The Notes feature available on the OSM home page is a great way to encourage non-mappers to add comments and point our errors and omissions (it’s also a great method for mappers too!)
BUT …. now all the extant OpenStreetBugs Notes have migrated over , some of which are YEARS old, it’s all getting a bit crowded and hard to differentiate new notes.
I like to view new notes and try to encourage those who have added them to add more by either amending the map where it’s obvious what’s needed or I know the area; doing a ground survey if it’s close or adding a comment where the note is not clear. The encouragement only works if the note is acted on quickly.
So I have a proposal whereby notes are differentiated by age, gradually fading in colour as they age until they turn white , (much like us really!)
So for example new notes get a bright colour on the day they’re created, then fade at week, month, 3 month, 6 month old until they become white after a year. I’m sure that to those who code such things this is not a major task
xkomczax
Good idea! Maybe there can be even filter in some “pro” settings where every single user can highlight/hide specific notes (older than *, made by *, …).
At the moment the only option I know is the RSS feed for notes – http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Notes#RSS_feed
nebulon42
+1
RobJN
Great idea Brian. One of the reasons why mapdust.com became unusable was because it became swamped with map bugs/notes. Many weren’t revelant (and actually related to the smartphone routing App that made it so easy to create a new note) and a “fade to white” as you have propsed would have been a huge benefit. Hopefully one of the OpenStreetMap devs will agree 🙂