Tags denoting note status and note comments

Pedja · 2022-10-30T10:21:32.788Z

That is why we are introducing Note statuses. When Note is closed there should be assigned status that explains reason. Note is not deleted and may be reactivated any time.

If note is open for a long time and no one reacted, including person who posted note, that it is clear indication that note is obsolete. Information in such Note even may be outdated and there is no one to check.

We are planing to make application that would allow reviewing notes (including closed ones), but which is sensitive to these statuses. There actually is at least one application existing for such purpose (OpenStreetMap (OSM) notes ("add a note"-feature) for Serbia @ ResultMaps.neis-one.org) except it does not follow statuses. We want to make improvement in that course. Final goal is to allow easier and quicker resolving notes.

And of course there is no intention to close notes just because they are old, that is just one criteria. If there is reasonable shred of possibility that Note could be actually used to update map, it should not be closed.

Mateusz_Konieczny · 2022-10-30T11:11:55.397Z

Pedja:

If note is open for a long time and no one reacted, including person who posted note, that it is clear indication that note is obsolete. Information in such Note even may be outdated and there is no one to check.

that is not true

I encountered while travelling notes that were very old (many older than one year) and they helped me to detect issues.

It is entirely OK to mark notes with such hashtag and skip it from some custom tools: but please do not close them.

That breaks other tools like StreetComplete and overall breaks note system just to improve statistics.

Closing all notes older than one year just because they are old is a very wrong move (basically horrible stalebot imported from Github into OSM)

Mateusz_Konieczny · 2022-10-30T11:14:42.372Z

Pedja:

If there is reasonable shred of possibility that Note could be actually used to update map, it should not be closed.

That makes sense!

But it is missing from “Note is older than one year and unresolved. It is not certain that information is valid. Note is closed with no data update.” criteria.

For example would you close “this amenity=shelter is not existing anymore” note older than one year? It is not certain that information is valid, it is not resolved, older than one year.

But still useful as it makes mapper far more likely to actually check specific shelter.

Pedja · 2022-10-30T12:03:40.754Z

Mateusz_Konieczny:

Closing all notes older than one year just because they are old is a very wrong move (basically horrible stalebot imported from Github into OSM)

One year is just proposal. It is yet to be determined. We have lots of unresolved Notes that are seven or more years old.

Line has to be drawn. It is not about statistics, but about dealing over and over with things that cannot be resolved. When you open ID editor and turn showing Notes on, you cannot distinguish new Notes from those old unresolvable ones. We find it practical to close such notes with appropriate tags so those can be dealt in different way.

Our hope is that this tagging system will be recognized by tools like StreetComplete. It is just matter of option to filter Notes by tags.

Mateusz_Konieczny · 2022-10-30T13:00:02.244Z

Pedja:

It is not about statistics, but about dealing over and over with things that cannot be resolved.

Yes, large part of editing cannot be done remotely. But it is not a valid reason for closing notes.

#cannot_be_solved_remotely or similar may be an useful note status that would exclude them from listing for armchair mappers.

But please, do not close notes solely because they are not solvable with remote mapping.

Pedja:

When you open ID editor and turn showing Notes on, you cannot distinguish new Notes from those old unresolvable ones

this may be worth reporting at GitHub - openstreetmap/iD: 🆔 The easy-to-use OpenStreetMap editor in JavaScript.

Pedja:

Our hope is that this tagging system will be recognized by tools like StreetComplete. It is just matter of option to filter Notes by tags.

not really - how exactly you would filter for “actually open” notes?
that is a really bad workaround for problems that should be properly fixed. Have you attempted to actually fix them without breaking open/closed status? For example reporting problem to iD developers, special status to exclude open notes from listing for armchair mappers and so on.
as StreetComplete developer I strongly oppose closing notes and putting text on them to declare them actually open. That is a bad workaround for problems that should be properly fixed.

Pedja:

We have lots of unresolved Notes that are seven or more years old.

