StreetComplete
StreetComplete copied to clipboard
streetcomplete
Enable "Note to self"
I often find during surveying that I'd like to make a note on the map just for myself, as a reminder of what I see and what the problem is so that I can make an edit on OSM when I get home. Of course it's already possible to make a note, but it will get uploaded to OSM, which is too "heavy" for my purpose most of the time (it will be for everybody to see, can be resolved and then reactivated, etc.). Would it be possible to make it optional to upload the note to OSM, or just keep it private in the app (on the phone of the user only)?
What is wrong with making a public note?
It is ok to make note that you plan to resolve - it just needs to be clear what is reported as the issue, what at least in my experience is not s big burden.
What kind of notes you typically make?
For example this is my typical note - short ("building"), but clear and about something that will be better mapped from aerial image but not done with Vespucci due to some limits https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2288660
There could be various reasons for not wanting a note to be public: privacy, not wanting to bother others, language issues (I'm a Dutchman in Bulgaria, so should I write the public note in Bulgarian which I don't master, in English, or in Dutch (easiest for me)?). If a note is private, I don't need to describe it so it is clear to others, which lowers the threshold to make one. Most of my notes would be about mistakes I found and how to correct them. I tried Vespucci a few years ago but found it quite difficult to make edits on a small screen.
Maybe as a checkbox on the note creation, or extra button next to "OK"
Yes. I asked for this because I guessed it wouldn't be very difficult to make the upload of the note to OSM optional. It could stay saved in the app on the user's phone, and be deletable afterwards.
But we need an interface to find them later even if the location is far away.
Maybe by providing a way to export the created notes in a GPX/GeoJSON file. The generated file could then be viewed using the software of your choice, I could also imagine to add the corresponding functionality to NotesReview in order to have an easy way to resolve your own private notes...
But we need an interface to find them later even if the location is far away.
"We"don't need to, it can be left to the memory of the user to remember where he took his private notes. ENT8R's suggestion sound complicated: I don't think a user should be bothered to need additional software to read his private notes. Streetcomplete's strength is its simplicity.
I had the same idea some weeks ago - typing in a long note on a smartphone keyboard isn't really fun, so I often wished there were a possibility to leave a private note where I could use my personal abbreviations for "this item doesn't exist anymore", "the name of this POI has changed" or "cannot determine if this way is lit, come back at a later time when it's dark".
In addition to the checkbox/button to mark a note as private at creation time (this probably needs an explanation in the UI!): The publicly visible and private notes should be easy to distinguish on the SC map... what about simply giving the question mark icon a different colour (orange? pink?) if it's a private note? If the user taps on a private note he should be able to delete it.
The cycling cat
It would already help if a user could see his own notes in Streetcomplete...
Can you explain the use case for that?
It would already help if a user could see his own notes in Streetcomplete...
Can you explain the use case for that?
See above for the use case of "note to self". I did start using the notes feature even though I don't feel the need to share them with others, but noticed I can't see my own notes in Streetcomplete (it's now a note to "everybody except self"). Since it's also not possible to see my notes in OSM (ID) while editing (on my desktop), it would help if I could see those notes in Streetcomplete on my GSM
Since it's also not possible to see my notes in OSM (ID) while editing (on my desktop), it would help if I could see those notes in Streetcomplete on my GSM
With iD and josm you are able to view you/all notes while editing. If you need a second screen you can open osm.org on your phones browser.
Very early in my StreetComplete use, I tried to map a polygon for a very new map location (i.e. not visible on satellite images yet). I did this by leaving myself a note at each vertex of the polygon, but I felt really dumb when I realized later that those notes are visible to everyone forever.
There could be various reasons for not wanting a note to be public: privacy, not wanting to bother others, language issues (I'm a Dutchman in Bulgaria, so should I write the public note in Bulgarian which I don't master, in English, or in Dutch (easiest for me)?).
I feel such option it would overly complicate interface (as noted above), and lead to private notes that never gets resolved as they get forgotten about or not found. Personally, I just use public Notes, even if it is not in native language of the country in question. Then I have all the more incentive to solve such notes quickly before questions start coming in asking me to comment if they were too brief or only make sense to me (which has additional benefit that the circumstances are still fresh in my mind).
