[OSM-talk] missing maps? no: missing GPS traces.

[Mario Frasca]

On 17/02/2020 12:21, Mario Frasca wrote:
> […] I'm not just complaining for the sake of it, I'm looking for 
> opportunities.
>
> you see, we are in 2020, and people still do not know OSM even 
> exists.  just count them: we have 1.35 billion people walking with a 
> handheld device, most of which with a GPS, and only 10 thousand 
> installations of OSM Tracker for Android.  […]

I was pointed to a web site for sharing GPS traces, mostly for trekking 
and hiking, on foot or by bike, it's called wikiloc (.com).  it uses OSM 
as base map (or Apple map), gives all possible and desirable 
attribution, and has many more traces to offer to globe-trotters than we 
have on OSM.

so there's this curious situation: via wikiloc.com you look for 
suggested walks, and you don't see the path in the map, since we mapping 
for OSM do not see the wikiloc traces, so we can't use them to 
vectorialize the available aerial pictures.  my current practice is to 
browse their traces, using their site as a set of hints for where to 
map, we have Bing after all!

but is there anybody here reading, from the OSMF, who could write to 
them, and suggest some correction to the current situation? like: you 
upload a trace to wikiloc, and apart from all current agreements between 
hiker providing the trace and wikiloc, there would be an extra clause: 
your points are exported to osm, maybe under a generic wikiloc user, and 
marked private, or the wikiloc user coupling their accounts, and 
deciding in their preferences which visibility for their traces.

to have a concrete example, take the Yeguada, north of Calobre, in 
Veraguas, Panamá.  OSM has not a single GPS point recorded there, while 
wikiloc has several traces, along roads that aren't in OSM.

https://www.wikiloc.com/mountain-biking-trails/calobre-la-yeguada-29495788

use the above link to reach the area.  the whole area is in this 
situation: unmapped, no GPS points available to mappers, quite a few 
well documented GPS traces in wikiloc.

just wondering, is there anything we can do?

MF