As the title states. I really want to like and use open source maps, but it seems that whatever database they are pulling from is pretty bad and incomplete overall. You also have to put the exact name, as it is in the system, otherwise it will not come up.
Just to use a really simple and well known example, after downloading the appropriate maps for this search, if I search for “the liberty bell”, the first four results are either roads or businesses near me, then the liberty bell museum in Allentown (which btw is permanently closed), and then the liberty bell center, then the liberty bell center again for some reason, and then finally the actual liberty bell itself. There are also suggestions down the list that no longer exist, such as the liberty bell pavilion. So this is clearly outdated data that is being used.
The suggested searches are also nonsense, only taking the last word into account, i.e suggesting “belles ave”, “bellgrove rd”, etc, rather than “liberty bell center”, which would be the most logical suggestion for that search.
Why is this so bad, and what needs to happen to make it better?
Just to confirm #1: moved to another city, and pretty much any address within the city is now searchable and correct. POIs are a bit off, but I try to update them.
Some places publish address data with a compatible license, some even directly importable to osm. But e.g. here where I live, we got an official address list for each residential addresses (no offices, factories, etc.), but without coordinates. So we can only use it to check if we still have to survey something.
The biggest open address db I know of is openaddresses, you can see on their coverage page it’s a hit or miss if they have data: https://batch.openaddresses.io/data#map=0%2F0%2F0
Another address source list is on the Overture maps attribution page, you can see in some places they don’t even have country wide sources, they had to ask from city level governments: https://docs.overturemaps.org/attribution/
Openaddresses shows my county as green, but my area only has block-level addresses in OpenStreetMap. What’s up with that?
They may only have that block level addresses. Or simply no one imported that data to osm yet. Or maybe its license is not compatible with ODbL, the license of OSM. There may be a lot of reasons, the easiest was to know it is to contact local mappers and ask them, you can find your local community here: https://openstreetmap.community/
You know, that’s like the third time I’ve been given that exact advice. I just really don’t want to make a whole new account on Slack or whatever just to talk to OSM people.
Use the forum then, you don’t have to register, you can login with your OSM account: https://community.openstreetmap.org/c/communities/us Most top mappers usually follow multiple channels.