Or if it happens that I won't be able to solve them soon or without resurveying etc, I comment on them when on computer (that time in English and with more detail - even if I happen to be the one resolving it, the crystal clear details of short note I took today become more hazy as days and week pass!)
And I not see any issue with privacy for OSM Notes because:
- for tracking my location, all questions of StreetComplete are equally telling as Notes
- if the data should not be public in OSM dataset, I simply do not enter it in Notes as they are irrelevant for the public (for example, if I wanted to mark private location of friend's home on OSM, I'd make a Favourite in OsmAnd or Maps or whatever app I happen use for navigation)
Also I periodically use https://my-notes.osm-hr.org/ to find all of my notes that I have not yet resolved (especially if they are scattered across space and time). As one will forget and/miss/lose track of some of them.
Most of my notes would be about mistakes I found and how to correct them. I tried Vespucci a few years ago but found it quite difficult to make edits on a small screen.
So are mine. Public OSM Notes work great for that purpose. If you like to save others some time, you can prefix them with self: or myusername: in order to indicate to others you'll be preferred one solving them, but it is really not that big of deal unless you leave them lying out for months before you decide to solve them. I try to solve most of them in a few days (and update with more information the ones I cannot solve without more time).
Hi there,
I just stumbled upon one more argument pro private notes: The OSM wiki clearly writes in the "Don't"s box on the right side:
"Don't use notes for yourself in a way which is useless to others. Although you can use notes as a reminder to yourself, you are also inviting others to look at it. Descriptions must make sense to other people."
(This afternoon I came across the next real use case for private notes: In a town nearby I got many quests related to bus stops and alarmingly many of them were placed at wrong positions, up to 200 metres away from reality! (Maybe they have been moved since the initial mapping 10 years ago and noone has moved the OSM node.) So I left many notes like "Bus stop is now here", but an abbreviation only visible to myself would have been handy as I could for example define "#B" as "Bus stop is now here" without confusing other mappers with my personal self-invented cryptic code.)
The cycling cat
@cyclingcat Perhaps you could just write "bus" which is not much longer than "#B" (actually, on US keyboard, it is even one keypress less!), which would be equally informative to you (as you would remember that you meant that the bus stop is here), but will also provide information to others in case you do not quickly solve the bug and someone else decides to.
Main problem I see with this "private note" suggestion is not that of simple checkbox private/public (which might occasionally get wrongly marked, but that is minor problem), but a lot of the additional work needed to actually allow user to solve that private notes.
As they are private, you cannot upload them as Notes to OSM servers; so you would have to connect phone and your computer, have a function in SC for preparing the data for transfer on phone, then transfer the data, and on desktop have an importer program for your desktop editor of choice (iD, JOSM, ... - probably separate for each editor), and then have a separate program/feature to track which of the private notes you have not yet solved, etc... (or alternatively you need to upload to separate service, that you need to create first, make it work with login/SSO etc) -- all of which is completely avoided by using public Notes instead!
Perhaps it would be better to just use smart keyboard on your phone with allows for use of macros or autocorrect feature to change short strings to long ones? That would give you best of all worlds - then you could you just type a shortcut and have it translated to full text which is also meaningful for other users and not only yourself, you would be able to understand it even months after being created (instead of just days probably) and you'd automatically without any work have instant support in all desktop editing programs you might wish to use, and you could use that same once-create-use-many-times functionality not only in StreetComplete but also in all other apps on mobile phone (OsmAnd, Vespucci etc.)
@mnalis: Perhaps my example was a little too simple: Indeed, this use case could be handled by some kind of macros (and the pound character would be a bad choice for the reason you mentioned, so just omit it, a pure "b" would be sufficient in my bus stop example). But what about more complex situations which need more specific information in their notes?
