I started contributing to OSM recently after a bike trail was built near me. The arial imagery typically takes years to refresh around here so I walked it a few times to capture GPX tracks and then drew the new path. It was exciting to see my contribution percolate out to various apps that depend on OSM, and meanwhile Google and Apple have both ignored my edit suggestions and deny the path exists.

So I have a fairly fresh newcomer's perspective and here's what I suggest to get started: keep it simple and start local. As others have noted, skip the complex mapping app and go straight to the website for feature edits, or download a simple mobile app like Every Door and focus on businesses and landmarks near you. Go on a walk around your neighborhood and look for old/incorrect/missing businesses. There may be errors near you about places you actually care about, and it is really gratifying to fix those.

There were restaurants near me that were missing, shops that had changed hands, etc., that were easy fixes but years overdue. I captured some basics (names, posted hours, the phone number posted on the door, etc.) with Every Door, and then later logged into the main OSM website and fine-tuned the entries. I got into a pattern of fixing one or two entries every evening when I went out for a walk and pretty soon my walking route was all up-to-date. Then I started paying attention to things like stop signs and cross walks and found a whole new kind of little, incremental edits that nobody else was doing.

It's been fun, I've made useful contributions, and my laptop is still Java free.

Elephant in the room question: how isn't OSM not pretty much in sync with major proprietary maps services using a crawlers that replicates what they find?

This seems to be a very powerful way to contribute to OpenStreetMap, but I'm not sure if it's the right option for a new user.

I have over 2k contributions and most are from the Every Door app ( https://every-door.app/ ) on my phone.

If adding new data is too "scary", then maybe use StreetComplete ( https://streetcomplete.app/ ) which essentially asks questions about missing or existing old data.

I've added buildings, fixed layouts, etc, but that came later, after I better understood how things work.

Oh dear.

Using JOSM for your 1st edit is definitely not recommended.

Doing the same with iD (the editor embedded in the OSM website) is faster and there's even a tutorial that will explain a bit about how things work.

https://streetcomplete.app - basic task-based, on-the-ground, app for Android

https://every-door.app - intermediate on-the-ground app for smartphones

https://rapideditor.org - AI-assisted mapping in browser

https://www.hotosm.org - task-based mapping in browser

https://josm.openstreetmap.de - advanced editor for desktop (this post)

https://www.comaps.app - actually use the map with ability to make minor changes

There's something a bit weird about OSM. We have the infrastructure and the idea to have a wikipedia-like map. It's insanely cool. But it's super hard to make any edit except through StreetComplete and people get asked the type of bushes they see in their street. I think the biggest priority would be to map all stores, their type and their opening hours. Right now there's nothing more reliable than Google Maps for this which forces people to use the Google Places API if they want a reliable product. I think we should have an app somewhere that is more user-friendly and focused on what most people need from a business perspective.

JOSM is great when you get really into, but if it's really your first edit, just use the editor on openstreetmap.org.

If it's something you end up enjoying, one really satisfying thing to do is pick a small rural town and improve the map. With a few hours, it's not hard to make the OSM data more detailed and better than any other publicly available map.

After you create an OSM account, there is also https://maproulette.org, which has tons of little tasks to fix, grouped into challenges, and many of them can be done using just the aerial photos, from the comfort of your seat.

Then there is also mapping for humanitarian purposes, https://tasks.hotosm.org/, which has mapping projects prepared by disaster response teams, and you can help by updating maps of areas recently affected by disasters. E.g. recently there was a lot of mapping in the area hit by the August river flood in Nepal.

I recently purchased some very rural land with a cabin that I put on AirBnB. The address is a different road than the driveway is and all the maps took drivers around 1 mile away with no way to find the actual driveway. I had to go through the process of fixing this on Google, Apple, and open street maps. OSM was by far the easiest and my updates propagated within minutes. Google was the second easiest but still took me deep into the “feedback” menu and then a week or two of waiting. Apple was by far the worst as I had to sign up for an Apple business account, upload incorporation docs, and then go through multiple rounds of back and forth with some approval agent.

We added a simple place editor to https://cartes.app that includes the website attribute.

We're convinced most users (shopowners too) want to read and write in the same app.

JOSM aside, I think it's great to target people that read HN with this article. They are likely tech savvy and as much as OSM tries to make it easy for less tech savvy folks to contribute, it's just not really feasible without third party apps like StreetComplete. I recently tried to teach my dad, who was interested but completely overwhelmed, even by the iD editor, and the whole idea of the data model. Which is a shame because he knows so much about the area where he lives.

Boy, the UX is horrible!

> The area you tried to downlaod is too big or your request was too large.

And no indication whatsoever of how big the area should be, I'm at my fifth attempt so far.

I appreciate this a lot, but I wonder why the first edit is not done on the website itself. This is 15 minutes of work for a single change, while on the website you can do it in a minute.

I've been using the app "StreetComplete" on Android, I have found it to be a really seamless and easy way to add extra details to OpenStreetMap while roaming around.

Contributing to OSM was super cool. I've had an issue where my home snaps to the nearest road, which is in fact fenced off from us, rather than the road that our cul de sac connects to (which was not well marked in OSM). Last week, I went in and in about ten minutes used the visual editor to paint in the driveway, read a quick wiki page on how to correctly label driveways, and then submitted it. I got a pleasant jump scare the next time I doordashed some food and saw the little driveway squiggles I added on the map in the doordash app, and then again for lyft -- such a cool feeling!

