此文本同時提供 台灣華語版本
This article is also available in Taiwanese Mandarin

First meeting. Source of basemap (c) OpenStreetMap contributors.

%{count} contribution(s) in the last year

section on the user page, should be edited. For numbers greater than four digits, periods are placed in groups of three for easier reading, but OSM user profiles have numbers that are difficult to read, such as 1234565885. If we write this as 1.234.565.885 or 1,234,565,885. The contribution counter will be easier to read.

Yesterday, I attended the OpenStreetMap Local Chapters and Communities Congress 2026 online.

This text was written by me a couple weeks ago. In the mean time I noticed that my computer struggles with the amount of data to process. That’s why I will need to use another way how to create my map.

Yesterday or the day before, Florian contacted me to see could we map hogbacks on OpenStreetMap. Short answer: Yes.

I’ve recently learnt how to use the “Building” plugin on JOSM and it’s so slay.

Hello! I made my 1000th edit today which also just so happened to roughly coincide with the 1 year mark of my OSM journey. I have had so much fun learning about OSM and connecting with so many cool members of the community.

I started my work on OSM improving the data in my home town of Wilson Wyoming, which continues to be my main focus, although I have done some smaller projects outside of this area. It has been so rewarding to watch my work come together to create such a carefully detailed representation of its unique and beautiful geography. Through all this work I have not only deepened my passion for geographic data, I have had the pleasure of developing the understanding necessary to truly comprehend the marvel of the world’s greatest map, the open street map. I couldn’t be happier to be a part of such a remarkable feat of humanity and commendation to our planet.

Speaking of Wilson, I began a series of diary entries early on where I would provide updates for my “Wilson WY data overhaul project”… I have since stopped doing this and kinda wish I could delete them (if you know how to delete them let me know). Anyways, I bring this up because Wilson has served as a kind of playground where I have and continue to develop my process for creating the most useful, high detail, well tagged, good-lookin’ data possible. This unfortunately hasn’t happened without some growing pains if you will. There are many things that I am not super proud of. For example, the fact that Fish creek has 30 versions in its way history, or the many driveways, roads, and ponds that have an absolutely egregious amount of nodes due to my disdain for jagged curves and my proclivity for getting carried away in my endeavour to make every curve pretty. I am a victim to the coastline paradox. However, this is something I believe I have improved on. Anyways, this entry is mostly for my own personal posterity, but if you are reading this, or are interested in the work I have done on OSM please reach out to me. I absolutely love to make connections with other mappers!

In the last quarter of 2025, I was privileged to be part of the HOT Mentorship Program. I was a mentee in the third cohort, focusing on Open Community Building.

This post presents the results of a student project carried out by the following group: Pierrick Causeret, Humbert de Chastellux, Paul Enjalbert and Othman Ouhaddou.

Map of Irish Wetlands
https://wetland.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/sidebar/index.html?appid=0b602456f4e54b2b808b9cf8d6472cad

I’m new to this.

I did what most people probably do and added/adjusted footprints of houses in my neighborhood. Great but I soon noticed that there were choices to be made about what did or didn’t get included, what level of detail to go to, etc. and no really obvious source of guidance about that.

Which is probably just as well, because if there were masses of prescriptive guidance about every little thing a new user would get buried. Anyway. I settled on what seemed reasonable to me and fleshed out the neighborhood a bit. Fun.

I’m a private pilot, so I checked out my local airport to see how things looked there. It was really quite good in some respects, if a little out of date. But again since there’s no guidance the previous editors had just made reasonable assumptions and got on with it. I noticed a few taxiway connections were missing (I taxi along them regularly so I know they’re there!) and added them. Then realized that the previous editor had only been adding taxiways that correspond to the painted lines. Reasonable but in reality things are more joined up than that. Food for thought.

So I thought I would check out a large nearby airport. Whoever did this has made a different set of assumptions about what a reasonable level of detail is. Nothing wrong with them, just different.

Then I checked out Chicago O’Hare. Wow. Someone went to town here. Every single parking spot in the parking garage is individually mapped. That seems excessive (and dragged my machine to it’s knees as well). I’m sure some aggregation would be better. Never mind.

Checked out Newark. Much more reasonable level of detail here. But I suppose that depends on what you expect people to use it for. JFK is different again.

It seems like it would good to define use cases and detail levels for this. Not to be prescriptive, just to give editors some kind of framework to consider if it helps organize their work. The wiki does have some information but it’s more about the specifics than overall organization. I expect GIS professionals have a whole framework for this kind of thing but that would be overkill.

I’ll see if I can find anyone interested it working on this. I’m too new around here to figure out how to do that though.

For some reason, the sidewalks near main roads in Sandy have been deleted without much warning. I just have to question what is with these changes and who is responsible for removing the work of mine and others.

