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Filterable Map Notes
We have some regions in Germany, were many map notes are on a little part of the Map So it would help a lot to be able to filter them by criteria like
- Creator (Anonym or a OSM User)
- Time since creation
- Viewed/not viewed
- Open/Closed
For those of you, who can understand German, here is the original forum thread: http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=22589&p=2
I support this idea. The possibility of filtering notes helps to quickly spot new created ones and reduces the impact of mass-abuse as shown in the picture.
A combination of filtering and the possibility to vote up/down the notes would be helpful for such issues - but not easy to implement I assume for an issue which doesn't happen often, seen globally.
It might also be a nice addition to have a way to tag notes like #surveyneeded. This makes it possible to filter notes by those that can be resolved by armchair mapping or those where the locations needs to be visited to be resolved.
+1 for filterable notes. Another case could be a way to tell apart notes from the main website and notes from apps (this has been suggested to me a couple of times). onosm.org and su.openstreetmap.it make notes, and it could be nice to receive notifications about these only (this could be achieved by a filter and an rss on it)
You can all keep saying +1 as much as you like - what will make it happen is not people doing that, but somebody actually stepping up to implement it.
I think perhaps the main question is how to expose those filters and what the correct design is for its UI. Simply adding those filters to notes API would likely not be particularly difficult and I can write some patches for that if there is an agreed upon number of filters we do want to support. Indeed, the API already gives you some very limited filtering ability. It allows you to limit the number of returned notes (which are ordered by date), as well as specify if you want only open notes or also closed notes. By default it returns all open notes and notes that have been close no longer than 7 days ago.
With regard to filtering applications, I was under the impression there was still a debate about how to record the app submitting the bugs. I.e. whether to use "created_by=" like tags, use OAuth app ids, or use something like http referrers. Again, if there is agreement on what is the acceptable and correct way to do this, the actual implementation would likely not be all that difficult.
I would also like to point out that notes filtering does not necessarily have to happen on our web site. Anyone could code a standalone web site that consumes the notes feed and allows all kinds of fancy filtering, or editors could offer note filtering in a way that matches their respective UIs.
Indeed filtering of map notes doesn't have to occur on the website as long as you are just reducing existing data, and so perhaps adding the filtering capacity to the API isn't all that useful. However, those filtering capacities do make notes potentially much more usable and given that we do want people to use the notes functionality on osm.org. Adding this functionality to the website UI is reasonably important.
The second part is information that is currently not available and thus obviously also not available to third party sites. The main example is the "created_by" tag to mark what application submitted the note. But there are other aspects like e.g. categorisation of notes (for example "needs ground survey", "suitable for armchair mapping", "todo note to oneself" or the likes). For this the system needs to be extended to actually collect and provide this information.
Here we will first need a consensus of what information is important and should be included in the database and how to best represent it. So hopefully we can do some brain storming together to figure that out.
The second part is information that is currently not available and thus obviously also not available to third party sites. The main example is the "created_by" tag to mark what application submitted the note. But there are other aspects like e.g. categorisation of notes (for example "needs ground survey", "suitable for armchair mapping", "todo note to oneself" or the likes). For this the system needs to be extended to actually collect and provide this information.
Here we will first need a consensus of what information is important and should be included in the database and how to best represent it. So hopefully we can do some brain storming together to figure that out
This is a great point, but it should not happen on this ticket as it would be offtopic.
The russian site http://openstreetmap.ru/ uses 3 different icons to display the OSB bugs:
- open
- commented (and open)
- closed.
I like that display, maybe adding that or filtering for it, would help to ignore the commented Notes.
Kind of funny how I arrived to globally the same conclusions: http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/JBacc1/diary/20309 (in French). Before arriving here thanks to Hno2, I suggested:
- a more constraining note creation protocol (zoom level, mandatory fields…)
- a private note mode: only I can see my private notes,
- a filtering system: show only anonymous/hide heavy users.
I also strongly recommand an additional field: survey needed/armchair resolution/heavy duty work. Without theese tools, which could be developped outside the main osm.org site, I fear the notes system may follow the OpenStreetBug evolution.
Unfortunately, my developping skills are… non-existant…
Generalizing the #survey_needed idea, I think the main thing we need is an #info_needed tag to filter out notes that we can do nothing about until either the original poster replies, or a survey is done. Posting a reply would, by default, clear the #info_needed flag.
