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Comment by __sr__ | Hacker News Reader

> No one said it has to be your job or passion. I've fixed a couple of areas in OSM, but I've probably spent not more than a few hours working on it in total.

That doesn’t work unless everyone else is doing it. And for that to work, everyone should be using it in the first place. It’s a catch 22 problem. To be fair, it is possible that people do this where you live - which may be a reason why it is usable there, but I have not found that to be the case at the places I have visited.

Perhaps it is not as complicated as fixing a software bug, but the idea is same - the data is available publically, go fix it.

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> That doesn’t work unless everyone else is doing it. And for that to work, everyone should be using it in the first place. It’s a catch 22 problem.

If that were actually true, Wikipedia would be no more than four stub articles written by Jimmy Wales.

The real barrier is people looking at a volunteer project and asking themselves "how can I take from this what I want?" rather than "how can I contribute to this, even in a small way?"

No one says anyone has to take on the herculean task of totally fixing all the problems they see in their area. But if you spend a little time fixing something, it will get better and perhaps even attain a high enough quality to satisfy you.

The most likely time for somebody to notice a problem is a) when they are on the move, and b) when it's a location unfamiliar to them. These are terrible circumstances to expect somebody to stop what they are doing and edit a map.

And while I really like OSM I must say Apple got it right. The "report an issue" interface on iOS Map is easy to use on the go and requests are actually assigned to people who fix the map. I’ve signaled a few mistake and they all have been corrected.

OSM is great for walking and cycling because pedestrians and cyclist are flexible enough to make small detours to map missing paths. In cities it's usually good enough if your destination is in the right spot, you can navigate by walking generally in the right direction. Finding potential shortcuts and getting to map terra incognita is just an added bonus.

It's not as complicated as fixing a software bug, but it's not trivial for the first-time user either.

Create an account, figure out how to navigate the interface, figure out what rules apply to your update, apply update, get reprimanded because you followed the explicit rule for "I'm not quite sure what to do with this".

__sr__ you're aware open source actually works. Largely because a tonne of people have entirely the opposite attitude to you for social tasks? Unless you haven't noticed Wikipedia exists... I worked on that long before it was mainstream or generally useful.

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