[jnpnj]

Are there other similar apps to stimulate soft "crowdfixing" ? I'm sure there are plenty of other aspect of society that would benefit from a light way to know where someone can contribute or notify so other can fix things (forest dumps, random trash). Homeostatic apps to ensure our surroundings are close to a good state :]

[matsemann]

I upload street view pictures to Mapillary, which again can be used to automatically infer info into OSM (like signs etc)

But I feel very few OSM mapping apps use street view / have it as a feature. But for me it's the main feature I use Google Maps for. Like checking road conditions or finding nice places to camp when bikepacking. Which is why I also upload my stuff to Google (cars can't access most of these areas), but I'd prefer open alternatives.

[jacobajit]

This is a big underutilized dataset for mapping features, eg. parking restrictions on a given street or building entrances. With something like Gemini Flash, it's cheap to systematically extract map features from that imagery. Surprised that even Google doesn't extract much useful street view information into their maps.

[jraph]

Check out panoramax if you don't know about it already.

https://panoramax.fr/

[matsemann]

Thanks! Did look at it a while back, and currently no instance where I can provide my street views, unfortunately. Hopefully more instances will come soon. And also hope that more mapping apps will use this data, it's a chicken&egg problem I guess.

[ivanjermakov]

> forest dumps, random trash

Likely you can report such occasions to local authorities via online form. Of course every city/county would have their own.

[macintux]

My city had a very vanilla, but very useful mobile app for submitting problems like missed trash pickup or dead traffic lights.

Someone apparently decided it needed to be "more modern", making it nearly unusable for quick reports like traffic light problems while I was stopped at the light. Every page was a separate request to a server, slow JS, etc.

They've since improved the flow and performance, but it still asks me for contact information before I can submit it. Fortunately they haven't started server-side validations yet, so I can still submit bogus info.

Just let me tell you your traffic light is out! Why is this so hard?

[jnpnj]

ah yeah pretty common and pretty annoying.. either they had to avoid false issues or maybe there was a regulation forcing the use of a more beefy system (or maybe someone thought it's "better" to use the latest shiny thing)

[ivanjermakov]

They likely provide plain email you could write to instead.

[jnpnj]

That is true, that said reporting is not the same (imo) as having a global map of problems and proposals to fix some of them. To me it's a lot more engaging (again, imo) as you see the distance to a goal.

[ivanjermakov]

Local authorities might not be happy with civilians painting curbs, fixing potholes, installing road signs. Or I'm not sure what kind of problem we're talking about.

[jnpnj]

Fair point, I wasn't thinking about making everybody a civil engineer but you can clean some walkway, fix a simple bolt, a bench. that sort of thing.

[marking-time]

hmmmm .... this prompted me to visit google street view in an area I lived in for 5+ years. When I was there it was a homeless haven. Hundreds of tents and hundreds of people lived there. Now when I go back and look at all the old photo dates, all the homeless have disappeared, as if they were never there. But the homeless were there when I was there.

It's easy to blame Google, but then again they kept a record of what they did and you can see it for yourself.