avoid useles OSM notes

[Matthias84]

Hi, the OSM community appreciates new contributors, also with the notes feature. Unfortunatly maps.me drops a lot of notes, just with general information (object not found etc.) that are useless in that form. The community usually doesn't edit data just because somebody anonymously suggest a change. Instead we believe it's more valuable, if the one does the edits with his own account. That way we get a detailed edit history and we are able to contact the original editor and ask for details, if we ran into problems.

So please think about a 'do specific edits on your own' policy, as the current situation is pretty unsatisfying:

• mapsme users ecpect the community to benefit / do the suggested changes
• community would need to revisit the objects on the ground to verify / can just suggest to do the edits on the user account itself

[Zverik]

Only 300 of 36k notes submitted with maps.me are anonymous. Usually you can contact the submitter by replying to a note.

Other than that, are you suggesting everyone, not just maps.me users, stop adding notes and learn some osm editing instead?

[Matthias84]

With anonymous I refer to 'not known / new to OSM communty'.
The point is, that if I have to contact every user who submit notes just to explain that it would be better if he could edit on his own, nobody will get happy.

I don't have an perfect solution to that problem, but I noticed, that it doesn't scale very well, if maps.me user contribute that way :disappointed:
On a low ratio of full anonymous users it was a nice tool and the workflow of revisiting the place / check when you get there was alright...

[Zverik]

Then what is the notes system for?

[Zverik]

Also, for one note maps.me users submit 10 edits. On the other hand, mappers complain about these edits too, asking us to switch editing for leaving notes instead.

[Matthias84]

I can just give you my personal impression and the question how we can find a better way.
IMHO generating an OSM profile (as you do already) and pointing the people to the official editors might be useful.

P.S. We have an long history of third party 'simple to use' editors that created a lot of dupes, broken multipolygones, ... so don't take it personally. It's just hard to find the right balance between useful contributions and edits that break most of the stuff ...

[Matthias84]

Just an idea: An photo by maps.me users would be a good way to verify the information on the ground, without the need to recheck the situation once more. As osm notes are currently limited to text only, this feature needs to make use of an third party image hoster.