Why exactly it is problem?

It is perfectly fine to have 20 year old notes requiring local survey if someone was not able to survey given location for 20 years.

For example closing “this amenity=shelter is not existing anymore” note older than one year just because it is old and not fixable remotely is harmful and will not help with anything.

Pedja · 2022-10-30T13:52:42.263Z

Mateusz_Konieczny:

#cannot_be_solved_remotely or similar may be an useful note status that would exclude them from listing for armchair mappers.

I actually agree with you. If we have tools that are sensible to proposed statuses we would not need to close Notes except in to two cases: 1) it is resolved; 2) it is irrelevant to mapping. Every other situation could be handled by statuses.

But we do not have such tools yet.

As StreetComplete developer you could actually help us make this work. Our plan is to create web application that would deal solely with Notes, allowing filtering so one can easily find Notes he can resolve. I would advocate that we do reduce closing Notes to ones where it is obvious that is should be closed.

It would be much better that applications like StreetComplete could use this tagging schema to help people who are on the ground to find nearby nodes that needs to be resolved, and especially those tagged as on the ground observation is needed. If you adopt and help us develop this tagging scheme, that may produce great result and also lead others to follow and implement it in their tools.

Mateusz_Konieczny · 2022-10-30T14:05:55.391Z

Pedja:

But we do not have such tools yet.

Then I think that it is much better to implement tool that lists only notes without #cannot_be_solved_remotely that would be used by armchair mappers.

Especially NotesReview seems relatively easy to adapt (see Add a possibility to exclude notes with specific keywords · Issue #58 · ENT8R/NotesReview · GitHub - note that you can upvote it, I just did it).

Making custom lister of notes that would regularly update is also relatively easy.

But closing notes, tag it with equivalent of #actually_open and expect everyone else to support this is not going to work well.

Why OSM API, JOSM, iD, StreetComplete, Pascal tool lister and every single other tool processing notes should be changed instead?

How such note would be even marked as closed if open/closed status is turned into “is it of interest for remote mappers”?

Pedja:

As StreetComplete developer you could actually help us make this work.

StreetComplete should be currently working fine, right? Or is there something that would make it easier to process on-the-ground notes?

Branko_Kokanovic · 2022-10-30T14:56:13.383Z

If I may chime in too. I don’t think you too are in disagreement. What Pedja is proposing here is a set of “recommended” hashtags for notes and their recommended usages. Note that “1 year” should be read as an example that some community may adopt. After we can agree on set of common hashtags and there is advanced tooling around this (either new app for note managament, existing one like NotesReview, or integration with other mapping apps like StreetComplete), every community can define/redefine what some of these tags mean for them (and only for them). For example, I really, really doubt that Chile’s community (with 100% of closed notes) are adhering to “every note is precious”, but - this is completely OK - if Chileans all agreed to that approach, why not. In your particular case, I doubt anyone would close note for possible missing shelter. But I am first one to gladly remove note that says “alfadent” that is 6 years old as I doubt POI (probably some dental?) could survive that long and whomever will map there would map this unmapped area will get to “alfadent” too.

So, @Mateusz_Konieczny - think of this as a proposal to define set of useful tags (and what hashtags different communities might want). Once we have those, each community may define different filter (if less than 5 years AND NOT #doityourself AND #surveyneeded - keep it open) and different rules, and other mapping software like StreetComplete might utilize these hashtags (when adding note, add checkbox “Personal note” that adds “#notetoself” (I am just making this up now).

Of course, there is no app yet and we plan to start using this locally (we already are dealing with notes for couple of months now, as already posted graph here can tell) and if it works for us, we might propose it further!

Mateusz_Konieczny · 2022-10-30T15:54:24.497Z

Branko_Kokanovic:

For example, I really, really doubt that Chile’s community (with 100% of closed notes) are adhering to “every note is precious”

From what I remember they (or some other SA country) make an opposite mistake: assume that all notes are fully correct and are from source not problematic in any way, and edit without verifying anonymous notes.

