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Hey!

I regularly find geometry in the map that has problems. How do I submit this geometry problem to get fixed by 'bot? I realize someone has to write code to fix it, but if they don't know about the problems, how will it ever get fixed?

For instance:

These are all fixable problems but I don't know how to write the bots to fix them. Where do I submit these issues?

asked 10 Jul '10, 21:55

jharvey's gravatar image

jharvey
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accept rate: 0%


I doubt any user would intentionally introduce such an error. Its most likely an editor issue. To reduce errors like these to appear in the first place, it could be worth investigating how it happened. In the case with way 23119666, you can see by the history that the error was introduced using the potlatch editor. Potlatch has as a "smoothing" function for straight roads and circles when you press 'T'. If you try to "smooth" a concave (shape of C) closed way, the function takes a 'crazy pill' and attempts to rectify this by creating "extra" loops of nodes. The bug has already been submitted to trac.

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answered 11 Jul '10, 21:39

gormur's gravatar image

gormur
10013
accept rate: 50%

edited 20 Feb '11, 16:56

emj's gravatar image

emj
2.0k123547

12

the problems you discovered are quite easy to detect by a computer. Sites like http://keepright.ipax.at/ or the http://tools.geofabrik.de/osmi/ help to detect those problems.

Writing a bot is a lot more difficult. There is no 100% right way for example to fix a self-intersecting way. Sometimes a node might have moved by accident. Other times the user connected ways that should not be connected. It needs a human to review these issues and choose the appropriate fix.

What you should do is to open these places in your editor and fix them (as long as it's obvious what is wrong).

In case you can't fix the situation without knowing the place in reality, then don't fix it.

You could file a report with OpenStreetBugs, but as other users can also use keepright or OSM Inspector it's not needed to duplicate the problem report. Just wait some time. That's how OSM is working, some user passes by that problem, knowing the situation and fixes it.

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answered 11 Jul '10, 20:37

Stephan%20Knauss's gravatar image

Stephan Knauss
4501311
accept rate: 0%

14

Automated edits have a great potential to screw things up very fast and very thoroughly. Therefore bots are not universally liked in the community. At the moment issues like the ones you present are mostly handled by websites finding and listing such errors and giving mappers easy access to them to fix them manually.

On the other hand, simpler mistakes like trailing or leading whitespace are fixed by bots. When ever a new bot is created it should be extensively tested against the API on the development server and the bot should be announced on suitable mailing lists as well as documented in the wiki.

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answered 10 Jul '10, 22:02

petschge's gravatar image

petschge
8.3k217398
accept rate: 21%

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question asked: 10 Jul '10, 21:55

question was seen: 5,576 times

last updated: 20 Feb '11, 16:56

NOTICE: help.openstreetmap.org is no longer in use from 1st March 2024. Please use the OpenStreetMap Community Forum