Linux

I've submitted a few corrections before. Garmin or Strava used it for mapping runs and I quite liked it because in my area their maps of trails were actually much more complete and up to date than Google maps. For example in one nature park the current trails were shown on osm but Google showed a completely different set. I later came across a really old and faded sign in the park that showed trails that lined up with what Google showed despite them not existing any more. The new trails WERE shown on a pdf the city provided on their website but I guess they must have never been submitted to Google or something. Fortunately there must have been some dedicated OSM users in my area who were inputting updates.

Yes, not only do I map, I show it to friends and how useful it is to me in specific situations. Bing and apple use osm data just like tomtom or many governments and many apps.

To me, spreading the word is more important than mapping. But I have to map in order to show how good it is. Moreover, it forces me to go out and hike and bike. That's awesome!

I had to make a full overhaul of my area but now it's awesome. I couldn't have done it without others, thank you guys as well!

I use it a lot. I'm finding things like hiking trails are more up to date than Google maps

I've thought about trying it before, but this thread is both inspiring me and giving me some info to get started (apps, etc). Is there a handy guide somewhere for a beginner that would explain some of the terminology, some of the most needed info, etc?

I used to contribute GPS-traces. But then good enough aerial photos became available for my country.

Now I contribute POIs. Last ones this week.

Yeah I have made many changes in my area. I also find it kinda therapeutic as well.

Yes, I've populated most of my local area, and every time I go for a walk or bike ride, I add as much detail that I can. I also find it very enjoyable and it's pretty cool to see features I added show up in all kinds of mapping services that use its data

Osm now has the clearest and most detailed maps for walking that I know, and I use them in preference to the UK's ordnance survey maps, which don't scale so well on electronic devices.

I contribute as much as I can, mostly through StreetComplete. I see it as a hobby when it isn't too hot/cold outside, to take a walk around my area and map houses and addresses. I find it super important

Thank you very much for your efforts, there’s a lot of inertia about mapping places with low amounts of detail. Remember to reach out to your local OSM communities for advice, and the OSM wiki.

There used to be a mobile game that would have you go around and complete tasks to fill out the map (still might be idk). That's pretty much what google did with ingress

I've used their map layers for a public data website. Worked great.

I use organic maps, based on openstreetmap, it has more information than i expected but still much less than google. It’s almost on par with apple maps where I live, both significantly worse than google.

I am a mod (and main poster) at c/castles and include an OSM link with all my posts.

Me and it was so cool. My (approx 25k inhabitant) town had like 5 roads and one of them was completely wrong. I rode ~20km every few days on a bicycle trough all streets, uploaded gpx and drew roads. I think it was around 200+km to draw all streets, but the end result was so satisfying.

I have updated plenty of poi data since then, i love the idea that data is open and can be used by anyone. Yes, there are better and more feature complete solutions, but this one is about community. Btw osm had more frequent updates and when there were major road construction in our capital city, all navigatiom systems but osm were useless, it updated on a daily basis and was always accurate.

The power of community, we can only make it better.

I used OSM tiles when creating webmaps sometimes and they can be great.

That said it's coverage is inconsistent. This area around a highschool has really high detail footprints for the houses so I think it might have been part of their IT class at some point.

https://imgur.com/a/8PA8xBS

OsmAnd actually works pretty well in my experience, at least in the UK. It's not always up to date or fully-detailed but it's far from useless and I appreciate that. It's my primary map program on my phone.

I live in an area that was next to perfect when I first learned about OSM, so I had no real reason to contribute. I have seen their maps used by our public transport to show the way to/from stops (or even inside them on the particularly large ones).

This just reminded me that I can in fact contribute and I will check out the iOS options for doing so.

I'll sometimes contribute when I'm travelling to more rural areas which are less likely to be well mapped. The experience in my country has been that cities are very well mapped on OpenStreetMaps with a lot of detail, often having more up to date information than Google Maps. Less populated areas usually don't have as much detail, but the basics, like roads and buildings are usually well mapped.

I've also noticed OpenStreetMaps is awesome for trails and smaller roads used by hikers, usually being much more useful than Google Maps.