what should be the source for a place while visiting

source=local knowledge

is for places where you have local knowledge, you live in or lived.

source=survey

for places which have been surveyed.

but what about places you have been visiting. Like while traveling by bus, added some places, POIs. sometimes it is not completely accurate from running vehicle, sometimes it is accurate while it is stopped in traffic signal. both local knowledge and survey don’t fit here. survey means it is surveyed and accurate.

and when you are on a tour. eg: visited a place for tour and added some places. source=survey?

You can use something more specific if you want - for example, there are 31 examples of “survey (view from train)”:

https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/source=survey%20(view%20from%20train)

Thanks, that’s great. that means any value can be used. That solves my confusion. The documentation doesn’t says this clearly so I was confused.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:source says about the tag “Survey” - “The OSM user was there and saw it himself/herself. The OSM user may or may not have done any precision measurement of the location etc. using a device such as a GPS receiver or a theodolite.”

The same wiki page Rassilon linked to also says:

For myself, I no longer add a source=* when editing, I enumerate my source(s) in the change set. And even for local things, I use “survey”. To me “survey” means I’ve been by the location and I’ve seen it. Most likely I was walking around mapping as that is how I do most of my data gathering but I may have been in a car driving by or maybe riding a train. Maybe it was just around the corner from my house (“local knowledge”) or thousands of miles from home. Makes no difference, I passed by there and saw it so “survey” it is.

Generally my edits use a combination of sources: I was there and saw it (survey). But I also had aerial imagery shown on the editor’s background as I edited (Mapbox, Bing, etc.). And I often have gathered GPS tracks to assure good locations and alignment of imagery (gpx).

I do the same too. Even before knowing this, I was always commenting to changeset, prefered it than adding source=* in objects.

But survey source in some cases doesn’t fit even after being there and seeing it. for example: I have collected some Fuel Station, Big Factories big noticeable things etc while running by bus at 60-70 or more kilometer/h speed; logging interval was 2-3 seconds in osmand. so shifting happened here for sure (It is better than nothing, if it is important) . One can doubt here, even after survey such shifting happened. so view from bus or something other than survey is more appropriate here I think. as I know now, no problem adding this :slight_smile:

I’ve just used source=visit if I’ve been to a place and remembered something which was absent in OSM, but I was not actually deliberately collecting information for OSM.

I might use local_knowledge if I know the place better: whether through many visits, knowledge I’ve gained in surveys but not explicitly surveyed (e.g., in many places once you know part of an area well one can infer much more about adjacent places than from imagery alone), or where information is volunteered to me by someone I know well & I know has such local knowledge, and I can ask further questions (e.g., my sister might say a pub has closed).

Andy’s (SomeoneElse) idea of survey/local_knowledge (extra info) is a very good one, which I adopted for various things.

Personally I still find survey tags on elements much more useful than on changesets. The person who uses this information most also finds that useful: i.e., me!