Enable "Note to self" #1992
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What is wrong with making a public note? It is ok to make note that you plan to resolve - it just needs to be clear what is reported as the issue, what at least in my experience is not s big burden. What kind of notes you typically make? For example this is my typical note - short ("building"), but clear and about something that will be better mapped from aerial image but not done with Vespucci due to some limits https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/2288660 |
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There could be various reasons for not wanting a note to be public: privacy, not wanting to bother others, language issues (I'm a Dutchman in Bulgaria, so should I write the public note in Bulgarian which I don't master, in English, or in Dutch (easiest for me)?). If a note is private, I don't need to describe it so it is clear to others, which lowers the threshold to make one. Most of my notes would be about mistakes I found and how to correct them. I tried Vespucci a few years ago but found it quite difficult to make edits on a small screen. |
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Maybe as a checkbox on the note creation, or extra button next to "OK" |
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I make POIs in osmand as a todo list. |
Yes. I asked for this because I guessed it wouldn't be very difficult to make the upload of the note to OSM optional. It could stay saved in the app on the user's phone, and be deletable afterwards. |
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But we need an interface to find them later even if the location is far away. |
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Maybe by providing a way to export the created notes in a GPX/GeoJSON file. The generated file could then be viewed using the software of your choice, I could also imagine to add the corresponding functionality to NotesReview in order to have an easy way to resolve your own private notes... |
"We"don't need to, it can be left to the memory of the user to remember where he took his private notes. ENT8R's suggestion sound complicated: I don't think a user should be bothered to need additional software to read his private notes. Streetcomplete's strength is its simplicity. |
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I had the same idea some weeks ago - typing in a long note on a smartphone keyboard isn't really fun, so I often wished there were a possibility to leave a private note where I could use my personal abbreviations for "this item doesn't exist anymore", "the name of this POI has changed" or "cannot determine if this way is lit, come back at a later time when it's dark". In addition to the checkbox/button to mark a note as private at creation time (this probably needs an explanation in the UI!): The publicly visible and private notes should be easy to distinguish on the SC map... what about simply giving the question mark icon a different colour (orange? pink?) if it's a private note? If the user taps on a private note he should be able to delete it. The cycling cat |
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It would already help if a user could see his own notes in Streetcomplete... |
Can you explain the use case for that? |
See above for the use case of "note to self". I did start using the notes feature even though I don't feel the need to share them with others, but noticed I can't see my own notes in Streetcomplete (it's now a note to "everybody except self"). Since it's also not possible to see my notes in OSM (ID) while editing (on my desktop), it would help if I could see those notes in Streetcomplete on my GSM |
With iD and josm you are able to view you/all notes while editing. |
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Very early in my StreetComplete use, I tried to map a polygon for a very new map location (i.e. not visible on satellite images yet). I did this by leaving myself a note at each vertex of the polygon, but I felt really dumb when I realized later that those notes are visible to everyone forever. |
I feel such option it would overly complicate interface (as noted above), and lead to private notes that never gets resolved as they get forgotten about or not found. Personally, I just use public Notes, even if it is not in native language of the country in question. Then I have all the more incentive to solve such notes quickly before questions start coming in asking me to comment if they were too brief or only make sense to me (which has additional benefit that the circumstances are still fresh in my mind). Or if it happens that I won't be able to solve them soon or without resurveying etc, I comment on them when on computer (that time in English and with more detail - even if I happen to be the one resolving it, the crystal clear details of short note I took today become more hazy as days and week pass!) And I not see any issue with privacy for OSM Notes because:
Also I periodically use https://my-notes.osm-hr.org/ to find all of my notes that I have not yet resolved (especially if they are scattered across space and time). As one will forget and/miss/lose track of some of them.
