Take StreetComplete with you when you're out and do pokemon-style quests while at the same time improve the map of the area you're in.
It's very fun and quite addictive, and the data you're providing is open source so it's not free labour for some huge company.

[–] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 months ago

Oh, I very much know that! But only on OsmAnd I can see those changes being applied a few hours later instead of a month later.

[–] yotsen@lemm.ee 12 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If the maps in your area are incomplete, you have the power to change that by editing OpenStreetMap. Organic Maps updates its maps about once a month by pulling data from OpenStreetMap.

[–] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 5 months ago

Oh, I very much know that! But only on OsmAnd I can see those changes being applied a few hours later instead of a month later.

[–] JASN_DE@lemmy.world 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Define "up-to-date"?

[–] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

OsmAnd allows me to see changes in hours, for OrganicMaps I have to wait a full month.

[–] semperverus@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I think this is to prevent organicmaps users from DDOSing the OSM servers by constantly streaming map data from them

[–] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well, we need a better system then

[–] semperverus@lemmy.world 0 points 5 months ago

I'm honestly fine with it.

Saying "we need a better system" without understanding why we have the current system we do is not helpful.

I work with hosting services and resource constraints every day at work.

Someone like Google can give you instantaneous updates because they have billions of dollars and can host data farms across the globe for billions of users to access whenever they feel like it.

OpenStreetMaps likely doesn't have this kind of funding and gets by on what they have. They are running fine now on the small amount of users they have, but if the usage suddenly 10x'd or 100x'd overnight from a popular app like Organic Maps switching to realtime downloads straight from the tap, the servers would ignite (not literally, I hope).

What I would like you to do is draft up a proposal for how to overcome the financial and technical hurdles needed to allow a much larger userbase to constantly hit the OSM service. This would be a much better use of your time. Once you're done, submit it to the Organic Maps and OpenStreetMaps staff to try to get it moving forward, or at least talked about.