today I noticed several new OSM Notes created by an external app called “PotholeFix App”.
They all contain messages like “POTHOLE REPORT …” and appear to be automatically and anonymously generated. Furthermore, all of these notes seem to be located in India.
In my opinion, temporary issues like potholes are not suitable for OSM Notes, as they are not mappable features and create unnecessary noise for mappers. However, this is only my personal view, and so far I have only closed one of the notes mentioned above.
What would be the recommended way to handle this?
(Close as not map-related, contact the app developer, filtering? …)
I think the issue here is not generally anonymous notes, but notes without any serious comment, just saying something like “pothole”, created by some “PotholeFix App”.
Do we really tag potholes? Not to my knowledge. Would it make sense? Imo not. I would close such notes with a short comment but it could be helpful, to contact the app developer and ask them to think about a more useful app if they want to add value to OSM:
I would assume, they are in the same way automatically generated like SC notes are, means it’s still a human creating them, just with a different GUI.
There seems to also exists a described tagging for potholes in OSM: Key:potholes - OpenStreetMap Wiki so I would first thing it’s somehow ok to do so,if it’s the aim to add them to OSM.
Even in Germany they are lasting longer than some shops out there…
“temporary” as in “exists for few to many years”. It sounds like useless notes because you can’t map one pothole anyway, for various reasons, the closest and useful one can get is to tag the way with lower smoothness (or other similar tag).
I would mass close them as reporting unimportant missing things that require survey to map them.
In principle it may be possible to map long-standing potholes.
But in the same way it is possible to map benches but creating flood of notes “here is a bench” is useless, maybe except rare extremely well mapped places with many mappers.
If someone wants to add such stuff they should just make an edit.
I mass closed some notes of “here is street lamp” or “here is grass area” and I would advise the same here. And try to contact app author to stop it at origin.
In Poland I would also advise to report problem to local government but not sure is it a good advise in that part of world.
Manholes are permanent, and usually of 2-3 sizes. Potholes can vary from small enough for a bike tire to fall in to big enough for a heavy truck tire to fall in.
Yes, this key exists, and the use of it demonstrates, how much sense it makes … 41 uses all over the world is a clear statement.
Just for comparison: The unclassified (and unsealed) road from my place to the next village counts 72 potholes and there are more every year … … but I have heard they want to renovate the surface next spring so I can delete all of them …
I don’t get what you are going to tell me? If you want to add more details tagging… I would assume we have tags for it, like depth, diameter, width,length, direction…
I would rather say, as of now, mappers are not interested in mapping them, so do I. But that doesn’t mean you are not allowed to do so. If someone want’s to map potholes, go for it.
Sure, and I did not say anything like that. As @jimkats already said we have the smoothness key to classify roads with a poor surface, but if someone wants to add potholes=many to a road that’s fine with me. I just said that tagging single potholes does not make sense and that I would simply close such notes.
I feel here we have the situation that mappers (or 99.9% of them) are not interested in mapping a feature that is brought up by an app that generates anonymous notes.
So I can absolutely understand people who close these notes without action or comment, as the right aproach for people interested in mapping them (or any other feature more or less missing in OSM) would in first hand be to map them and not asking other people to do it.
From people building an app just for this purpose one could expect that they contact the (local) OSM community before launching it. I do not know if this happened in India or any other place.
… (specially in case of such a questionable object)
Spot on! Seems to be exactly this one which is published by BBMP (the city administration of Bagalore). The description does not tell anything about placing nodes in OSM but sending a message to the BBMP (to take action about the pothole), so apparently it is only designed to work within the city of Bangalore.
If running an app which allows creation of OSM-notes counts as Organized editing, where is the permission for apps like StreetComplete? It’s not listed on the OSM wiki page.
In general I feel a bit strange that some guys from mainly Europe are discussing about mass-deleting notes created in India. Do any of you gathered any input from the local community?
… but I have heard they want to renovate the surface next spring so I can delete all of them … 
… (specially in case of such a questionable object)