So are mine. Public OSM Notes work great for that purpose. If you like to save others some time, you can prefix them with |
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Hi there, I just stumbled upon one more argument pro private notes: The OSM wiki clearly writes in the "Don't"s box on the right side: "Don't use notes for yourself in a way which is useless to others. Although you can use notes as a reminder to yourself, you are also inviting others to look at it. Descriptions must make sense to other people." (This afternoon I came across the next real use case for private notes: In a town nearby I got many quests related to bus stops and alarmingly many of them were placed at wrong positions, up to 200 metres away from reality! (Maybe they have been moved since the initial mapping 10 years ago and noone has moved the OSM node.) So I left many notes like "Bus stop is now here", but an abbreviation only visible to myself would have been handy as I could for example define "#B" as "Bus stop is now here" without confusing other mappers with my personal self-invented cryptic code.) The cycling cat |
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@cyclingcat Perhaps you could just write "bus" which is not much longer than "#B" (actually, on US keyboard, it is even one keypress less!), which would be equally informative to you (as you would remember that you meant that the bus stop is here), but will also provide information to others in case you do not quickly solve the bug and someone else decides to. Main problem I see with this "private note" suggestion is not that of simple checkbox private/public (which might occasionally get wrongly marked, but that is minor problem), but a lot of the additional work needed to actually allow user to solve that private notes. As they are private, you cannot upload them as Notes to OSM servers; so you would have to connect phone and your computer, have a function in SC for preparing the data for transfer on phone, then transfer the data, and on desktop have an importer program for your desktop editor of choice (iD, JOSM, ... - probably separate for each editor), and then have a separate program/feature to track which of the private notes you have not yet solved, etc... (or alternatively you need to upload to separate service, that you need to create first, make it work with login/SSO etc) -- all of which is completely avoided by using public Notes instead! Perhaps it would be better to just use smart keyboard on your phone with allows for use of macros or autocorrect feature to change short strings to long ones? That would give you best of all worlds - then you could you just type a shortcut and have it translated to full text which is also meaningful for other users and not only yourself, you would be able to understand it even months after being created (instead of just days probably) and you'd automatically without any work have instant support in all desktop editing programs you might wish to use, and you could use that same once-create-use-many-times functionality not only in StreetComplete but also in all other apps on mobile phone (OsmAnd, Vespucci etc.) |
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@mnalis: Perhaps my example was a little too simple: Indeed, this use case could be handled by some kind of macros (and the pound character would be a bad choice for the reason you mentioned, so just omit it, a pure "b" would be sufficient in my bus stop example). But what about more complex situations which need more specific information in their notes? In my almost daily use of SC during the past weeks I came across the following situations where I wanted to leave a note but refrained from it because I neither wanted to write a long text on the smartphone touchscreen nor clutter the notes with my personal abbreviations. Some examples, taken directly from my practical experience during the past weeks:
And so on... but maybe it's just a matter of personal taste, mindset and workflow. Mine would be: "Leave (cryptic) private notes on-site, start JOSM later at home with the phone lying beside my PC keyboard, find the notes on the phone and fix the tags in JOSM. Of course the possibility to get a list of the private notes with the possibility to jump to the geographic position would be handy. (Don't know if this is feasible with reasonable effort though, this falls definitely into the category "nice to have".) Fun fact: If I decide to leave a note (often of type "This object doesn't exist anymore") it's sometimes already fixed by another mapper when I come home! There is a VERY active mapping community here and one or two people seem to concentrate on cleaning up behind me 😃. (But what would these poor mappers do if they came across notes like "not" or "x" as I would abbreviate it?) The cycling cat |
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What about suggesting previously submitted note texts when writing a new note? Together with a photo of the stairs/shop/etc., you could use the same non-cryptic text again and again: "This road is actually stairs.", "This shop is not here anymore.", etc. |
This is done already by keyboard word suggestions/predictions (at least for me it works fairly reliably if I type the same note text multiple times). |
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I don't personally need this feature, but as far as implementation goes,
I think the best compromise would be to simply add a way to share a list of all notes via the normal Android share menu. Then there are a number of ways to get that information to your computer -- email to yourself, share via http, etc. |
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I don't think there is a need to move the notes anywhere, like @cyclingcat I'd just have my phone next to my desktop when I'm back home and make an edit in ID based on the note, and then delete it on the phone. If I'm late following up on the note so I don't remember what it was about, I'll have to go back to the location and look again. That is only my problem and nobody else's. Keep it simple please! |
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@cyclingcat Here is what I would do in your examples:
As for the others solving your Notes, I do not know if you consider that positive or negative experience - if you find it positive, than you should be even more inclined to provide non-cryptic Notes so others may fix them. If you instead prefer to hone your JOSM skills (instead of others doing half your intended homework by the time you got back home), then you could disable auto-upload, and upload only when you get home and are ready to start editing the map. |
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@rhhsm & @cyclingcat & others - how would you envision that Here is my take: If private notes were implemented, I guess they'd probably be just like the public Notes but in different color or something similar. Adding them could be as simple as having checkbox But after getting home, for them to be usable for me, I'd first need to find my private notes, for which I'd need at last a visible track where I've been or simple way to switch showing only private Notes and back showing all selected quests or have some special menu item in StreetComplete which would show only private notes, so they wouldn't be lost in forest of other quests. Then, I'd need to edit the map. From what I understand, you'd both prefer just to look at the phone and try to locate the same location in And finally, I'd need to remove resolved private Notes from phone, but leave the ones I have not resolved for later. So probably easiest would be so each private Note when clicked would have an option to delete it. How do others think process should work from beginning to end? What would work for you, and what wouldn't? |
@smichel17 Yes, It was behaving that way in for me too SC On second look, it does indeed look like #1901 might not solve 100% of all such quest dependencies... But as main issue here seems to be that there is so much problems on-site that one has to resort to cryptic single-letter notes, probably the single mapper wouldn't be able to solve 100% of them in one go anyway. |
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As I understand it, multi-download:
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Agree
No, I'd expect to have no more than 5-10 notes for a survey trip. I think I'll easily remember where I've been, so I'll know in which area to look for them. It would be nice to show the private notes in a similar way to the public notes now, i.e. together with the normal quests but standing out because of a noticeable colour, and preferably on top of any other quest so they are always selectable.
