Beginners Guide 1.6
Community
Help from other OSM members can be found in a range on places.
- Help - We have a site dedicated to help at help.openstreetmap.org, where you can search for questions which have been asked in the past, as well as submit your own.
- Forum - You can go to the forum for further help.
- IRC - Ask in the OSM chatroom (IRC, Internet Relay Chat). Connect via the web or using an IRC program such as mIRC (Windows), Colloquy (Mac) or kvirc (Linux): then choose server irc.oftc.net, room #osm.
- Mailing List - Get on the newbie mailing list or one of the other mailing lists. Specifically - get on the one from your country.
- User Groups - Find an OSM user group in your area.
It can be a good idea to take advantage of OpenStreetMap's community to help you take your first steps and learn about mapping. You can communicate with OpenStreetMappers anywhere in the world through various contact channels, each with their own characteristics. You can find out about all of these options on the "Contact" page. For example if you like email, the mailing lists are a very popular communication channel. There's a very active one called "talk" for general discussion. There's also a special mailing list for new users asking questions called "newbies". If you want to fire a very quick question it's well worth hopping onto IRC. Don't be put off by the techy acronym. It's just a chatroom, for instant text-based chit-chat.
But OpenStreetMap also has a very local aspect. You can find out about mapping in your country, and maybe even in your region or city/town, by navigating the pages of the wiki starting from "Mapping Projects". You may find some specific information about people involved, contact channels used locally, and maybe even local events.
You can have a lot of fun introducing yourself and making friends with other OpenStreetMap enthusiasts in the community, and this can be a great way to learn, but don't forget ...you don't have to ask permission before editing the map.
Other tutorials
- Indonesia has inspired an amazing OSM Beginner's Guide (browse or download 37-page 42.3MB PDF @ LearnOSM.org, "Beginning OpenStreetMap: A Field Guide for Everyone")
- Video tutorials.
- More advanced questions, and FAQs can be found on their own pages around the Wiki.
- Help Documentation is an entry point to various wiki documentation outside of this guide
- How to get involved.
- If you want to add quick annotations to the map so a more experienced mapper can have a look at it, you can use OpenStreetBugs.
- To get some inspiration of all the things that can be mapped (well it is basically limitless...) have a look at some of the best mapped places.
- A list of software that supports OSM data can be found on the Software page.
- Help on editing/updating the Wiki is available on the Wiki help page.
Other notes and tips
- If you want to edit this documentation wiki, you can signup here.
