Things I’ve figured out (possibly incorrectly) in my first week of mapping, since I discovered StreetComplete and got addicted… Don’t worry, in two or three weeks I’ll simmer down, LOL

• It’s better to mark a store (with website etc) as a point, and mark the building footprint (area) separately as “retail premises”. This way if the building footprint gets adjusted, the shop marker is still there; also the shop marker can be moved if the store relocates, as they often do

• There’s no “medicare_bulk_bill=all/available/none” tag yet for doctor’s clinics, although this is key information which really helps when looking for a GP (doctor). Also, none of the GP’s in my whole town were listed at all.

• In order to place advisory speed limit zones - like around bends - you need to split the road into sections and add max_speed:advisory=xx

• A “living street” in StreetComplete is a pedestrian shared zone in Australia, and usually has a 10 or 20 km/hr limit (I have mostly only seen them in caravan parks). I have been marking residential streets as “slow zone: 50km/hr” (because I need the 50 to show up on my GPS as a reminder if possible).

• When marking the location of a tree, there’s no tag (at least, not showing in iD) for species. This would be helpful when marking some trees, e.g. locally Ficifolia are a significant species, as are Norfolk Island Pines.

• old historical buildings and routes belong on the open history map, not the open street map.

• there are many, many major buildings and stores missing in my town!

• Daycare centres are probably tagged as ‘nursery/creche’?

• There’s already an excellent CC-BY 4.0 Victorian government data set that includes all the roads and buildings already, but it needs importing and that hasn’t been done yet because nobody with the skills has had a go at it.

• In some places, four or five separate buildings that touch one another are all drawn as one building.

• It’s amazing the things you notice when looking closely at maps. While checking the map, I saw a building that I didn’t recognise. It was right beside an intersection I have driven through many times a week for a few years - but still, I had no recollection that there was anything there at all. I had to go and look, and there it was!

• updating OpenStreetMaps is addictive, and I really need to pace myself. I am having far too much fun…