As I was passing through Amsterdam, OSM lied to me several times. I don’t have the tools and means to correct the maps for various complex reasons starting with not having a good Internet connection, but really an Amsterdam local should get involved anyway because I’m not sure of all these problems.

Misinfo:

  • Brouwerij Troost (52.36616°N, 4.87318°E) ← shutdown
  • Manamana (52.35410°N, 4.89033°E) ← apparently shutdown; someone should verify
  • Hecke Electronica (52.35243°N, 4.88725°E) ← shutdown; owner retired. It should be updated to say “/Formerly/ Hecke Electronica” until something replaces it
  • Flower Burger (52.37226°N, 4.88566°E) ← replaced with a /cashless/ croissant shop.
  • CT Coffee & Coconuts (52.35267°N, 4.89150°E) ← replaced with another similar shop. Not sure if other Coffee & Coconuts locations closed or just this one.

Missing info:

  • Bierfabriek Amsterdam (52.37007°N, 4.89375°E) ← cashless¹!
  • Brouwerij De Engel (52.37007°N, 4.89375°E) ← building is rightfully unnamed since the brewery was only there a couple years before bankruptcy. It should be updated to say “/Formerly/ Brouwerij De Engel” so people actually know the brewery is no longer there, until something else is established there.

¹ When a cashless merchant sells alcohol, it’s a trap and an injustice. Having records of alcohol consumption stupid and reckless because it denies consumers their GDPR Art.5 right to data minimisation. And it has consquences. E.g. a scandinavian home buyer was denied a loan because the bank discovered he bought alcohol regularly. Anyway, there will always be dumb consumers who pay for alcohol electronically, but in the very least OSM should mark cashless bars as cashless so wise consumers can easily avoid them. I walked out of my way to visit Bierfabriek only to discover they were cashless. Unlike other cashless bars, they were at least diligent about posting it.

  • activistPnk@slrpnk.netOP
    14·
    1 day ago

    If you just found this few in a city of several million people it means amsterdam is very well mapped, good work local mappers!

    I verified roughly ~15 or so data points during a day visit. So statistically ~8 out of ~15 does not look great for such a heavily travelled city.

    You should leave a note on the openstreetmap website,

    I tried to register there at some point and could not complete the process. I did not note exactly what the issue was but most likely I failed a humanity check, which is usually my problem given my low tolerance for those checks as well.

    You can do this without registration, the barrier of entry is as low as possible deliberately, so those like you can report the problems easily.

    Oh, interesting… good tip! I’ll be making use of that for sure.

    Also don’t call this misinfo, it’s usually simply outdated data.

    Misinfo is the correct term. It’s not just old info, it’s also wrong info.

    • infeeeee@lemm.ee
      4·
      1 day ago

      50% only is very good. Trust me, I have 5000+ edits on osm.

      Local mappers rarely visit tourist places, as they are for tourists mostly, so it would be very very useful if you would add these notes. Shops change there frequently as well, unlike for example shops in villages or residential areas. Last week I surveyed a local restaurant street, and 70-80% of restaurants were outdated, all of them changed owners only in the last 2 years.

      The word misinfo has a connotation that it’s deliberately wrong, which is definitly not the case here. Your post sounds like someone vandalised the map there, which happens a lot of times, but I guess it’s not what happened here.

      As osm is a huge open data project we have to deal with a lot of bad actors, hence the checks, but afaik you can even sign up with a temporary email, but I’m not sure about current limitations, I registered more than a decade ago.