In my almost daily use of SC during the past weeks I came across the following situations where I wanted to leave a note but refrained from it because I neither wanted to write a long text on the smartphone touchscreen nor clutter the notes with my personal abbreviations. Some examples, taken directly from my practical experience during the past weeks:
-
Opening times quest for a shop: Not answerable because the whole shop has changed (startlingly often nowadays for smaller shops in pedestrian zones) or there is something totally different in the same building now (a car repair turned into a martial arts centre - no kidding, I spotted this yesterday!) I could nevertheless fill in the new opening times with SC but need to note something (or at least a reminder) for the later work on this shop with JOSM.
-
Name changes of POIs: A quest related to a POI comes up, I solve it but notice that the POI's name is wrong (typo, misspelling, ...). So I want to leave a note without having to type in the (sometimes longer) name - often it's self-explanatory what has to be corrected, I just need the reminder that I have something to do concerning this POI when I'm back home.
-
Street surface quests: Sometimes very small snippets are in fact stairs! Here I want to take the opportunity to correct this later via JOSM but would like to collect all related information on-site (number of steps, handrail etc.) without having to type too much, especially if the chance is low that I'm going to visit the same place again during the next weeks/months. So I would think about inventing a code like "S15 H+ R2" but don't want to put this in a public note (see the OSM wiki link mentioned yesterday).
And so on... but maybe it's just a matter of personal taste, mindset and workflow. Mine would be: "Leave (cryptic) private notes on-site, start JOSM later at home with the phone lying beside my PC keyboard, find the notes on the phone and fix the tags in JOSM. Of course the possibility to get a list of the private notes with the possibility to jump to the geographic position would be handy. (Don't know if this is feasible with reasonable effort though, this falls definitely into the category "nice to have".)
Fun fact: If I decide to leave a note (often of type "This object doesn't exist anymore") it's sometimes already fixed by another mapper when I come home! There is a VERY active mapping community here and one or two people seem to concentrate on cleaning up behind me 😃. (But what would these poor mappers do if they came across notes like "not" or "x" as I would abbreviate it?)
The cycling cat
What about suggesting previously submitted note texts when writing a new note? Together with a photo of the stairs/shop/etc., you could use the same non-cryptic text again and again: "This road is actually stairs.", "This shop is not here anymore.", etc.
What about suggesting previously submitted note texts when writing a new note?
This is done already by keyboard word suggestions/predictions (at least for me it works fairly reliably if I type the same note text multiple times).
I don't personally need this feature, but as far as implementation goes,
Of course the possibility to get a list of the private notes with the possibility to jump to the geographic position would be handy. (Don't know if this is feasible with reasonable effort though, this falls definitely into the category "nice to have".)
I think the best compromise would be to simply add a way to share a list of all notes via the normal Android share menu. Then there are a number of ways to get that information to your computer -- email to yourself, share via http, etc.
I don't think there is a need to move the notes anywhere, like @cyclingcat I'd just have my phone next to my desktop when I'm back home and make an edit in ID based on the note, and then delete it on the phone. If I'm late following up on the note so I don't remember what it was about, I'll have to go back to the location and look again. That is only my problem and nobody else's. Keep it simple please!
@cyclingcat Here is what I would do in your examples:
-
Opening times quest for a shop - I'd select
Can't say, and take a public Note with text "changed" and taking a picture of new shop/martial arts center (possibly with extra picture for details if needed) to fill with JOSM back at home. I think it is bad practice to mark new working hours, because you're then misleading people that there is still active shop with those new opening hours, when there is not, until the time you solve the note (which might happen to be much later, or even never)! And last updated time will make it even worse than if nothing was done about that shop. (Also note that taking a note manually is less precise thanCan't sayas you could point to nearby shop instead). -
Name changes of POIs - I'd take public Note with text "name" and take a picture of new long name. That way either you or anyone else will know exactly what is meant and solve it (even if it happens months later no need to remember crypto), and you don't have to type long names...
-
Street surface quests - I'd select
Can't say(as it is steps and not a path), and take a public Note with text "steps" and picture(s) showing steps with handrail, visible number of steps etc.
