Add a website tag to OpenStreetMap in under 15 minutes
Make Your First Edit to OpenStreetMap in the Next 15 Minutes
A step-by-step tutorial for making your first OpenStreetMap edit: create an account, download JOSM, filter for shops missing a website, and use the WebsiteWizard plugin to find and add the official URL. The author added 66 website tags in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood, and notes that the US alone has over a million shops still to map.
The United States alone has more than 1 million shops. So if we want to put them all on the map, we’ll need to get many more people to help.
- _russross
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 […]
- celsoazevedo
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.
- sp8962
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.
- Einenlum
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.
- nobody42
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
- mikeocool
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.
- pferde
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.
- agile-gift0262
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.