Show HN: StreetComplete, an OpenStreetMap Editor for Humans

9 points

5 years ago

StreetComplete is an OpenStreetMap[0] editor directed at people who want to contribute and want to do this using their smartphone, without learning how to edit things[1]. It is available as an Android application.

It is intended to be used as one walks, with quests appearing as markers on the map. Selecting a marker allows one to answer a simple question. The answer will be added to the OpenStreetMap database, with app handling selecting objects for editing, transforming answer into OSM tags and making edits.

OpenStreetMap account is needed to apply edits, but it is possible to start without it, make some edits and login/register later.

Note: I am not the main author, but I am one of the active contributors. Github page is at https://github.com/westnordost/StreetComplete and https://github.com/streetcomplete/StreetComplete/releases shows what was recently released.

[0]OpenStreetMap is a Wikipedia of maps, available on the open licence. This dataset is already used for many interesting or useful projects. And new mappers are always welcomed!

[1] JOSM, Vespucci I use them heavily but describing them as newbie friendly would be a blatant lie. iD is more newbie friendly but still is quite complex to use and unusable on mobile. Most of difference is caused that all of them are general purpose editors, for example it is quite hard to make iD even easier to use.

I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21577029 in 2019, since that time several new quests were added, download become significantly faster and app got much smarter, while hopefully not becoming more confusing.