As for the others solving your Notes, I do not know if you consider that positive or negative experience - if you find it positive, than you should be even more inclined to provide non-cryptic Notes so others may fix them. If you instead prefer to hone your JOSM skills (instead of others doing half your intended homework by the time you got back home), then you could disable auto-upload, and upload only when you get home and are ready to start editing the map.
disable auto-upload
Unfortunately, you will often miss quests if you do that -- see #1550 and #1510
@rhhsm & @cyclingcat & others - how would you envision that have phone near and find the notes on the phone and fix the tags in JOSM / iD process in detail? That is the biggest problem I see.
Here is my take:
If private notes were implemented, I guess they'd probably be just like the public Notes but in different color or something similar. Adding them could be as simple as having checkbox Private? when opening Note, which would mark it should never be uploaded - that seems to me to be the simplest part.
But after getting home, for them to be usable for me, I'd first need to find my private notes, for which I'd need at last a visible track where I've been or simple way to switch showing only private Notes and back showing all selected quests or have some special menu item in StreetComplete which would show only private notes, so they wouldn't be lost in forest of other quests.
Then, I'd need to edit the map. From what I understand, you'd both prefer just to look at the phone and try to locate the same location in JOSM / iD manually? I find that very error prone/time consuming, especially where there are many similar locations, and/or tightly packed shops in same building etc. I'd personally much rather have StreetComplete share GPX file with private Notes as waypoints, that would show exact locations with comments in JOSM / iD or other editing tools (and easily allowing me to see all the private notes outside the current view).
And finally, I'd need to remove resolved private Notes from phone, but leave the ones I have not resolved for later. So probably easiest would be so each private Note when clicked would have an option to delete it.
How do others think process should work from beginning to end? What would work for you, and what wouldn't?
disable auto-upload
Unfortunately, you will often miss quests if you do that -- see #1550 and #1510
@smichel17 Yes, It was behaving that way in for me too SC 24.x, but then with multi-download feature which is present in 25.1 seems to fix that issue for me? For example, I can disable auto-sync (or even put mobile phone in offline mode - no data, no wifi - which happens to save a lot of battery power), and I still can solve "address quest", "building type", "number of floors" etc. all in the same go without needing the Internet (which I couldn't do before).
On second look, it does indeed look like #1901 might not solve 100% of all such quest dependencies... But as main issue here seems to be that there is so much problems on-site that one has to resort to cryptic single-letter notes, probably the single mapper wouldn't be able to solve 100% of them in one go anyway.
As I understand it, multi-download:
-
Does solve the issue of certain quests not being fetched until you've solved enough quests in the vicinity to prompt another scan for quests.
-
Does not solve the problem of quests that only appear based on your answer to a previous quest — the dependent quest will only appear after upload.
If private notes were implemented, I guess they'd probably be just like the public Notes but in different color or something similar. Adding them could be as simple as having checkbox
Private?when opening Note, which would mark it should never be uploaded - that seems to me to be the simplest part.
Agree
But after getting home, for them to be usable for me, I'd first need to find my private notes, for which I'd need at last a visible track where I've been or simple way to switch showing only private Notes and back showing all selected quests or have some special menu item in StreetComplete which would show only private notes, so they wouldn't be lost in forest of other quests.
No, I'd expect to have no more than 5-10 notes for a survey trip. I think I'll easily remember where I've been, so I'll know in which area to look for them. It would be nice to show the private notes in a similar way to the public notes now, i.e. together with the normal quests but standing out because of a noticeable colour, and preferably on top of any other quest so they are always selectable.
Then, I'd need to edit the map. From what I understand, you'd both prefer just to look at the phone and try to locate the same location in
JOSM/iDmanually? I find that very error prone/time consuming, especially where there are many similar locations, and/or tightly packed shops in same building etc. I'd personally much rather have StreetComplete shareGPXfile with private Notes as waypoints, that would show exact locations with comments inJOSM/iDor other editing tools (and easily allowing me to see all the private notes outside the current view).
I don't think there will be many errors: it's the responsibility of the mapper to take good notes and photos so the edits will be accurate. I'd use private notes mostly to note errors, so I'm sure more errors will be removed than created. If the note isn't clear enough when being home, the mapper might need to go back and check again but that's the mapper's problem, no one else's. Same for being time consuming: so be it, but to have private notes as an option is better than having only public notes. Anyone is free to use them or not. It would help if the GPS position of the user at the moment the note is created is added to it.
