The map on osm.org does not instantly refresh after you submit the edits. In fact, iD does feature a relevant tip in the post-upload panel (here in Polish):
But as I’ve been speaking with new mappers, it’s not internalized by them. They often think the edits need some form of moderator’s approval.
Can we do better by improving that message?
I also pondered doing an experiment: for a sample of new mappers, request re-rendering of tiles in vicinity of their edits (do this as quickly as possible, based on changeset metadata replication). I am not sure however if it would get through the tile CDN to be visible to anyone regardless of IP geolocation, how to quantify better engagement (and what effect sizes would be feasible to measure with certainty), and of course if the OWG is going to get mad
As far as I know, OpenStreetMap, OpenHistoricalMap, and similar projects are already much more responsive to edits than commercial maps that accept user feedback. Thinking about other services I use that lag behind public contributions, it can be helpful to maintain a public status page that shows the current wait time. The Overpass API, RevertUI, and the OSM Wiki all have lag indicators if you know where to look. I don’t know what would be involved in setting up a status page like that though.
If this isn’t feasible, maybe you could still monitor recent edits and send new mappers a kind welcome note after enough of a delay that allows the tile to rerender.
What doesn’t help in this situation is that the cache usually has to be reloaded in order to see the effects after some time which may cause some mappers think “Why are my changes not visible even though I already waited for a day?”
At least this is what I have to do when I upload my changes.
