OpenStreetMap
As explained in this french diary entry I left a bunch of notes, took a bunch of traces while visiting Mongolia in July. The main reason, was that I was playing with StreetComplete and firing Vespucci would have annoyed my wife adding notes was easier. So I left notes, for later. Today I decided to start editing based on my memory and some of the notes. While editing, I saw a very high number of these in the center of UB.
Many are old, and the imagery is old. Is there a process to clean up notes? Are there people willing to spend time taking these notes and making the edits that for some are probably needed?
Discussion
Comment from rompe on 5 August 2026 at 08:48
My observation is that people tend to start cleaning in their own area first, so if no active contributors are located in an area, notes are getting stale there.
Maybe we should start working on totally random notes, no matter where they are. On the other hand, some local knowledge can really help, so I’d probably hesitate to work on places I’ve never been to.
Comment from Lejun on 6 August 2026 at 04:31
Using JOSM with the noteSolver plugin and NotesReview, it was quite a breeze to go through simple to skim simple notes (either useless or quick to map). I think I’ll stop here for the time being.
As @rompe said, there isn’t any good solution really, one would need to have Ulaanbaatar on its own watchlist for the situation to not decay has it has. The high POI density due to company offices and high-rises scattered all around makes it a pain to review though. Some notes aim to point to POIs which may or may not have replaced others. There’s also the language barrier as most of the notes have some local quirks difficult to translate or interpret. I’m especially dumbfounded by the sheer amount of supermarkets mapped. Pretty sure those are wrong tags but can’t be sure of it. Anybody wanna offer me the travel fare?
Comment from DeBigC on 6 August 2026 at 14:39
Lately I have seen mappers say that they have no virtual source of imagery/information capable of resolving the note and so close it. If that happens you get an alert and so a chance to test your memory. Maybe your notes need to be more focussed on tagging - just a suggestion.
Comment from lhirlimann on 6 August 2026 at 14:57
@deBigc I leave images with my comments. y remarks were mostly aimed at the bunch of empty comments/notes.
Maybe I’ll start closing some.