Hi, I’ve added this request to GitHub regarding OSM Notes but people may miss it and I am not certain about where to post it so why not both!
According to Pascal Neis , since 2013 or so, OSM users have logged 4.76m OSM notes, of which 452,000 remain open, close to 9.5%. Is it time to look at the Notes system and look for short and long term gains…
Quick(ish) implementation
Read mode…
When in OSM view mode, use the same Iconography as in the edit mode. This hopefully allows users to see more notes that are clustered with the reduced size.
When looking at a changeset, allow users to easily access the note from the changeset noteId or within the item edited.
In Edit mode…
When moving into edit, by default, open the notes layer so that local editors can see and rectify issues. Editors can always toggle the layer but expose the issues at hand.
Provide a check box to toggle closed notes visibility. It is difficult to sometimes view what needs to be altered with open notes impacting on the closed notes and not all notes being rendered if too many for an area. Get rid o
Like the Mapillary id insert into values button, allow users to capture the Notes ID to their clipboard, for pasting into their changeset comments or into the notes key of the entry they are fixing. There is a disconnect that is difficult to trace back to a note once the update has been made. A changeset noteID=12345 would be ideal for this.
For open notes < 31 days, add a little asterisk to identify new notes
For open notes > 365 days, identify these in a different manner.
Not so quickish implementation
This relies on OSM Notes system but I think additional key/values of Local_Knowledge_Required=yn , expert_Knowledge_Required=yn and perhaps a gamification system where more points are awarded for more complex, older (or brand new) notes where the note is not reopened.
There are frequent disputes in the community over the closing of notes. Some mappers like to “tidy up” their area, seeing every open note as a “bug”; often they will err on the side of closing (read: to resolve this I would have to leave my armchair, and nobody else has left their armchair to resolve this in the last two years, so let’s just get rid of it). Then others re-open the note and accuse the closer of “vandalism”, and so on.
The deeper issue is that different people use the note system for different things. Adding some sort of “tagging” system to notes - could be via fixed flags like “survey required”, could also be free-form like elsewhere in OSM - would allow the community to work together better. New, “un-tagged” notes could be prominently visible, and the community could triage them - some might be solvable immediately, some might need a survey, or expert knowledge, or a revisit at a later date. Those “tidying” their area could choose to ignore notes that have any of these tags, therefore reducing strife in the community.
I think this might have to do with the styling of the notes icon on the map on the OSM website, the red pin with an X makes it look like “something is wrong here” rather than “someone has something to contribute here”, it looks negative when it should look positive.
iD automatically tags the changeset with closed:note=* if you close a note while preparing the changeset. JOSM has a plugin that does something similar. Is this what you have in mind, or something else?
Naturally in the German community this is partially driven by the translation of Note to Fehlermeldung instead of just Hinweis.
It isn’t a secret that adding tags to Notes has been in the work for a long time, there’s even a PR, but that suffers from going way overboard (adding versioning to notes etc).
Thanks Minh - thanks for reply. I wasn’t aware of closed:note=* so that is fantastic and probably covers most. Where I have added several shops names in this instance only one note is captured but that is probably not that critical. See Changeset: 185515618 | OpenStreetMap
I use notes, for example, to indicate the location where a new fire station is to be built, even though work hasn’t started yet and the fire station won’t open for another two years.
Why am I doing this?
Because there are so few contributors in certain areas, there’s no guarantee that, even when the fire station is open, there’ll be anyone around to notice it. Thanks to this system, I’m very often ahead of the French National Geographic Institute’s mapping efforts.
I include as much information as possible: the most precise location possible (cadastral boundary) based on the details I’ve gathered, the planned date of commissioning, and any newspaper articles that mention it. It is, therefore, a highly qualified assessment,which I find very interesting, even if the timeframe is open to question
There are three options:
create private notes that do not clutter up other contributors’ feeds
create notes with a maximum automatic closure date
create notes that are triggered in x days, months or years
That’s one of the ways I use it, though not necessarily the main one
They probably didn’t close the note from within iD. You have to enable the OSM Notes layer using the Layers sidebar, select a note on the map, and close it with a comment. Then iD will automatically close it when you upload and tag the changeset with the note ID. This changeset was mentioned earlier as an example.
I’m a fan of this one. Currently I do this by including #surveyme somewhere in the note text (as that makes the note show up as a quest on StreetComplete) but a tagging system would be better.
Could you please stay on Ewen’s topic (Notes) instead of hijacking this thread for the debate with TheNightRider! @TheNightRider: how about starting a suitable thread elsewhere!
Another thing that might help with this would be if there were a way to “hide” notes or mark them as read somehow so they aren’t constantly in your face once you’ve already looked at them and concluded you can’t do anything to fix them with the information available to you, while still leaving them open for others (who may be in a better position to act on them) to see.
I agree that having a way for an individual mapper to say “don’t show me this note” would be good. But I don’t think it will address the root cause of rude armchair mappers.
I think the articulated conflict between long term useful notes and unreasonably aggressive armchair mappers is accurate. In my experience, the notes system mostly works well, and locals often communicate with each other.
I have seen the “distant armchair mapper wanting there to be zero open notes” problem many times. it is interesting, though, that the total number of osm accounts (people?) that I’ve seen it happen with has been very small. I think it’s 3, in maybe 6 years. Yes, I have seen notes wrongly closed by others, but almost always I talk to them and it is happily worked out.
I believe that 95%+, maybe 99%, of the “notes angst” could be solved by prohibiting armchair closing, unless based on a genuine belief that the note has been solidly addressed, which is articulated in a comment when the note is closed*. That can be as simple as a note which says there is a new restaurant, and it was added by someone who didn’t notice the note, with “restaurant is already on map”, or a “parking lot” note with “I added the parking lot based on aerials”.
The real problems are “I can’t see this feature from aerials so it must not exist” (yes, I actually encountered that, for a feature I saw, and later was able to find on newer imagery) and “this has been open for 2 y so obviously it should just be closed” sorts of things.
The problems in my experience are overwhelmingly the result of a small number of people and we just need to tell them that’s not ok.