Usage of OSM-FR Panoramax server

[fizwidget]

Hi, just thought I’d raise awareness of this post on the OSM community forum in case it hasn’t already been seen:

https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/osm-fr-panoramax-server-only-for-testing-if-outside-of-france/143428

Unless I’m mistaken Go Map!! uploads all images to this instance?

(I’m not associated with OSM FR, just a random Go Map!! user that browses the community forum 😄)

[bryceco]

Yeah I saw that as well. Since the number of uploads from Go Map!! is tiny compared to typical uploads it's a low priority at the moment. I'm open to suggestions for other instances to use.

[JLZIMMERMANN]

Such pictures from Gomap! are welcome because a picture taken with a réal patience is high level quality.

[bryceco]

The fear is that a future geofence will block uploads outside of France. If that fence excluded single image sequences that would be ideal.

[JLZIMMERMANN]

I have asked directly in french OSM forum.

[cquest]

A much better option would allow to select on which instance you want to upload your pictures.

GoMap can get an up-to-date list from the metacatalog at https://api.panoramax.xyz/api/instances

[bryceco]

I agree that having the user select the instance is an option, but there are some downsides:

• Panoramax is not a well-known project and most users won't have good instinct on how to pick an instance, and will be confused by the choices.
• most of the instances are geared towards specific geographic areas, but the instances in total cover only a small portion of the earth. If you're a user in Mexico which instance would you choose?
• I travel a lot. There's a small instance that covers the US state I live in, but if I go to California or outside the US my uploads will start failing and I will have to create a new account on a new instance. That's confusing and annoying to users.
• the few instances that accept photos worldwide (e.g. "At Mathias house") sound like hobby projects that might be abandoned some day, which complicates the decision of how to pick an instance.

[tordans]

I still think the best way forward would be if the OSM mobile apps were to join forces and find a place to run a shared single-picture-panoramax instance. The picture volume should be way lower than any other instance, and we could limit contributions to those apps only via some additional auth part if needed or by just allowing max 3 pic per upload…
MapComplete already has its own instance. StreetComplete runs its own picture services and might migrate. Every Door does not have the feature yet. And then there is Go Map. I asked the MapComplete-Crew, and they don't have the capacity to expand their service. So we would have to find some other setup for this…

[thibaultmol]

asked the MapComplete-Crew, and they don't have the capacity to expand their service.

I mean tbf, I (host of the Mapcomplete server) am not against doing it but I feel like it'd be weird to have gomap users upload to panoramax.mapcomplete.org

So I almost feel like it'd be better to have a neutral url for this purpose. I did recently buy openstreetmap.world (because I saw it was unclaimed and felt a shame if someone snagged it). But now I'm not sure if panoramax.openstreetmap.world would make people confused there's a relation between the 'osm world' panoramax server and the 'osm world' discord server.

But yeah, in theory I'm down to have a shared server I think. But we would have to look into rate limiting or something.
With Mapcomplete we did it a quick and dirty way of just having one user 'mapcomplete' which the mapcomplete app auths with. And so only mapcomplete users can upload.
If we were to allow users to create individual accounts, I feel like we'd need Panoramax to add extra things to their code to allow:

• some automatic rate limit scaling (as in: only allow x amount of images on the first day, but have it increase over time or somehting)
• Only allow uploading through allowlisted apps such as gomap, etc to prevent people from bulk uploading.
• And I guess: If I notice some problem where one of the apps is breached or something or causing other issues on the server, being able to identify from which app it originated.. not sure how that would work

Also @bryceco I had replied to your email from in June but maybe you didn't see the response

[bryceco]

For the uploads from Go Map!!:

• we only support uploading one photo per upload set
• the photo set always has "Go Map!!" in the title
• we add a semantic tag to it that identifies the OSM object being photographed.

I'm totally fine with you running a daily/weekly script that deletes anything that doesn't follow that pattern. As long as you specify in the server description that it is intended for individual photos and not for huge photo sets I think it's fine to delete anything that violates that requirement.

Also @bryceco I had replied to your email from in June but maybe you didn't see the response

Oh no, I missed it somehow. Thanks for letting me know!

[JLZIMMERMANN]

I think a minimum of 3 pictures would be welcome : context, object, detail (max would be 10 sometimes we need to push more details like for streetcabinets operator, ref, manufacturer...)

[bryceco]

@JLZIMMERMANN You're probably right that to future-proof things allowing up to 10 photos per upload set is probably more reasonable.