And finally, I'd need to remove resolved private Notes from phone, but leave the ones I have not resolved for later. So probably easiest would be so each private Note when clicked would have an option to delete it.
Of course a private note needs a delete or close button to remove it.
Thanks for feedback @rhhsm:
No, I'd expect to have no more than 5-10 notes for a survey trip. I think I'll easily remember where I've been, so I'll know in which area to look for them.
OK. In my case, trips are mostly cycling (half of full day long), and often on the order of about 50-100km, with at last 50-200 notes due to old/nonupdated data, and I rarely know where I've been exactly - I often just follow whereever biggest bunches of unsolved quests are :) (interestingly, even with much shorter trips of just several km walking, I also create few dozen notes - as the area is much more dense with more unsolved quests and issues).
It would be nice to show the private notes in a similar way to the public notes now, i.e. together with the normal quests but standing out because of a noticeable colour, and preferably on top of any other quest so they are always selectable.
That would need some quest priority mechanism for showing quests; I do not know if such option exists technically in tangrem-es? Currently, if there are more than 1 quest in certain radius, all other quests but (random?) one will lose their icons and become simple small circle or disappear. So unless you solved all the quests around your private notes (and no new ones pop up in the meantime), there is chance some or all of your private notes wouldn't be visible at all unless such priority option exists and is implemented (or you turn off all other quests as suggested before).
Same for being time consuming: so be it, but to have private notes as an option is better than having only public notes. Anyone is free to use them or not.
I agree with you there that people need not use the feature they don't find very useful (and for me it might be useful if it exported GPX with waypoints, but not if I'd have to go full-manual on it). I just worry if private notes might be (much) more work than first look shows...
It would help if the GPS position of the user at the moment the note is created is added to it.
When you press on the map it should be near your GPS position (if you use follow mode)... Are you proposing that both the note location and user location (at the time of taking note) be recorded somehow? How do you propose to show that data (eg. graphically as arrow pointing from user location to note location, or just as textual geo: numeric coordinates somewhere in note or some other way)? I agree that would be useful (as is would show a vector more precisely defining what exactly note was about), but I'm not sure how much work it is.
Of course a private note needs a delete or close button to remove it.
Agree. I just mentioned it, as some other programs do it other ways: for example KeypadMapper3 (which was my favorite for mapping addresses before StreetComplete 25.1 came out) only offers "delete all items in database" option, which I do not think would be a good match here.
So far, most of the use cases I see so far full under the category of correcting incorrect information, particularly information that could be entered with SC if it were missing, rather than incorrect. Would it make more sense to address this use case directly?
This is already the purpose of resurvey quests. I wonder whether it would also make sense to add a "correction mode", which removes the time restriction from all resurvey quests (ie, asks them again, regardless of how recently the information was tagged). Then, instead of making a note, you could enter correction mode and answer the relevant resurvey quest, fixing the map in the moment.
The main barrier here is that currently only the highest-priority quest would be shown — we'd need to add a way to switch between quests for a given object. This would also be useful for times when you're answering multiple quests for the same object, in general. For example, if you're not sure of the answer to one quest, but you will return later to solve it. Right now you'd have to answer the quest with "can't say" in order to reveal the lower-priority quests for that object, then go into the settings and restore hidden quests when you return. Depending on the implementation, this might also help with whatever UX issues were present with showing the next quest immediately after the previous one was solved… @westnordost Could you elaborate on https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete/issues/1969#issuecomment-723457563 (or link to an earlier discussion)?
I have some early ideas for a gui, but I want to look through previous discussions on the topic first, which will take more time than I want to spend right now, and also I'd like to hear @westnordost's initial impressions — if you are interested in the idea, I'll open a new issue for it, since it is not exactly the same as this one. Particularly…
Street surface quests: Sometimes very small snippets are in fact stairs!
This is the one case I see so far that would not be solved by "correction mode", since SC generally does not add objects or change their geometry.