this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2024
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OpenStreetMap community
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Everything #OpenStreetMap related is welcome: software releases, showing of your work, questions about how to tag something, as long as it has to do with OpenStreetMap or OpenStreetMap-related software.
OpenStreetMap is a map of the world, created by people like you and free to use under an open license.
Join OpenStreetMap and start mapping: https://www.openstreetmap.org.
There are many communication channels about OSM, many organized around a certain country or region. Discover them on https://openstreetmap.community
https://mapcomplete.org is an easy-to-use website to view, edit and add points (such as shops, restaurants and others)
https://learnosm.org/en/ has a lot of information for beginners too.
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Thank you. I would be changing my username regularly and posting at random times.
I don't think that's good etiquette in such communities. I realize the privacy concerns, but what if someone wants to message you about your edits?
Not editing around such sensitive areas is a better choice IMO. Hopefully someone else will.
That's good to know, like I said, I'm new. Do people often message about edits?
Yes, changeset comments are more common than messages though. They are public comments. You can see all of them worldwide here: https://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussions You can see in the last week 1300+ comments were made
I review edits in my area made by new contributors frequently, write to them if their was some error, help them fix it, or if it's too complex for them I fix it etc. There are tools for that, e.g. osmcha flags suspicious edits.
Please also sign up with an email address you actually read. If you don't answer to changeset comments for a long time DWG (Data WorkingGroup) will block you.
Changeing username frequently doesn't help anything. You have a hidden user id you can't change, so tools can list all your previous usernames, even though it's not visible on the main UI.
Thank you, I will read email. I will setup a dedicated address for it.
I am still trying to understand how this all works in general, and how I can maintain privacy at the same time.
What is your attack vector, what type of tracking or privacy violations are you afraid of? I'm really curious.
The number of osm contributors are too small to someone start to track your edits for some nefarious reasons, targeted advertizing.
Email aliases are usually more convinient for this type of usage, basically it will be a read only address, you won't have to send anything from there.
Only to minimize tracking. I've never used Facebook, Twitter, or had a Google account. I would rather give them as little as possible.
I am relatively new as well. Someone asked for some clarification on an edit I made, and it turned out I had made a mistake.
In addition, if you leave notes, those may go without interaction for a long time. Although it is true that notes can be resolved without any further input from the original account.
I believe I could then use different usernames as long as I kept the original email addresses active.
Changing your username does nothing, because you have a unique, unchanging user ID. Just use something you don's use anywhere else. Reputation is important in collaborative projects. You want to be known as a member that knows what they're doing, and then you can be as anonymous as you like.
@Cheradenine @Tyoda @openstreetmap
I don't think that changes your underlying account ID.
Whatever you do you need to make sure that you are contactable through the email address(es) you supply. If there is a problem with some of your edits and you don't reply to queries you may have your account(s) blocked and all your edits reverted.
Would it be better to maintain the username but just make it something that you don't use anywhere else? I don't know the wider OSM community, but I assumed it was similar to contributing on Wikipedia where reputation is helpful.
Posting at random times could help, as well as gathering a lot of data and contributing it at one time