There are plenty of other possible criterias (date, author, tool), but I feel this one is the most important (I'd even consider assigning a different icon for notes with that status). It gives a clear feedback to non-editing contributors, and allows separating survey sessions from armchair mapping.
The other big difference between that criteria and the others proposed, is that it is extra info in the db, that we are not collecting yet. I could write my own note-filtering interface today, but the #info_needed flag needs to be implemented upstream (I could hack a "last comment text contains need_info" filter, but it would lack standardisation).
What about starting this "filtering of Notes" issue at the listing in OSM user settings about all notes where a logged-in user is involved ("My Notes") ... see www.openstreetmap.org/user/YOURUSERNAME/notes
By now, this listing is only sorted by "last changed".
Is it generally possible to add filters to this listing?
via three radio buttons that mean a) show open Notes b) show closed Notes c) show all Notes
or with checkboxes that say: show only notes a) created by me b) commented by me c) closed by me
and finally make some or all columns of this listing sortable?
What do you think?
What I think is it will do no harm, but show open/closed/all/closed by me will be of limited effect (as the closed notes are not rendered after a few days). Created by me will certainly help « heavy users ». But for « note closers », what would really help in priority is:
- opened by anonymous
- hide private notes (but this is more than a filter, needs an evolution of the DB). Such an evolution would certainly be done along with the other proposals (chair mapping/needs survey/heavy duty).
- and that's in my dreams: hide « heavy users » notes (but needs to first identify them: currently owns more than 100 opened notes, for example).
Point *1 is easy to implement, can be compared to your proposal. *3 seems heavier. *2 needs admin work…
What do you think?
- 1 for Categories and Filtering. I suggest to do this in key value pairs (as in OSM nodes), and started a discussion here: http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=23625
Survey needed sounds to me like the prime target here. Then remote mappers can disregard those instantly.
I think a key consideration here is that the Notes idea is mind-bendingly simple, and we need to try to keep it that way. That mostly applies to the process of adding a note though. I guess we could make the notes layer display a bit more powerful.
I do find myself often writing "survey needed", and I've started deliberately writing those exact words on the end of note description or comment so that I might search/filter by that at some point. This could help those remote mappers who seem to be (rather too zealously perhaps) itching to close all notes in their city from the comfort of their armchair, but on the flipside it could also help folks to do very useful data gathering while out and an about, using app with a "find your nearest 'needs survey' note" feature.
@vincentdephily you say "I could hack a "last comment text contains need_info" filter, but it would lack standardisation" I had the same idea. I think that could be an interesting experiment. Create a kind of power tool for notes wranglers, as a separate website or JOSM plugin. Sure the standardisation is challenge. I was imagining a tool might look for various formulations we've mentioned "needs survey" "needs_survey" "#needs_survey" (personally I prefer the natural language 1st option) in the notes or comments, and start to classify notes and display them in different colours.
An ignore button or hide anonymous users would be a great help to see the forest for the trees. In the Netherlands the amount of "unwanted" notes are exploding now.
@zerebubuth With unwanted I meant notes that are uninteresting for me (eg post boxes, rubbish bins) that will clutter the map, but that can be valuable for others. It would be great if we have an ignore button to make those invisible. Closing is only allowed for invalid notes (like "this is my home").
I also strongly recommand an additional field: survey needed/armchair resolution/heavy duty work. Without theese tools, which could be developped outside the main osm.org site, I fear the notes system may follow the OpenStreetBug evolution.
Extending the notes functionality and making them much more robust would help immensely, especially when e.g. looking for Maps.me notes to verify
(commenting here because issue 2513 has been closed in favour of this)
I'm not sure exactly what the requirement that lead to issue 2513 was, but there are ways of maintaining private "note collections" - mine is https://github.com/SomeoneElseOSM/osmimport_02 (designed around Garmin waypoints because that's what I mostly use outside). I'm sure that there are other, more polished, alternatives. What it doesn't do of course is integrate with OSM, but if's it's a private collection of notes, does it need to?
I think that some form of tagging and filtering would be great, possibly even with different colors to display on the map. Github is a great example of how good issue tracking works, we just need to apply that to a map :wink:
