Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

#1

Post by juliantigler » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 4:25 PM UTC

Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap
high5apps.github.io

Re: Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

#2

Post by corecoder » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

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.

Re: Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

#3

Post by KolmogorovComp » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

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This seems a bit outdated as many restaurants/shops now consider they FB/insta page as their "official" website (or rather lack of).

Re: Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

#4

Post by aaronbrethorst » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:01 PM UTC

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

Re: Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

#5

Post by boredpudding » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

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.

Re: Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

#6

Post by boredpudding » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:03 PM UTC

KolmogorovComp wrote: post #3

> Do NOT use search results for social media profiles This seems a bit outdated as many restaurants/shops now consider they FB/insta page as their "official" website (or rather lack of).

There's separate tags for the social media profiles. So those can still be added.

Re: Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

#7

Post by mikeocool » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

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.

Re: Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

#8

Post by juliantigler » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

KolmogorovComp wrote: post #3

> Do NOT use search results for social media profiles This seems a bit outdated as many restaurants/shops now consider they FB/insta page as their "official" website (or rather lack of).

For social media profiles, a different tag like contact:facebook, contact:instagram, etc. are recommended!

[1] https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/contact:facebook [2] https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/contact:instagram

Re: Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

#9

Post by 0l » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:04 PM UTC

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/

Re: Make your first edit to OpenStreetMap

#10

Post by sp8962 » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 5:05 PM UTC

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.