Thanks for writing the diary - I’ve been recording street level imagery in my area (https://www.mapillary.com/app/?lat=51.50138625980165&lng=-0.33074324317226456&z=12.412109168034068) for a few years and it makes me feel less weird that other people understand the point! I started off with a GoPro Hero 9 Black and now also have a GoPro Max, partly to record evidence of dangerous driving when I’m cycling (with four reports to police over three years) and partly on the recommendation of the Mapillary forum. There’s not much more rewarding than when other people start updating OSM in your area based on imagery that you’ve captured! My biggest disappointment is that even with a GoPro Max mounted on my bike helmet, the imagery is usually too fuzzy to read addresses. One of the reasons I want to contribute is because I think the UK Address Database (The Postcode Address File) should be open data, and the closer OSM gets to a complete dataset, the less value the PAF has as a proprietary dataset that they demand megabucks for. Anyway, how have you found the image quality for reading door numbers? Thanks again! Steven

@MccCon, that’s great, and good point about WhoDidIt being a useful alternative for the times OSMCha isn’t working.

Regarding adopting areas, it currently feels a bit random which areas are being watched. The binding box I defined currently spans approximately two London Boroughs, and I have no idea if anyone is watching updates to neighbouring boroughs.

It would work best if people covered areas they are familiar with so that they can tell whether plausible updates are real or not.

I’ve occasionally caught issues in the area I’m watching, and I wonder how many incorrect updates go unnoticed?

One thing that regularly comes up in my feed of local authority changes is School Streets. I’ve been tagging the conditional access but doubt any routers use the information yet?

It does facilitate producing a map view of the school streets in Overpass Turbo though! https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1F28

@MxxCon thanks, I hadn’t seen that one before!

@SK53, thanks, yes, I use OSMCha to watch what others are mapping in my local area and use the RSS feed functionality there too. It displays the OSM-centric view of how an area is changing. Has there been any concerted effort to get volunteers to “adopt” an area of the map and watch them for new mapper mistakes and for deliberate vandalism? Seems like it might be a good idea as a QA mechanism?

The Gazette lists the changes that the highway authority proposes, so it’s a good way to get a list of new things that may not yet be reflected in OpenStreetMap, though the notices are usually posted a couple of months in advance of the changes actually happening because the notice provides the mechanism for residents and other interested parties to object or otherwise respond to the proposals.

I’ve often posted notes to OSM linking to the Gazette notice recording that something is due to change in the near future, with suggestions of how it can be tagged, in the hope that someone else more local might have their attention drawn to something new and unmapped once the changes are complete.