and then it got closed again, again with no comment as to why.
—-
I do accept that I have a bad habit of creating notes while travelling, and then not getting around to editing and closing them when I get home. Some of these may appear “incomprehensible” and yes, that is a failing of mine due to being unwilling to write comprehensive essays on a phone while on the go. And sometimes some personal notes get mixed in. I will strive to do better in these regards.
I do half-heartedly wonder whether we should offer private notes, which no one apart from the poster will see, as well as public ones. People do evidently use notes as personal surveying aide-memoires and that’s fine - we want to encouraging more surveying!
I wonder why people just not make waypoints/bookmarks/whatever in the app they are using with notes to self. Why on Earth would you make them visible to others? That is how I map - I usually come from hiking with dozens of GPX points that I can then edit from a computer with the help of satellite mapand a much bigger editor.
@Micha From my point of view, yes, the notes should be closed with “incomprehensible”, and it is a bit rude not to do that, but I would also say that the two notes you posted are imcomprehensible (they are just noise), and adding imcomprehensible notes is a bit rude. Either make them private or elaborate a bit more.
(Ok, so I can’t always spell very well using a phone keyboard while wearing motorbike gloves)
I wonder why people just not make waypoints/bookmarks/whatever in the app they are using with notes to self.
Because OsmAnd doesn’t have that feature. That said, it seems that at least the current version of OsmAnd allows uploading notes selectively - that is, I can leave personal or unclear notes un-uploaded. I don’t know if this is something that was changed or if I accidentally pressed upload on some personal notes in the past.
the two notes you posted are imcomprehensible (they are just noise), and adding imcomprehensible notes is a bit rude.
Ok, alternate viewpoint; taken onboard.
I fail to see why “road closed” is incomprehensible, but sure, I won’t notify other road users in future and will request OsmAnd to add a “Personal Note” action to the app. Or see if I can code it up myself as a plugin.
Thank you everybody for a constructive discussion. I see there are multiple viewpoints and, ultimately, the long and the short of it is that I fail to action my own notes, at the very least to clarify and add context to them once I get home - life usually gets in the way after a trip. Still, I was hoping to help improve a mapping solution of which I am a regular user.
“Unactionable” is probably a better word. As was suggested above, it is unclear what to do about it. Delete the road? Change its access tag? Was is something seasonally or temporarily conditioned? Etc.
The way I see it, the note must allow somebody who has not been to that place and who cannot read the mind of the note creator to make an edit. If it allows that, it adds value and is good. When not, it just adds cognitive load to everybody. Of course, it depends on the notes. I am not saying all your notes are useless - just the two mentioned here.