Contributing FAQ
Here are some Frequently Asked Questions about contributing.
See other FAQs at FAQ or Category:FAQ.
If you have a question not on this list, feel free to ask it in one of the Contact channels.
How can I get involved?
There are lots of ways to contribute to the OpenStreetMap project. If you have a GPS unit you can use it to collect data and use our online tools to add the data to our collection. If you don't have a GPS unit you can still help. Ways to help are listed on the Getting Involved page.
How do you communicate?
- Main article: Contact channels
The OpenStreetMap community is large, spread across many locations, speak different languages, and focus on different areas of interest. So the answer is we don't always communicate very well! But we do our best.
- Mailing lists. The talk list is very high traffic. This is where most discussions take place and decisions are made. There is also lists for dev and newbies and over twenty other lists. See mailing lists.
- There is a help centre at help.openstreetmap.org
- The forum at forum.openstreetmap.org is a good place to get help.
- OpenStreetMap Slack - https://slack.openstreetmap.us/
- Discord servers
- Live chat through IRC - irc://irc.oftc.net#osm . See Contact#IRC for a list of other OpenStreetMap channels on IRC.
- Some announcements and interesting developments are made on the blog at blog.openstreetmap.org.
- And there's this wiki. It's used more for reference than for discussion.
- https://community.osm.be/ (OSM Community Index) is an index of local and global channels
Is there any ongoing scholarly research on OpenStreetMap?
Numerous universities worldwide are studying various aspects of OpenStreetMap or are using OSM data in their research. See Research for more information.