Hello,

I recently noticed that Someone, Which I do not know of, Has vandalised clyst vale by Removing the entire school, and replacing it with a sainsburys, ive wrote this to alert a mod to hopefully revert the changes at clyst vale

-SouthWestTrains1

This article was originally written in French here. This English version was partly translated with DeepL.com.

One of the most memorable phases of my OpenStreetMap journey was being part of the Autumn Mapping Sprint 2025, sponsored by Youth Innovation Lab. This was a funded mapping sprint that lasted for one full month, making it both exciting and challenging at the same time.

What made this experience even more intense was that, during the very same month, I was also involved in a one-month field campaign in Dolakha district as part of my studies. Managing both at the same time was not easy.

My days were filled with fieldwork—collecting data, traveling, and completing academic responsibilities. And yet, despite the physical exhaustion, I stayed committed to mapping. Every evening, I tried to make time—sometimes small, sometimes longer—to contribute to the sprint. It required discipline, time management, and a lot of determination.

There were moments when I felt overwhelmed, but I didn’t want to give up. Being part of a funded program and representing myself among advanced mappers motivated me to keep going. I reminded myself why I started this journey and how far I had already come.

Throughout the month, I continued mapping—adding buildings, improving roads, and refining data with care. Even with a busy schedule, I managed to stay consistent and complete my contributions.

Being recognized as one of the advanced mappers during this sprint made the experience even more meaningful. It wasn’t just about mapping anymore—it was about proving to myself that I could handle challenges and still stay committed to my goals.

Looking back, this month feels like a true test of my dedication. Balancing fieldwork and mapping taught me resilience, time management, and self-belief.

This experience showed me that no matter how busy life gets, with determination and passion, I can always find a way to keep going.

Looking back at my OpenStreetMap journey, two dates will always hold a very special place in my heart—June 21 and October 14.

On June 21, I achieved something I had been working toward for a long time: I became the top mapper in KU Youth Mappers. That moment felt surreal. From the days when I was just learning how to draw my first building on the map to reaching the top position—it was a journey filled with patience, consistency, and continuous learning. Every late night of mapping, every small correction, and every effort finally felt worth it.

But the journey didn’t stop there.

On October 14, I reached another incredible milestone—I became a top mapper in UN Mappers. This achievement felt even bigger, as it connected my work to a global level. Contributing alongside mappers from around the world and being recognized among them made me realize how far I had come.

These milestones are not just about rankings or titles. They represent growth, dedication, and the impact of consistent effort. From starting out as a beginner to becoming a leading contributor in both university and international communities, my journey has transformed me—not just as a mapper, but as a learner and contributor.

Sometimes I pause and think about how it all started with simple curiosity. And now, those small steps have led to achievements I once never imagined.

This journey reminds me that with passion and persistence, even the smallest edits can lead to the biggest milestones.

OpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license.

A future version of the UrbanEye3D plugin will support trees and other objects.

Hello people, I’ve been Hoping to help my local town of Exeter and nearby plymouth, ive so far made houses in both sherford and torpoint, ive also named the schools of Clyst vale and Stoke hill, And im hoping to do more to help the community of OpenStreetMap

-SouthWestTrains1

Westhay Moor & Honeygar Farm:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/51.19215/-2.78186

Hello

I have been using OpenStreetMaps for navigation across the globe for multiple years free of charge. I think the time has come for me to give something back to this community.

Thank you wonderful people at OpenStreetMap for such a wonderful project! I hope my contributions will help.

Kind regards

The Vilnius Stroller

Ive been mapping crosswalk corners using a single point for the curb (lowered or otherwise) on a small spur connecting the sidewalk to the crossing way, trying to balance:
- One entity per feature (not duplicating the curb)
- Not blocking the sidewal…

I am happy to annouce that, after a long time we, the OpenStreetMap Carto maintainers, have prepared a new major release of the OpenStreetMap Carto stylesheet (the default stylesheet on the OSM website). Once changes are deployed on openstreetmap.

Wasn't it just yesterday that Android 13 was shiny and new? (Missing backgrounds on Android devices)

After 3+ weeks of silence following the RFC discussion (no further comments/objections), the proposal is now officially in Voting Phase!

Rail trails with route relations with railway=abandoned to denote a rail trail is not working. When the named bike route enters city streets or along side walks where the railroad never went this becomes and tagging nightmare.

This is not about the Linux Foundations Overture Maps attempt to hoodwink the Open Geospatial Consortium into standardising Overtures GERS (Global Entity Reference System) .

Today I received an invitation to attend the bi-monthly OSM US Maintainers Working Group.

But due to timezone difficulties, I don’t think I’ll be able to attend it live.

