Join the community

Beginners' guide

Join the community

Before you can contribute to OpenStreetMap you will need to sign up and agree to share your contributions under OpenStreetMap's license. This ensures that the data stays free for everyone and that changes can be attributed to specific sources. You don't need to use your real name as your user name. Many people use pseudonyms or nicknames instead. The email address you provide is just for validation and messages between users. It is never revealed directly to other users.

Sign Up

Congratulations, you are now a member of a very large community of contributors to OpenStreetMap! There were more than five million people from all round the world who have done what you have just done.

Communication

Now that you're a user, you can communicate with the community in a variety of ways.

The forum
The Questions and Answers site
Users can comment on changesets made by other users at OpenStreetMap.org/history.
Users can comment on Map Notes.
Mailing lists - the talk and tagging lists are quite active.
Wiki users (requires a seperate user name) can communicate via Wiki talk pages.
See the Contact channels page for more details.

Find your country page

Many countries have Wiki pages that discuss country specific conventions, guidelines, and communication methods. Search for your country's Wiki page using the search bar, or create one if it doesn't exist!

Stay up to date

Keep up with OSM news through these links:

The OpenStreetMap Blog
The Wiki News section
The Announce mailing list.
Weekly OSM - Weekly summaries of major OSM news.

Next step

OSM data explained

Join the community