I don't think there will be many errors: it's the responsibility of the mapper to take good notes and photos so the edits will be accurate. I'd use private notes mostly to note errors, so I'm sure more errors will be removed than created. If the note isn't clear enough when being home, the mapper might need to go back and check again but that's the mapper's problem, no one else's. Same for being time consuming: so be it, but to have private notes as an option is better than having only public notes. Anyone is free to use them or not. It would help if the GPS position of the user at the moment the note is created is added to it.
Of course a private note needs a delete or close button to remove it. |
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Thanks for feedback @rhhsm:
OK. In my case, trips are mostly cycling (half of full day long), and often on the order of about 50-100km, with at last 50-200 notes due to old/nonupdated data, and I rarely know where I've been exactly - I often just follow whereever biggest bunches of unsolved quests are :) (interestingly, even with much shorter trips of just several km walking, I also create few dozen notes - as the area is much more dense with more unsolved quests and issues).
That would need some quest priority mechanism for showing quests; I do not know if such option exists technically in tangrem-es? Currently, if there are more than 1 quest in certain radius, all other quests but (random?) one will lose their icons and become simple small circle or disappear. So unless you solved all the quests around your private notes (and no new ones pop up in the meantime), there is chance some or all of your private notes wouldn't be visible at all unless such priority option exists and is implemented (or you turn off all other quests as suggested before).
I agree with you there that people need not use the feature they don't find very useful (and for me it might be useful if it exported GPX with waypoints, but not if I'd have to go full-manual on it). I just worry if private notes might be (much) more work than first look shows...
When you press on the map it should be near your GPS position (if you use follow mode)... Are you proposing that both the note location and user location (at the time of taking note) be recorded somehow? How do you propose to show that data (eg. graphically as arrow pointing from user location to note location, or just as textual
Agree. I just mentioned it, as some other programs do it other ways: for example KeypadMapper3 (which was my favorite for mapping addresses before StreetComplete 25.1 came out) only offers "delete all items in database" option, which I do not think would be a good match here. |
I feel like this is a minority opinion. A good note is obvious enough to anyone and can facilitate ad-hoc live-comapping. I've added notes that were solved before I got out of the field before. |
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Like @joepie91 I too recognize the issue of the Dutch 🇳🇱 mappers being on top of things. Sometimes I make notes which has some public value, and which I intend to fix later that day. It has occurred that even before I get home my notes are already commented 💬, critiqued 👎 or closed ❌. it is frustrating to the person staying on top of things who is somewhat bombarded with notes, and it is frustrating to me because I get into a discussion on the notes and I have wasted somebodies time. Yet I still take notes sometimes to convey information from the scene which could also be modified by looking at satellite imagery. Info button with explanationMaybe StreetComplete can have a popup or some info button So maybe it should say something like: "Please don't use notes as a way of mapping features that cannot be mapped using StreetComplete. Please consider using a different application if you want to change or add elements. And if you choose not map it yourself, don't expect others to do it for you, and stick to the tagging options of StreetComplete." Referring to other solutions.I myself work around the issue by tacking screenshots of locations I intend to fix at a later stage. But that is not a good solution I think. Other apps: Maybe StreetComplete can have a text in the notes interface that for private notes you can use another app. We can link suggestions like the OSM Tracker for Android or the more advanced Vespucci. Share a geo link: Thinking about it now, you could also have a 'share coordinates' option where a text with coordinates and a related OSM link is generated, which can be shared in plaintext to be put in any kind of note taking apps to the liking of the user. |
When you long press on a location you can actually already choose “Open with another app”, which may work like this if you can choose a text editor or so… Nevertheless, about your use case:
Yeah, okay, I see that this is not a good experience. As such my suggestion would be (if possible somehow): Hide the notes from public users (i.e. others than yourself) on OpenStreetMap for a certain time, e.g. 5h (maybe adjustable in the settings). This way, if you get home after your mapping trip, you have enough time to solve all notes, but if you forget some they will be (made) public and the community can solve them. I know technically this may not be possible yet, but take it as some UX “drafting” process. IMHO this would solve your use case best while keeping the other advantages. |
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I wonder if this would be better proposed as an upstream feature. As I understand it, notes are already a separate api, layered on top of the base OSM data. If that api supported a "note to self" flag, then the SC implementation of this feature would be much simpler, and the Dutch mappers (and others who stay on top of such things) would be able to easily filter out these notes. |
