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openstreetmap
possibility to attach photos to notes
Sometimes when adding a note it is not so easy to explain the actual map bug just with words alone (let's say you find a very complicated road sign and don't really know what's going on). In that case it would be helpful for both the note submitter and the mappers if photos of the location could be attached to the note.
StreetComplete has support for attaching photos using third-party service. In my experience this feature is extremely useful.
The trouble with using third-party services is that each note-generating client needs to implement it on each own and it is fragile (StreetComplete was recently affected by photo-storage discontinued).
Is it viable to store photos directly on OSM servers? It would be nice to know is there some fundamental blocker before somebody starts implementing this feature.
Only if OWG were prepared to provide significant server resources to support the service.
And answer in https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/206 is
My initial reaction is: not in the short term. We have been planning to move the website storage (e.g. user images, gpx files) off of a centralised machine and onto a storage cluster, but that is still in progress.
Photos could provide useful context in a note, but allowing images in notes could also increase the potential for abuse. Inappropriate images including copyright infringement could become more common. We allow profile photos, but those are small compared to what I’d imagine we’d want to enable within notes.
This would be a handy feature, though as others have noted it's potentially open for misuse.
From a quick read through https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/206 and https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/169 it looks like S3 may now be in place as an object store - does that mean the storage blocker for this has gone?
Yes, there's two technical aspects that have changed since these related tickets were opened. The first is that OSMF is using an object store for hosting files (e.g. user avatars and gpx traces), currently AWS S3, and secondly Rails has the ActiveStorage feature which takes care of the uploading / downloading / image resizing etc and makes it much easier (less code) to add this kind of functionality.
The policy topics - e.g. inappropriate image hosting, moderation etc - are unaffected and there hasn't been any recent discussions on this topic as far as I'm aware.
With the shift to AWS S3 for storage and the availability utilizing ActiveStorage, the technical barriers to implementing photo uploads in notes have been resolved. This feature would provide valuable context that text alone cannot convey.
Given these developments, could we reconsider this feature and discuss the potential for a PR? It seems timely to revisit this, considering the resources are now in place. @gravitystorm @tomhughes
Well there are budgetary questions if we're going to wind up using substantially more space and image hosting is also potentially problematic from a moderation and legal liability point of view so we may want to speak to LWG before considering it.