Branko_Kokanovic:

I doubt anyone would close note for possible missing shelter. But I am first one to gladly remove note that says “alfadent” that is 6 years old as I doubt POI (probably some dental?) could survive that long and whomever will map there would map this unmapped area will get to “alfadent” too.

In that case I fully agree, I also closed many notes that were not worth it. But it seems that it was formulated in much stronger way, maybe I misinterpreted it.

Matija_Nalis · 2022-11-01T19:47:11.246Z

Pedja:

#surveyneeded, #needonthegroundconfirmation || Podaci u napomeni nisu dovoljni. Nejasnoće se mogu rešiti samo direktnim fizičkim odlaskom na lokaciju. Očekuje se da neko to uradi.

Predlažem da se koristi već postojeći #surveyme hashtag za tu svrhu koji je podržan i u drugim alatima; pogledati npr. ovaj komentar i linkove.

Pedja · 2022-11-02T06:59:15.762Z

Dodato je #surveyme u tabelu

AngocA · 2023-03-01T15:20:44.865Z

I have discovered this thread, which is very interesting. However, the text was originally in Serbian, and I had to translate it into English to understand it. I hope I don’t miss any important parts because I used an automatic translator.

I am part of the note solvers in LatAm, where we take care of notes and apply many changes to the map. We want only recently opened notes, which have fresh information, and the users remember the area in case of more information. This reduces the need for very old texts, which could be irrelevant now.

I have created my list of hashtags based on yours and given extra content: https://wiki-openstreetmap-org.translate.goog/wiki/ES:LatAm/Proyectos/Resolución_de_notas/hastags?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=es&_x_tr_pto=wapp#Lista_de_hashtags_de_estados_para_notas.

The text is in Spanish, but the purpose is to share it with the LatAm community, which is actively working on notes as a region - https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/ES:LatAm/Proyectos/Resolución_de_notas/hastags#Lista_de_hashtags_de_estados_para_notas.

Sabering · 2023-03-01T20:45:49.813Z

Very cool frend!

daganzdaanda · 2023-03-16T19:58:05.922Z

Having an agreed upon set of hashtags for notes looks like a very good idea! Thanks for working on this!

I also agree that it should be “backwards compatible”, don’t close a note and add a hashtag for possible future re-opening. It should be left open and get useful hashtags, so that maps, editors and apps could filter it out if it’s not interesting to the user at the moment.

Of course editors / apps need to be aware of the hashtags that will be used, and they need to be able to do the filtering. I don’t know how hard this would be for ID or JOSM or StreetComplete or NotesReview or even the Notes layer on the main map, but we should push for them to look into the possibility of adding support.

Pedja · 2023-03-17T07:27:52.586Z

I agree, once we have good tools that follow tagging scheme, closing note would be the least needed option.

kmpoppe · 2023-04-15T11:10:44.934Z

I will implement a tag & comment function in my JOSM plugin noteSolver using this, slightly rephrased, list of comments: Select hashtag for closing notes · Issue #26 · kmpoppe/noteSolver · GitHub

K

Duja · 2023-08-02T12:58:39.500Z

Pedja · 2023-08-16T07:15:33.195Z

That i great!

Maybe it is time to make this list in English and as official proposal?

ivanbranco · 2023-10-18T19:08:18.954Z

I started using these hashtags. I would like to suggest an addition. Sometimes a note is lacking information, so it could be closed with #not_enough_info. But happens sometimes that I ask more info to the note author (often a new user), but the user doesn’t reply, so it happens I find useless notes in which I asked a question one year before but forgot closing it after a while. I started using #waiting_for_feedback, so I can search such notes and closing them after a week or such.

Duja · 2023-10-19T07:09:46.279Z

(mod note: I translated the title to English for convenience of non-Serbian speakers)