For instance, the other day I was looking for a functionality to upload photos (with their coordinates from EXIF) from various places, but it was impossible. In general, contributing to the project seemed all too complicated for others than diehard devotees.
Regarding ease of contribution... I knew exactly nothing about mapping a few months ago. I saw the recent OSM birthday news and decided I should start contributing. Someone here on HN recommended Street Complete so I just downloaded that. It was really easy to contribute data using that app, it asks you stuff and you just add the missing information or confirm that it's correct. Added lots of local information for my city and neghborhood.
Eventually I noticed some roads were wrong and downloaded Vespucci to fix them. Turned out to be surprisingly easy once I learned about ways. Just pick up a few dots and move them, maybe add some new dots. Then I figured I should probably add my house to the map. Then why not add my neighbors as well? Wait, I'm using the satellite imagery as a reference to trace the buildings. Are the streets even aligned with the images to begin with? I figure I should get some GPS traces to verify. Wow, I always thought GPS and its 3 meter precision were impressive but it's actually not good enough for this purpose. Looks like I can set up a differential GPS system with a base station at a precisely known position, what a cool project. Expensive though. Oh look, new Android phones provide access to raw GPS pseudoranges which is just what I need to differentiate GPS fixes. They even have L5 GPS, sweet. I should try making an app for that when my new phone arrives. Maybe I can repurpose my old one into a GPS base station so I can compute GPS traces with centimeter precision. Meanwhile, I'll just average the results with JOSM. Man, JOSM is such a nice editor. Free software, works on Linux. I should learn all of its features.
Now, you piqued my curiosity with your mention of newer Android phones. Are they RTK-capable? Do you have a few good references on that? There are collaborative RTK networks such as https://centipede.fr/ which could be very useful in combination with that.
Androids version 10 and above have support for raw GNSS measurements, they provide access to the pseudoranges and lots more. They suddenly became the most convenient platform for accessing raw GNSS data given the proprietary mess that is the GNSS receiver market. We can also turn off the battery saving GNSS chipset duty cycling and have it continuously track the satellites, improving accuracy.
Right now there seems to be no Android RTK app but I want to try making one. Perhaps I can post process the GPS traces if I can't achieve real time.
Resources I've found and collected on the subject:
https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/sensors/gnss.html
https://developer.android.com/reference/android/location/Gns...
https://barbeau.medium.com/gnss-interrupted-the-hidden-andro...
https://www.johnsonmitchelld.com/2021/03/14/least-squares-gp...
https://www.euspa.europa.eu/system/files/reports/gnss_raw_me...
The "Improve Accuracy" tool in JOSM is amazing. Check it out if you are not using it already.
https://josm.openstreetmap.de/wiki/Help/Action/ImproveWayAcc...
Seems really useful, I'll try it.
So not if your bus or tram is leaving in two minutes, but many other time tables are there.
The notation is horrible though. It's a hodgepodge DSL, that's almost a programming language crammed into a text field.
But contributing to OSM is definitely not inherently complicated: the StreetComplete app has been around for years and lets any ordinary phone owner add details with just a few taps, in an environment much like a computer game. It is true that powerful editors like JOSM or Vespucci have a steeper learning curve, but since changes to OSM immediately go live and e.g. deleting a highway by mistake would be bad, you want some level of friction.