this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/33407329

We've all already talked about switching away from google/apple maps to something like openstreetmaps, mapy, tomtom amigo, etc. But all of these services use openstreetmaps (UK non-profit) as a source and they still miss a lot of local data even for bigger cities!

If you have some spare time, think about adding a bit of data to the map with your local knowledge. There's a lot of business data missing that is on google maps like websites, phone numbers and opening hours but also stuff like parking lots and whether they're publicly accessible and free or not. Adding these makes the competition of ALL services using OSM as a source better.

I also use the mobile app https://streetcomplete.app/ and https://every-door.app/ to add data while on my walks, these make my walks more engaging and I actually take longer ones + see new places because of it. Streetcomplete also has a focus on important and easy to collect data with their default filters, and you can choose what you want to contribute.

If you really want to get into the thick of it and contribute more than just simple data you can always check out https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/How_to_contribute and see in which of the many ways you can contribute!

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[โ€“] LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think there's limitations to that. I also think ideally we should cut Google out our work chain anyways, and depending on data from there makes that functionally impossible. Stuff on maps changes, if we're scraping from Google maps now we're just gonna have to continue doing that. Instead we should normalize our own community work chains to build our own dataset.

[โ€“] Kualdir@feddit.nl 4 points 1 day ago

Yep, best to verify the data either in person or at least via their website instead (if they have one)