Openstreetmap-website: possibility to attach photos to notes

[tyrasd]

Sometimes when adding a note it is not so easy to explain the actual map bug just with words alone (let's say you find a very complicated road sign and don't really know what's going on). In that case it would be helpful for both the note submitter and the mappers if photos of the location could be attached to the note.

[matkoniecz]

StreetComplete has support for attaching photos using third-party service. In my experience this feature is extremely useful.

The trouble with using third-party services is that each note-generating client needs to implement it on each own and it is fragile (StreetComplete was recently affected by photo-storage discontinued).

Is it viable to store photos directly on OSM servers? It would be nice to know is there some fundamental blocker before somebody starts implementing this feature.

[westnordost]

In other words, would you accept a PR if someone was to implement it?

[tomhughes]

Only if OWG were prepared to provide significant server resources to support the service.

[matkoniecz]

And answer in https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/206 is

My initial reaction is: not in the short term. We have been planning to move the website storage (e.g. user images, gpx files) off of a centralised machine and onto a storage cluster, but that is still in progress.

[1ec5]

Photos could provide useful context in a note, but allowing images in notes could also increase the potential for abuse. Inappropriate images including copyright infringement could become more common. We allow profile photos, but those are small compared to what I’d imagine we’d want to enable within notes.