When it comes to mapping, I think a large part of the struggle for it is my obsessive compulsive disorder. I’m writing this post because I think it’s unique and I haven’t stumbled across any other posts like this.
For starters, obsessive compulsive disorder is “a common, chronic, and long-lasting disorder in which a person has uncontrollable, reoccurring thoughts (“obsessions”) and/or behaviors (“compulsions”) that he or she feels the urge to repeat over and over”.
For me, that could mean asking questions like these when doing mapping:
“Do I need to put the city, post code, and state for each address I put in, regardless of whether I know the full address or not?”
“Do I always need to mark if the place is vegan, vegetarian, air conditioned, smoke free, etc.”?
“Do I need to perfectly realign the buildings using JOSM?”
The way things are right now, everybody has their own mapping style. For instance, some people may put a place’s post code and city, even if they don’t know the house number. Some people may put if a place is air conditioned or not.
The reality of the situation is that OSM is not used extensively in the US. So every time a POI is added to the map, it may not be extensively detailed. And even if it is, chances are unless there are some really dedicated mappers out there, that info will become obsolete within a few years because nobody will update the data.
When it comes to OSM, I started to work on the project because I felt it had potential. A potential to become something high quality and really detailed. The sad thing is, I focused so much on that level of detail (mainly with POIs), that I burned myself out on mapping. So I guess the question is, how much is too much detail?
Comment from Marcos Dione on 14 March 2023 at 20:23
Depends on the region: for instance, since France is completely split in regions, départements and communes, you only need to put the street number and name.
It helps people looking for those attributes. If you want to do it quickly, you could use StreetComplete (Android), MapComplete (web) or a JOSM preset (dekstop).
I would try to contact the community around the place you want to edit. They will know better which imagery is best for that.
I don’t have OCD, so I’m not sure this will help you. But in many places I go POI mapping is really low, so I try to at least add the POI and its name, or if the mapping app does not have the right preset, a note. If time permits (sometimes I’m mapping from the car or bike, waiting for a green light), open hours (see later), then other info. Try to find a balance, see what’s really important for you. To me is having as many POIs as possible. My main tool for this is OsmAnd.
Comment from Marcos Dione on 14 March 2023 at 20:23
not even the post code.
Comment from SherbetS on 14 March 2023 at 21:51
how much detail is always up to your discretion. the relationship being that the more detail you add, the less you contribute in total.
there is an infinite amount of work to do in a finite amount of time. its up to you to triage your own mapping to match your skills, scope, and interest.
Comment from Magick93 on 15 March 2023 at 19:57
It is not ‘wrong’ to put all those address tags. Feel free to map as much detail to your heart’s content. However, not all information is useful. All map features inherit the main location they are in.
When it comes to addresses, to me, the main tags are addr:street=* and addr:housenumber=. This will help and enable routing in other services based on OSM data! Other tags like addr:country= may not be very helpful.
Many times I see a large administrative boundary area, and all map features inside it are understood to be located in that administrative boundary, be it a city, county, state, etc. If a building is within the USA, you don’t have to tag it unless you really need/want to specify it (maybe useful for embassies and consulates?).
In the ID editor, you can press Ctrl+Alt+L, and a window will show the county, city, state, country, and latitude-longitude coordinates of the mouse pointer location you’re in.
Comment from Magick93 on 15 March 2023 at 20:33
For building alignment and geometry, I was struggling on wheter to map the exact outlines or only a rough shape. Here you can see the 2 options side to side. I eventually decided to go with the rough building shapes, it was faster to map the whole neighbour (warning, high density city!).