MapComplete

Let a thousand flowers bloom

MapComplete attempts to be a webversion crossover of StreetComplete and MapContrib. It tries to be just as easy to use as StreetComplete, but it allows to focus on one single theme per instance (e.g. nature, bicycle infrastructure, ...)

The design goals of MapComplete are to be:

Easy to use, both on web and on mobile
Easy to deploy (by not having a backand)
Easy to set up a custom theme
Easy to fall down the rabbit hole of OSM

The basic functionality is to download some map features from Overpass and then ask certain questions. An answer is sent back to directly to OpenStreetMap.

Furthermore, it shows images present in the image tag or, if a wikidata or wikimedia_commons-tag is present, it follows those to get these images too.

An explicit non-goal of MapComplete is to modify geometries of ways. Although adding a point to a way or splitting a way in two parts might be added one day.

Examples

Buurtnatuur.be, developed for the Belgian Green party. They also funded the initial development!
Cyclofix, further development on Open Summer of Code funded by Brussels Mobility. Landing page at https://cyclofix.osm.be/
Bookcases cause I like to collect them.
Map of Maps, after a tweet

Have a theme idea? Drop it in the issues

User journey

MapComplete is set up to lure people into OpenStreetMap and to teach them while they are on the go, step by step.

A typical user journey would be:

Oh, this is a cool map of my specific interest! There is a lot of data already... 0a) The user might discover the explanation about OSM in the dedicated tab page 0b) The user might discover the other themes in the other tab 0c) The user might share the map and/or embed it
The user clicks that big tempting button 'login' in order to answer questions. The user makes an account - a big step.
The user answers a question! Hooray! When at least one question is answered (aka: having one changeset on OSM), adding a new point is unlocked
The user adds a new POI somewhere 3a) Note that all messages must be read before being able to add a point. In other words, sending a message to a misbehaving MapComplete user acts as having a zero-minutes-block. This is added deliberately to avoid new users fucking up too much
At 50 changesets, the custom layout becomes available
At 200 changesets, the tags become visible when answering questions and when adding a new point from a preset. This is to give more control to power users and to teach new users the tagging scheme
At 250 changesets, the tags get linked to the wiki
At 500 changesets, I expect users to be power users and to be comfortable with tagging scheme and such. The custom theme generator is unlocked.

License

GPL + pingback.

I love it to see where the project ends up. You are free to reuse the software (under GPL) but, when you have made your own change and are using it, I would like to know about it. Drop me a line, give a pingback in the issues, ...

Dev

To develop:

Install npm.
Run npm install to install the dependencies
Run npm run start to build and host a local testversion

To deploy:

rm -rf dist/ to remove the local build
npm run build
copy the entire dist folder to where you host your website. Visiting index.html gives you the website

Architecture

High-level overview

The website is purely static. This means that there is no database here, nor one is needed as all the data is kept in OpenStreetMap or Wikimedia (for images).

When viewing, the data is loaded from overpass. The data is then converted (in the browser) to geojson, which is rendered by Leaflet.

When a map feature is clicked, a popup shows the information, images and questions that are relevant for that object. The answers given by the user are sent (after a few seconds) to OpenStreetMap directly - if the user is logged in. If not logged in, the user is prompted to do so.

The UI-event-source is a class where the entire system is built upon, it acts as an observable object: another object can register for changes to update when needed.

Searching images

Images are fetched from:

The OSM image, image:0, image:1, ... tags
The OSM wikimedia_commons tags
If wikidata is present, the wikidata P18 (image) claim and, if a commons link is present, the commons images

Uploading images

Images are uplaoded to imgur, as their API was way easier to handle. The URL is written into the changes

The idea is that one in a while, the images are transfered to wikipedia

Privacy

Privacy is important, we try to leak as little information as possible. All major personal information is handled by OSM. Geolocation is available on mobile only throught hte device's GPS location (so no geolocation is sent of to google)

TODO: erase cookies of third party websites and API's