[OSM-talk] The future of bugs in OSM

Renaud Martinet karouf at gmail.com
Wed Jul 1 16:24:27 BST 2009


I think there was some talk about that last year (march or june) when
OSB appeared. If I remember, people liked the interface because it's
rather nice and it lowers the entry level. So more people submit bugs
and eventually also fix them, we get a better map and all is well.
But it has also been said that we need advanced features, similar to a
software bugtracking application. There was even some suggestions to
adapt Trac to map bugs tracking but it sounded awkward and probably a
bit complicated.
Anyway we need the same core features but we could also have feeds so
people can monitor new bugs in their area and then go fix them, things
like that that will make people take action because they feel pride in
keeping their area bug free. Pretty much like people monitoring
articles on Wikipedia.
The API is essential in my view so we can have one day applications
running on car GPSes that will help people report bugs when
travelling. So then we beat Tomtom's Mapshare on the very same idea
they ripped off from OSM :)


Renaud.


P.S.: Steve sorry for double post.

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 4:22 PM, SteveC<steve at asklater.com> wrote:
> I've been thinking a bit about how bugs work in OSM.
>
> I really like the way OSB works
>
>        http://openstreetbugs.appspot.com/
>
> But it's closed source afaik and doesn't have an API. It uses human
> input. new OSB is cool and tries to fix some of this
>
>        http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/User:Emka/new_OSB
>
> I like keepright
>
>        http://keepright.ipax.at/
>
> But it's more automated.
>
> Here's my vision for how bugs should work.
>
> You go to http://bugs.openstreetmap.org/
>
> There's a big map of bugs which looks similar to OSB. It doesn't know
> who you are and drops you in to beginner mode which shows bugs that
> are relevant to you - human entered stuff say. There is an
> intermediate mode which shows a slide which, when slid, shows more
> bugs. So at the low end human entered stuff, but at the high you get
> every single fixme from OSM. Then there is expert mode which looks
> like keepright, and you can click various things on and off.
>
> How do you enter bugs? There are two ways. As a human on bugs.osm.. www.openstreetmap.org
>  you can click a little green plus like OSB has on the map, or
> potlatch will let you do it too.
>
> But, and this is key, it also has a RESTful API for mass uploading of
> bugs.
>
> We need to do two things - unify the various bug systems and expose
> more of the bugs.
>
> To give you an example there are tons of bugs in the US, but there is
> no systematic way to fix them, or even begin fixing them. There are
> some good HOWTOs on the wiki on the actual individual details of how
> to fix a bridge connected to the road beneath it, but no big list of
> such bridges or where they are. We need to make this systematic.
>
>        http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/TIGER_fixup/Over_Connectedness
>
> Why is my system better than OSB or keepright?
>
> OSB with a simple API might fly, but it's not open and not quite part
> of OSM. Keepright kind of gets there but the barrier to entry is high.
> If I want to do an import and list bugs to check, or I want to write
> my own little maplint utility to check for X or Y or Z I have to learn
> whatever language keepright is in and start hacking against a large
> codebase. Instead, bugs.openstreetmap.org would offer a really simple
> REST api to throw bugs at.
>
> I envisage it as a sort of clearing house for bugs. It will quickly
> become very useful for lots of people writing small, loosly-joined
> tools. The barrier to me writing a small bug app is low. I imagine all
> sorts of little apps writing things to submit bugs much as keepright
> or maplint sort of do now. All they have to do, is run a script to
> report the bugs from planet every week (or whatever) and keep track of
> the bug IDs and see if they're closed yet.
>
> Now on the output side I think there is a huge amount of potential.
>
> Right now people don't know where to start fixing things. You can
> point people at OSB but that is human only, or you could point them at
> keepright or maplint but then you have to fight to maintain those
> things. Instead, bugs.openstreetmap.org would be a central clearing
> house which everyone can submit to and use.
>
> To go back to that example, if someone writes a script to find all
> freeways in the USA which connect at right angles to residential roads
> and submits them through the api to bugs.openstreetmap.org then you
> have a big dataset. It becomes super fun, cool and easy to motivate
> the community and say - hey lets fix all those bugs in the US. You can
> draw graphs of the number of bugs being eaten up, show progress, make
> a leaderboard... all the things that will motivate a *lot* of people
> to fix these things. It will be so cool to be able to have many people
> working on closing bugs, I'd make it my number one slide in every talk
> I go to, saying "go to bugs.openstreetmap.org and enter or fix a bug"
> maybe I should already with OSB.
>
> Now, you can of course just write a standalone app to do that freeways
> in the US a bit like keepright is a standalone app, but having it work
> for that, then someone else enters all the bugs in Spain that they're
> interested in, someone else when they import the next GNIS or
> something, adds bugs against all the imported PoIs that they need to
> be checked, other people can just enter bugs they see.... it becomes a
> very powerful system. All it needs is a little REST api.
>
> And what's doubly great is that it's basically a weekend, if that,
> project to get started and do the simplest pieces. Then we can iterate
> it from there.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Best
>
> Steve
>
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