We have developed SiraApp, a SaaS feature that allows verified business owners in MENA region to create or update their own POI information in OpenStreetMap.
Key points:
Edits are user-triggered
No bulk imports are performed
Expected volume: approximately 50 edits per day
Only business-owner-provided data is used
All users agree to ODbL publication before syncing
Full documentation is available here:
We welcome feedback and are happy to make adjustments based on community input.
There is not much you can do but put up some text warning the user, is there ? How you ensure that poi added through id, josm, everydoor, streetcomplete etc… are license compliant and correct ?
Hello @Roboost_OSM, thank you for starting this thread.
Could you give us some concrete examples of some of the companies you already want to add and what tags they will have?
I noticed that in your earlier attempt there were a few small tagging issues. Would you mind adressing whether you plan to solve/fix these issues? Take for example:
The phone number formatting was wrong.
The SMS tag included “:sms:” in the value as well.
The description included SEO/marketing text
The name was written in two languages seperated by a | character.
The changeset description wasn’t clear at all. “Updating Nodes from SiraApp” does not explain what happened in this edit or what you changed. Just that you used an editor called SiraApp.
I also noticed that some of your earlier edits seem to be botched test edits. Editing incorrect nodes, moving nodes to coordinates 0,0, adding test values, etc.
It would be difficult to provide exact examples as the tool is used by our clients upon acknowledging our ToS. But we documented the scope of those changes in the Confluence file. The tags used are also mentioned in the Confluence File.
As for the tagging issues: These formatting mistakes were checked and handled.
Descriptions are no longer SEO related.
We’ll look into detailing the Changeset description more, and then test it on https://master.apis.dev.openstreetmap.org/
— Could you please describe what an ideal changeset comment would look like ?
We also edited Our tool to discard botched changes and they are no longer being implemented.
As for the 2 languages we view this as an accurate entry, is there a problem leaving that way given that those locations are indeed branded using both names languages??, e.g: (The banners on the store front is shown in that format)
Verification and Validation are all done independent by our Tool, therefore taking edit actions from separate accounts would add an extra layer of unnecessary abstraction.
With ASL Burger as example, something along the lines of “Added ASL Burger location” or “Added information to ASL Burger location” if it is an existing one. The purpose of changeset descriptions is to make it clear to other mappers what happened in that particular changeset.
If the banner on the front of the store uses that format, then I don’t have much of an objection.
Please understand that OpenStreetMap is very different from Google Maps. OSM works more like one giant community project that values individual contributions and truthfully mapping what is on the ground above most other things. The goal is to create a better map. Whereas the business POI layer on Google Maps functions more like a giant advertising space.
If you want to enable your clients to add their businesses to our map using just your account, then you are taking on the responsibility of ensuring the data they are adding and their mapping activities meet our mapping standards.
SEO companies generally have no reason to care about our map beyond adding their clients names to it. This often leads to a lot of very low quality additions that are at odds with the kind of map we are trying to create. Right now you seem to have a thorough plan in place to prevent low quality additions, which is great. But it is unclear to me how you would guarantee those described standards if it is your clients that are doing the edits.
We show our clients a live preview pulled from OpenStreetMap API, they then apply edits to the existing nodes/create new nodes through a curated UI experience. The user confirms each tag separately, Upon each of the user’s submission, that data is filtered through our tool to match our documentation on Confluence and subsequently OpenStreetMap standards.
We check for formatting, correctness and duplicates.
This is in spirit of OSM community as we will provide access to Business Owners and Location Managers to adjust their own locations it doesn’t get more on ground than this. Our tool aims to add a validation layer and provide access to reputable sources, who would otherwise find contributing to OSM too complicated.
How would you prevent a company from giving the wrong names? For example, it is not uncommon for SEO companies to use ALL CAPS TO GET NOTICED MORE, or add more information in the name tag than there should be.
How do you ensure the POI’s are added at the right location?
How will you ensure that feedback (e.g. changeset comments) goes back to the entity that created the data?
Once you’re ready to start your import, would you be able to show a limited trail run? With just a few dozen or so POI? As it stands right now I still remain wary of what you are attempting to do. Seeing some results first would help a lot with verifying the data quality.
We are not an SEO company, and the users are not looking to optimize SEO, these are BOs (Business Owners), They’re trying to accurately represent the presence of their brand. As I previously informed you we instruct them to show their names as shown at the storefront. e.g: The example we spoke of earlier where the BO updated their name in both Arabic & English because Saudi regulations require both on all storefronts.
Therefore they are incentivized to enter in their correct names and we’re willing to take responsibility for the correctness of that data
They pin their location themselves, I would argue that’s more reputable than a contributor who has no affiliation to the business or has never visited the location. from a live map that we show
After your feedback on the change set comment we started tracking each change made and reflecting it in the change set comment, which we’ll format the change set comment and show a version of it to the users of our tool.
I think what the other person was trying to say is that buisness owners represent the name the way they want to and not how people refer to it. I can easily imagine a scenario where a business owner writes their shop name in capital letters instead of small letters because I have seen similar things happen.
Business owners can sometimes not understand the map and think they are looking at A while actually looking at place B which looks similar to place A on the map. This is one way in which a mistake can be made by the business owners themselves.
Or, they could place their “pin” just a little off from a neighbouring pin to “ensure readability on the map”, seeing how our rendering engine would otherwise randomly prioritize one business over another if space is insufficient to show both, and this is difficult for a business owner to accept. Will @Roboost_OSM educate business owners about this fact and that there is no guarantee that a business will be shown on the map at all?
In that case its probably best to use name=* for the name as it appears on the storefront, in addition to that name:en=* for the english version and name:ar=* for the arabic version.
I was not aware of that mechanism in OSM’s rendering engine. That shouldn’t disrupt our tool but we can surely communicate that.
Thanks for the tip.
I think we have done what’s needed to abide by both the spirit and guidelines of OSM, and this forum can be used as documentation for both our implementation and methodology of it’s implementation.
We’ll start testing using the updated changes e.g.: new descriptive changeset comments. Then we’ll publish our tool for a second attempt