Would highly recommend the web editor -- what's proposed here looks super comprehensive but way more difficult to use for a first timer.

One thing to note: OSM edits are associated with your account. Do not use your regular user name, or people can easily identify where you live since people tends to edit nearby locations.

If you accidentally did that, I believe there's a way for the admin to scrub that for you.

How does OSM prevent trolling or vandalism? Since many (most) courier companies rely on OSM for their database a bad "joke" could prove very frustrating to many people.

I've made a bunch of edits just through the website, because my rural village was not very accurately reflected on OSM. I've added all the missing footpaths, fixed a couple of intersections, and added building footprints for all the houses.

I'm not sure anyone but me cares, since most people use Google maps. But it's satisfying to have accurate maps for myself at any rate.

Funny enough, Cafe Lolo, the business that the example edit demonstrates, replaced my favorite restaurant in Seattle, Cookweaver. The chef-owner of Cookweaver is now doing private events and in-home meals for folks who miss his cooking: https://www.cookweaver.com/omakase-menu

I started contributing via StreetComplete a couple of months ago, and then using iD, it's amazing this kind of thing can exist and work, just like Wikipedia.

Now I'm looking into automated edits, because in my region there's a lot of open data published by the government/local cities about locations of various types of features, like bicycle holders or bus stops, and it would be nice to keep that updated automatically.

The online iD editor is powerful enough for even pretty complex/big edits in my experience, with good basemap options and intuitive controls. I don’t see any need to download JOSM.

I was put off by co tributing to osm at first when someone brought up that 300mb java monster application at first actually. Luckily i found there's an online editor and did my first edits there. I would definitely not recommend josm for a newcommer

> Do NOT use search results for social media profiles

This seems a bit outdated as many restaurants/shops now consider they FB/insta page as their "official" website (or rather lack of).

I use the Street Complete app, which shows missing data around me. It's fun and satisfying to add many details that no other map has, like accessibility of crosswalks or street lighting.

On iPhone, so far "Go Map!!" works well for my simple edits, which are things I notice while walking on the sidewalk.

https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Go_Map!!

(The double exclamation marks in the name drove me away initially, so I tried 3 others first, none of which worked well on the iPhone for my edits, but then "Go Map!!" seemed to just work.)

For edits that can be done from desktop, the OSM official Web site's editor was pretty good -- complicated, but seems to work, and has a nice interactive tutorial mode.

I hope the author reconsiders recommending JOSM to beginners. iD, StreetComplete, MapComplete…almost anything except JOSM would have been a better starting point.

Downloading a whole binary to do an easy edit in ID editor

Crazy stuff, definitely not for beginners

The article describes a case that is a perfect candidate to be automated by LM. You don’t have to have real-world knowledge for that.

Would be interesting to see what involves contributing a real thing that’s not found on the net - a fence, footpath, etc. Or contributing a bus stop.

> the Java OSM editor app

Java? No thanks. I don't want that monstrosity of system-hogging, clunk, slow, 1990's UIs on my system again.

So, I read the article, downloaded JOSM and start making edits on my neighborhood (including adding new poligons, buildings, etc).

Soon I thought "This would be easily done by an AI" and searched for it and found META's Rapid (https://rapideditor.org/) which does an ok job finding buildings, but really could go further and suggest the tags as well.

I would honestly not recommend beginners use JOSM - the web based iD editor [1] is much easier to learn and will hold your hand a lot more.

[1]: https://learnosm.org/en/beginner/id-editor/

I was just thinking about this as I just started using Overpass QL to help a friend with a project.

As a side note, there is an Android app called StreetComplete [1] which creates 'quests' for you that let you contribute to OSM in a fun way.

[1] - https://streetcomplete.app/

Starting with a website tag is clever because it gives newcomers a bounded edit and leaves a source for later phone and hours updates.

Surely if they want any chance of having relatively up-to-date meta data on their map, making edits needs to be more user friendly than this.

it's much easier than that. just go on osm.org, create account, click edit and then ... DONT edit ... but complete the tutorial offered right there ... then edit. anyway, it's fun to keep the neighbourhood up-to-date.

Thank you so much for this tutorial, I've made my fist OSM updates. As a former gis guy, this is awesome!

Is there any software that can take raw footage from 360deg cameras that are now sprolling, identify businesses without websites, opening hours etc, and pre-fill them? With the user only having to validate.

A foot-carried google street car if you want.

I do not recommend JOSM to a new user. The iD editor in openstreetmap.org is much more user friendly than JOSM. The target audience for JOSM is power-users and experienced mappers.

I'm conflicted about OSM. Historically maps have essentially had a military use. Volunteering to give otherwise unattainable level of detail about a potential future war zone, is not right. Some details should be kept away from maps. That's what I read in TAZ by Hakim Bey

Don't make your first edit(s) around the place you live.

w00t. L-U-V this

im using OSM in my app but its not clear how much usage i can get before i get rate limite ?

Why is lake America misspelled on there?

I send update about defibrylitors and after half year still it not apear in map

sorry this is not profesional