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@rugk I agree with @smichel17 here, such feature to hide notes from public users would need to be implemented on OSM servers side to be effective, not in SC side (or you would have to have SC as foreground app for 5+ hours in order for notes to be uploaded, and it wouldn't work in manual update mode anyway etc.) As for everybody interested in this issue, I've updated discussion page at #2559 and it indeed seems that (as @smichel17 noted) that And As for @nicorikken - SC already has |
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Thanks for all the explanations, I can make that work for me. |
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Search term: local notes |
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Also related: GPX notes in https://github.com/Helium314/StreetComplete/tree/mods fork mentioned at #3003 (reply in thread) are a proof-of-concept variant of private/local notes, for people interested to try it out. |
Here is one use case:
Of course, showing the user's own notes could be optional and off by default, as with notes that are not phrased as questions. |
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If you are last one to comment, the note will be shown to you
Am 18. August 2021 21:26:58 MESZ schrieb "Jonathan Neuschäfer" ***@***.***>:
…> > It would already help if a user could see his own notes in
Streetcomplete...
>
> Can you explain the use case for that?
Here is one use case:
- I open a note
- Discussion ensues and we (the OSM community) decide that more
information should be gathered
- I want to revisit the note in order to add a comment with the missing
information
Of course, showing the user's own notes could be optional and off by
default, as with notes that are not phrased as questions.
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should have probably been:
@neuschaefer And if you want to force so that it is shown to you even when you were last to comment, you can add text (Or, as a hack, in StreetComplete go to |
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Addressing the OP concept: I would suggest using a separate app. To me, such a feature seems like bloating of SC. Adding data to SC, which isn't uploaded to OSM, only to be deleted later. That seems outside of SC's scope / purpose. Other apps already implement this behaviour / feature (e.g. marking favourite locations (‘geobookmarks’)). Else, use a more generic editor and add a note:* or fixme to the element in question. I also find that simply taking photos (stored on the device, not attached to an OSM note) works well as reminders. Geolocated by the ExIF metadata, and showing the real-world object that requires non-trivial mapping. |
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I currently usually run OSMTracker just for leaving little notes that I know I can fix myself but not through streetcomplete. Personally all I'd want from this feature is a button to add a note to self at a location and then a menu to go through existing ones. |
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Any update on the 'Note to self' / 'Personal notes' feature request? I would love to see this feature added to StreetComplete. Thanks in advance! |
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I needed to make personal notes because I could not add knots directly. So I often http://vespucci.io/ open at the same time. I think what people don't understand is that SC is not an editor. I think it's a pity that it doesn't do that because the interface is really nice. |
Hm, SC is definitely an editor - it edits OSM data directly. It is just not a general purpose editor, but a very specific one which only does some things (but does them easily and quickly, simpler and faster then general purpose editors like Vespucci)
For those interested in not publicly uploading their Notes/photos, this feature for local (private) Notes with pictures have been implemented in SCEE fork of StreetComplete. |
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The last weeks I noticed a few new OSM-mappers which are using StreetComplete and opened DOZENS of public notes each day. And to be clear: This aren't notes as they should be used: to report an error in the data and ask OTHER mappers for help or their opinion. No - they have been just used as private reminders, to fix some SC-question at home. This is not what OSM-Notes are for: "Dont' use them just as private reminders": https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Notes This behaviour of StreetComplete is really dissappointing, cause the map is cluttered by such private notes, and complicates locating the "real" notes adressing other mappers. I already wrote to such newbies, and in general they answer: They didn't know about this fact and would be happy if a "reminder" function within SC would exist. Please introduce this feature "private notes", to make SC users being able to create such reminder-notes which are just stored on their local phone. |
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(ref.: @ppete2 complaint is also crossposted at #2559 (comment), where there is more discussion, so answers show preferably go there - ideally there is only one place when one subject is being discussed) |
I often find during surveying that I'd like to make a note on the map just for myself, as a reminder of what I see and what the problem is so that I can make an edit on OSM when I get home. Of course it's already possible to make a note, but it will get uploaded to OSM, which is too "heavy" for my purpose most of the time (it will be for everybody to see, can be resolved and then reactivated, etc.). Would it be possible to make it optional to upload the note to OSM, or just keep it private in the app (on the phone of the user only)?
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