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Comment by Sir_Substance | Hacker News Reader

I don't really understand the note resolution process, I feel like streetcomplete could do more to improve this but I don't know what, because I only see it from the streetcomplete side of things.

It's pretty common for me to see a note from someone that's like a year old saying "this business isn't here any more". Indeed, it is not. I mean, I could add a picture (didn't realise that feature existed), but how would that help? It's a picture of a thing that's not there. Why not take the notes word for it when it was first posted a year ago?

If this is some multi-verification thing, there must be a better way to present that?

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> It's pretty common for me to see a note from someone that's like a year old saying "this business isn't here any more". Indeed, it is not. I mean, I could add a picture (didn't realise that feature existed), but how would that help? It's a picture of a thing that's not there. Why not take the notes word for it when it was first posted a year ago?

"This place has gone or never existed" is a note from MAPS.ME generated by clicking such button in that app. But people sometimes missclick it. Or use it wrongly e.g. place exists but has slightly inaccurate position or name. Or use it on POIs they added themselves as a mistake (MAPS.ME allows adding/editing POI, but not deleting them)

If you solved as many notes as I did you would understand ;) I think that photographing something that's not there is still a valid thing. I try never to trust notes blindly, and when possible corroborate it with outside sources (no copying of Google Maps allowed, though).

> If this is some multi-verification thing, there must be a better way to present that?

Notes, their usage, and resolving are pretty free-form.

> If you solved as many notes as I did you would understand ;) I think that photographing something that's not there is still a valid thing. I try never to trust notes blindly, and when possible corroborate it with outside sources (no copying of Google Maps allowed, though).

I think this can get tricky. I've worked in several office suites where having a business listed on the directory at the entrance was an additional fee that many tenants opted not to pay (not just struggling startups; I've known this category to include large publicly-traded companies who'd existed for decades). Someone could see that a listed business is not on the directory, mark "no longer exists", even posting "photographic proof" of a directory without the business's name -- and they could still be wrong.

The only way to know for sure would be to a) verify the landlord's records; or b) regularly knock and confirm that employees of said company are routinely occupying the space.

OSM is a map first, not a business directory - although these do overlap. Admittedly, businesses without a marked presence are not de facto priority (as in: no explicit rule, but they don't get mapped first). Shops, restaurants and so on that are open to the public are more so.

Ultimately in a cooperative project like OSM you have to be able to somehow verify others' work - that's why there's "on the ground rule". https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Verifiability

That said it's only a guideline, which is deviated from in some cases (like administrative boundaries). I guess some other proof could pass, if it was plausible enough.

StreetComplete doesn't have the interface to resolve the note.

It's just asking the user to add information to a note that has not yet been resolved. It's likely enough that no one has looked at it (and it could be resolved just based on the initial note), but it won't hurt anything to add the information.

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