Agreed on all points, but you can "let your fingers do the walking" as the Yellow Pages phone book people said eons ago. I've done this myself and essentially you're letting people on the ground somewhere far away do a survey for you. The last time I did this Google Maps was way out of date, but so was OSM. Now OSM is more up to date than Google - for that spot, for now. If we could only convince people who give their time to Google (for free) to spend a little bit of that energy on OSM, where the data is not held hostage and revealed according to some algorithm. Who can tolerate a map that doesn't show you the same data, first time, every time?

Thanks for your quick reply! @whammo actually checked that and added a fixme over a year ago. I've been working on notes, not fixmes, but saw this POI because I go by there a lot and it suddenly stuck out.

Here's an idea: in validation scans, look for a fixme at the same time and flag it for scrutiny.

I was just having a discussion about OSM's mantra, "Map what's on the ground", which seems to be of more fundamental importance than updating brand info from the NSI, even though that is definitely important. We should first make sure something exists on the ground before taking any time to update its tags. I've been criticizing Google Maps for years about inaccuracies, and if OSM lets this slide, particularly about the existence of something on the ground, then OSM is no better than Google in that area. We have to be better or it's one less thing we have to convince people to use OSM. It's already tough to convince people because OSM doesn't have a satellite view for them (only editors).

Another issue is that the NSI is out of date with some brands (like DXL BIG+TALL and Tesla), and that is causing trouble because people using iD assume iD is correct when it's not always. So they'll do what iD suggests and "Upgrade the tags" when in fact they are out of date.

Qdoba (2650787863) has been closed since 2018: 6 years. Teriyaki Madness came after that & is still in operation. @whammo flagged this in 2024, so @omgitsgela you're editing nonexistent POIs. Please resume doing what your profile says: "None of my edits are mechanical, every object I edit is manually verified for accuracy."

Good flag on Qdoba: this one went away sometime in 2018 and got replaced either late 2018 or early 2019 by Teriyaki Madness.

This is like the white elephant in the corner. Tempting to delete it because it's so wrong, but it can be updated. Maybe break it up into manageable pieces and redraw those to not include all the shops restaurants, hotels, and the cemetery.

The landuse area tagged as "residential" ( way/1348072685) needs way more than minor edits because it's not just residential. Tons of retail in there.

Maybe use JOSM to copy the entire Blue Line to a new layer, then export that layer to a .gpx file so it can be added back - if it even matches whatever gets built. It might be a time-saver in the future. I've been doing that with EV charging stations because someday I want to start mapping them as ways instead of just nodes.

But I'm not in the Austin area, so I'll leave it to the local mappers who know what's on the ground.

I'd support deleting it.

Right, "proposed" should not be mapped, but notes about the proposed stuff could be added to existing POIs. Until something is on the ground, and it could be construction, it's not mappable on OSM.

Ha! Yeah, well, I'm all for tags and keys that are so self-documenting that you don't have to look anything up in the OSM wiki. Of course, people will say, "We've always done it this way," but since OSM is an ever-evolving project, why not improve it by making it easier to use?

Oops, in the changeset comments I meant to say "highway number (41>49)" because it's on Highway 49, though very close to Highway 41.

The comments about "No street sign for this road" apply to the little east-west section between Highlands Ridge Heights and Chapel Hills Drive. Sorry for the confusion.

Thanks! Yikes! Not sure how "reference" got in there because I've been extending "ref" lately for store numbers with "ref:store_number" (taginfo shows 224 uses worldwide, and it's growing). ref by itself is mysterious, so why not name it better?

Just added a description about the bus loop on the service road ( way/580976575 )

Hi again, you were absolutely right! I just called Mountain View High School and they said this was a multi-purpose area. Mainly it's the bus loop (which we might need to tag), but the marching band does practice there. Great info!

Got to run, but back on this later. It's interesting!

OK, in your TX example, Bing Maps aerial imagery shows markings that look like a duplicate of a football field, with circles for band movement. I see some similar markings on the asphalt at Highlands Ranch.

Yep, they're both asphalt with parking lot lines (and a few cars), but they probably rope or cone it off before band practice. What piqued my interest was the green rendering, so I was expecting to see grass/dirt. I think a phone call to the high school would answer the question. :)

Online references are easier to check than having to go to the library.