Make descriptions of data clearer for end users

[ADepic]

I am proposing...

to make descriptions of POIs clearer for end users.

Prerequisites

• Vector Map Tiles On openstreetmap.org (issue)
• Clickable POIs (issue)

What will this enable that we can't do today?

Today, when you access the description of a POI/ any other osm node/way/area/relation, the description is aimed at mappers. However, for a person using the map, this can get quite confusing. If this is implemented along with clickable POIs, it could attract a lot of users as a alternative to other proprietary maps.

What needs to be done.

Let's have a look at a sample description of a POI on openstreetmap.org.

The first thing you see, the title, is completely aimed at mappers, and can leave a end user confused. The first thing mentioned is if the item you are viewing is a node, way, area or relation. This is immediately confusing if you do not know the OSM terminology, and end user shouldn't need to know what it means.

After that you see the name of the data, immediately followed by the number of the node/way/area/relation in brackets, which is useless for the end user, only slightly useful for a mapper.

Then after that, you get the latest comment of the latest changeset that affected the piece of data, followed with the date of changeset, editor, version number, changeset number & link, and Lat/Lon co-ordinates. Out of all those things, I would say only the Lat/Lon co-ordinates are useful (maybe the date of changeset, but that is probably useless too.). lat/Lon co-ordinates might be useful to send to a user using a different mapplication.

After this, the user is left to comprehend what the POI is by the tags alone. The tags are not presented in a user friendly manner at all. An example of this was when once I was tagging a residential road as highway=residential, and he say that and said "How is that a highway?". What he thought highway meant, as many people do, was that highway meant a main road, such as a moterway, and was completely confused when I tagged the residential road as "highway".

While many tags are self explanitary (such as "shop=supermarket") no specific tag is placed at the top, and the user can easily be confused. The tags have to be presented in a user-friendly way.

Lets have a look at the POI in Google Maps.

The first thing written, in a clear font, in the title. Just below it is what POI the piece of data is, and all of this is on a blue background to make it stand out from the less important details. Four useful options (similar to osmand) are shown below. Out of those I think Search Nearby should be retained.

Below, if available, a description is shown (this could easily be done in osm, just show the description written in Key:description) which is also useful for end users. Below that (just like osmand and maps.me) any other useful detail is shown, such as telephone number (phone=), email (email=*), opening hours (opening_hours=* although it should be presented as a table.), address (addr:*=* or preferably addr:full=*). Other details could be shown, for example, if you are checking road info, then the road surface (surface=\)

Another button just below this information is "Suggest Edit".

Something like this could be implemented, e.g. "Add missing information". This could lead to another tab with two options; "Add a Note" & "Do It Yourself"/ "Add Information Yourself". Both these options need a clear description explaining what they do. For example, "Add a note" will have a description saying that this note will tell other contributers to the map.

Here you can see Google Maps lets you easily add phone numbers, opening-hours and emails with the click of a button (if you are logged in, that is.) I think this could be implemented into OSM and that could be quite useful.

All mapper info, such as changesets and changeset comments and if the piece of data is a Node/way/area/relation should be hidden inside a "Advanced" tab, which the mapper can scroll down and click on.

Whom does this benefit?

End users of openstreetmap, people who aren't mapping but instead using the map for general use cases (finding POIs, )

Any drawbacks?

Mappers. Now all details that are meant of mappers will be hidden underneath a "advanced" tab, meaning one more click to see.

Resources needed to build and maintain?

All shop= tags, amenity= tags, building=* tags need to be presented in a user friendly work.

For example, a shop=convenience called "Daily Food"

would show up as:

Daily Food

Convenience store

Doing this with thousands of osm tags will take ages.

Describe this project in a single emoji:

:tada:

[HolgerJeromin]

Today, when you access the description of a POI/ any other osm node/way/area/relation, the description is aimed at mappers.

This is the target of the osm.org website

If this is implemented along with clickable POIs, it could attract a lot of users as a alternative to other proprietary maps.

This is not the aim of osm.org website.

[bhousel]

@HolgerJeromin It's totally ok to propose things here that expand the scope of the osm.org website. All ideas are good ideas!

If people are currently using the OSM website to look up POIs and they can't do that, maybe we can make that easier to do. It doesn't make the site any less valuable to editors.

I do agree that #16 is probably either a prerequisite or at least the more important.

Also @ADepic I'd avoid the negative talk on Google Maps. We're not really competing with them - OSM just does our own thing. You are right that POI lookup is a feature that is currently much more polished on Google.

[ADepic]

Also @ADepic I'd avoid the negative talk on Google Maps. We're not really competing with them.

Sorry, I was doing negetive talk on Google as a whole, not simply their maps.

And for the Project name, I'm really sorry, I know it was terrible, I've removed it now.

@HolgerJeromin If the main website isn't appealing, then many potential users, out of which some will become heavy mappers, will be lost.

[woodpeck]

I think some of the ideas presented here, where they go in the direction "allow casual visitors to OSM to enter structured information", are good.

But generally, I don't subscribe to the idea that our web site should necessarily work on becoming more friendly towards non-mappers. Our resources are already stretched thin trying to build a site that is good for mappers; I don't see where the development resources should come from to build a map that tries to achieve feature parity with commercial map offerings. That doesn't mean that our own map site should be ugly as hell but I think we can skip the fancy stuff. We'll never be an end user mapping site - we don't have things like traffic data or aerial imagery that make the big commercial offers interesting.

So... make contributing easier, yes. Make the web site better for non-contributors - not our core business. Most of people exposed to OSM data today already view our data through other sites or apps, not the web site; the idea that a more end-user friendly web site would attract tons of users is flawed IMHO. Our web site needs to be: "Have seen/used OSM data elsewhere? This is where you come to if you want to modify it."

[danieldegroot2]

Parallel issue: https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/706 . (includes prototypes)