The meeting agenda has been shared, mainly focusing on the topic of standards and interoperability. There are some interesting starter questions there, so I’m intrigued to answer those questions in an OSM diary instead, hoping that I’ll be able to join the discussion asynchronously.

So, here we go :

---

“What standards (geospatial file or data formats, metadata schemas, wire protocols, structured text formats, encodings, etc.) does your project depend on or interact with?”

I frequently use GeoJSON format in several of my projects.

“Are there any standards that you wish would be evolved/extended but aren’t actively maintained? Or implementations that aren’t fully compliant that you wish would be?”

GeoJSON fits pretty much all of my required use cases. My only concern right now is how to make GeoJSON files more compact. I haven’t researched much about this since there’s currently no urgent performance issue that needs to be handled, but I love tweaking my apps for performance.

“Are there standard formats or protocols that you would like to use, but aren’t well supported in your language/ecosystem?”

The General Transit Feed Specification.

I’ve been interested in this data format for a long time, but I still don’t know how to properly tinker with it. Last time I worked on this, I had to make my own Python implementation to read and navigate GTFS files. I don’t know what the current situation is right now. Maybe it’s already supported, maybe not.

“What are your thoughts on Overture’s OGC proposal?”

I already posted my thoughts in a certain Slack thread somewhere. Here’s the verbatim quote:

“Does an OGC standard become legally binding worldwide or something?

I’ve been thinking for quite some time about the idea of having a single global geographic identifier for every place. Ideally, any online content that refers to a location — whether a blog post, tweet, video, or photo — would include that global GeoID so it could be reverse-searched more effectively, such as finding every piece of content that references a specific place. For now, I use OpenStreetMap node, way, or relation IDs as links whenever I mention a place as a rough workaround, but I still hope that vision could be developed further.”

“What role do you think maintainers in the OSM community should play in giving feedback on or submitting standards to formal bodies like OGC?”

I guess maintainers would only care about standards if those standards personally affect their lives (their projects depend on them).

One day, a certain still-popular web APIs were unilaterally deprecated by a certain majority market-share holder browser company. Several maintainers (me included) staged a protest on their mailing list, practically begging them not to cut our collective lifeline. A representative from that company personally told me a quick fix on how to navigate that situation, and I’ve been using that quick fix for years. I don’t know the rest of the story, but if my app is occasionally broken without a clear reason, I suspect that quick fix is no longer enough to resolve the deprecation issue. That was the last time I participated in a “standardization” discussion.

“Anything new with your project(s) you’d like to share?”

Not exactly my project per se, but several weeks ago I saw someone in an OSM diary who recommended SCEE as one of the best available OSM editors on mobile. So lately, I’ve tried doing field mapping with SCEE.

They were right, it’s so good.

But somehow preset tags are still missing (I can’t add ATM, recycling center, or power pole yet). I don’t know how to add new preset tags to the app. Is there a hidden menu somewhere, or should we make a pull request to the repository? I’m now quite interested in this topic.

Finished adding villages in Nagqu City with Tibetan names listed in the Place Names Database KNAB and having a Q-id in wikidata; Im continuing with Ngari Prefecture.

Tonight I finished mapping Maud, meaning the bulk of Fairview California is mapped. There are still some places along Fairview Avenue as it goes around in a circle and becomes Hayward but this is area shared by Hayward, Castro Valley and Fairview.

It feels so good to see my home there and recognizable.

I started this project in earnest on November 18th (although I did my own street back in June).

Automatic Pedestrian Detection at Signalized Crossings

Vibe coding an OSM / Overture conflation tool.

In May 2025 the OSM website introduced two new optional fields in user profiles: company and location.

Until recently, I mainly used the opening_hours evaluation tool to quickly generate valid OSM opening hours. However, it often requires some manual work to simplify the syntax afterwards.

Holux M-241, week rollover fixed with mtkbabel

I have created a tag, diet:excipient_free=* , which is about finding clean supplements, i.e., without harmful ingredients that can make us infertile, inflamed, obese or even epileptic.

For example, whenever we look for magnesium (bis)glycinate, we want one thing, but many so-called “magnesium” supplements come with a lot more ingredients that might reduce the price, or enhance the appearance, but of course, at a cost; to hurt and make us need another supplement to compensate with the side effects. (Maybe they should rename those “magnesium” supplements to corn syrup supplements instead.)

Almost if not all of those ingredients fall into one category, excipients. Let’s use diet:excipient_free=* on pharmacies and nutrition supplement stores to promote a healthier future without dyes, fillers, flavorants, preservatives and other inactive ingredients that can cost us our health.

OpenStreetMap old timers know about the infamous 2009 TIGER import of road data in the US that continues giving to this day.

I started a new wiki talk page discussion on the conflicting/controversial usage of the wetland=tidalflat tag regarding implied and explicit surface types: