I couldn’t find it through a search to see if my suggestion below had already been suggested.
If it has already been suggested, please let me know and I will refer to it and delete this post.
I wish there was such a feature for OSM beginners.
It would be nice to have a practice space.
I was a little confused when I first started, but there are quite a few cases where people who are just starting out unintentionally edit wrongly or in the wrong way.
(It is not easy to distinguish this from vandal, and I think it is dangerous to dismiss it as vandalism in order to treat beginners kindly.)
Especially in my case, it was difficult to find easy-to-understand help due to language limitations (non-English speakers).
So, I think it would be nice to have a separate virtual space similar to the OSM map so that beginners can practice editing enough.
It would be good to have a watch period for beginners.
I would like it to be marked separately for first-timers’ edits so that existing mappers can keep an eye on it.
For example, there seems to be a way to put a separate ‘watch’ mark for edits up to the 20th after the first introduction.
There may be things like cost and operational difficulties, and there will be problems that you didn’t even think about.
We’d love to hear from you.
Thank you.
OSM 입문자를 위하여 이런 기능이 있었으면 합니다.
연습 공간이 있으면 좋겠습니다.
저도 처음에 입문할 때 좀 헷갈렸습니다만, 처음 입문한 사람이 의도치 않게 잘못 편집하거나 엉뚱하게 편집하는 경우가 꽤 있습니다.
(이게 vandal과 구분하기가 쉽지 않으며 입문자에게 친절하게 대하기 위해서라도 함부로 vandalism으로 치부하는 것은 위험하다고 생각합니다.)
특히 제 경우에는 언어의 한계 때문에 쉽게 이해할 수 있는 도움말을 찾기도 쉽지 않았습니다.(비영어권 사용자)
그래서 OSM과 비슷한 가상의 공간을 따로 두어서 충분히 편집해 볼 수 있는 연습 공간이 있으면 좋겠다는 생각입니다.
입문자에 대한 주시 기간을 두면 좋겠습니다.
첫 입문자의 편집에 대해서는 따로 표시가 되도록 해서 기존 맵퍼들이 주시할 수 있도록 했으면 좋겠습니다.
보기를 들어, 첫 입문 후 20번째 까지의 편집에 대해서는 따로 ‘주시’ 표시가 붙도록 한다던지 하는 방법이 있을 것 같습니다.
비용과 운영의 어려움 같은 것도 있을 수 있고 생각하지 못한 문제도 있을 것입니다.
여러분의 의견을 듣고 싶습니다.
고맙습니다.
I believe it is possible to edit OSM here: https://master.apis.dev.openstreetmap.org/ without impacting the map. But maybe wait for someone else to confirm before trying, as I am not sure.
In the Netherlands we run a welcome program in which we send every new mapper an e-mail with editing tips and pointers to various wiki’s to put them on the right track.
I think such a program should be run on a country-basis which makes it possible to give the best help to new mappers.
Thank you for your words.
Fundamentally, I can agree.
However, in order to operate to such a degree, there must be many existing active mappers, and there will be many ways to get help even if it is not that way.
But in areas with fewer active mappers, there is little way to get help but official documents.
And mapping is not based on nationality either.
Right, you can do some limited mapping on the development instance. I’d recommend to create a new user with a different name, as to avoid accidential changes to the main osm.org map. I use “mmd2” instead of “mmd” on the dev instance, as an example.
Now, there are a few restrictions you should be aware of:
Map shows data from osm.org, rather than the dev instance itself
Same restriction applies to:
the search
routing
the query tool ("?" question mark tool)
(Maybe not super relevant for mapping, but currently there are no diff files or planet files available for your edits)
What works:
Uploading changes to the master dev database
Notes: creating new notes, adding comments, closing them
Adding changeset comments, subscribing to changesets
Map data overlay
In general, all API 0.6 endpoints
Blog posts
I recommend using iD, as it’s the easiest option to play around with.
For JOSM, you need to change API endpoints. If you really want to try this out, maybe start with Basic Authentication. For OAuth, you would need to change a number of other settings, which is quite cumbersome to set up.
Several mobile apps also allow you to play around on the dev instance. Assuming you have created a dedicated user beforehand, you can also try them out without impacting the main database.
I turned this post into a Wiki, so that everyone can edit it, if things are missing/wrong.
It probably needs spelling out that this implies that any edits will not change the background map, routing or search displayed on the dev instance of the website. As a result of the missing feedback it is doubtful if it is really of much help to contributors wanting to practice, contrary to developers wanting to test software (which is really intended for).
Over the years it has been proposed many times to create and run an actual sandbox site with map rendering etc, however there has never been anybody willing to do the work.
I don’t think that’s entirely true - I’m aware of at least one person who’s said they’d be interested in doing it. When they said that I tried to put them in touch with a previous offer of support for a “practice space”.
I can easily suggest that they offer again, but who should they contact?