Basic questions from new user

General talk
1

Hello,

I am from Cornwall, UK, and have just joined. I am trying to make my first contribution by adding some unmapped roads where I live.

Forgive me if this is covered elsewhere, but my edits are not visible on the map, and I’m not sure if I have done something wrong! I have created a trace, saved it to my PC, then used JOSM to tag the roads, then uploaded it by pressing “Upload to changes to the active data layer”.

The wiki seems to say I need to upload the trace first, then download it again to edit it. Do I have to do that, or can I work on the trace locally before uploading using JOSM, as I did?

2

First of all: Welcome to OSM! Have fun to add more details to the map.

For “When my changes will be visible?” read the FAQ

For the basics of how OSM works, please read http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_Guide

If you have questions, do not hesitate to post here or open a new thread.

3

Thank you. I’ll leave it a while then and see what happens.

I’ve read the beginners’ guide, but it is not clear if I can do it the way I did, or if I have to upload the trace first before editing. It would be easiest to work from a local trace then upload when I have finished. Is this OK?

4

It’s no problem to upload a GPS trace only after editing the map. The renderers don’t use the GPS traces anyway, so it shouldn’t have any effect on whether or not map data is rendered.

However, your changeset history tells me that you haven’t uploaded any map data so far - waiting is therefore unlikely to solve the problem. Apparently, your upload didn’t work as intended.

What happened after you clicked “Upload to changes to the active data layer”? It should have displayed a dialog with a list of added/changed objects, a text field for describing your changes and an “Upload changes” button that would start the upload.

5

Yes, I have been looking at the history and seeing nothing of mine there, so it looks like it didn’t upload anything. it gave me the dialogue box, where I entered a short description and then clicked the ‘upload changes’ button. It then asked me for my username and password, which it said was OK, so I assumed it had uploaded. I’ll try again.