I edited an area where I grew up and frequently return. I chose to focus on some features in this area, as I figured some would be missing or incorrect due to fewer resources to investigate them and their lower priority given the town’s smaller size. I decided to start with elements I knew were recent in the town, such as the opening, closing, or rebranding of businesses. Then I moved into land-use elements, as some areas were assigned to a broader category when a more specific use could be assigned. I updated some other features as well, like microfeatures in Murphy Park and Canada Post mailboxes, but I mainly focused on businesses and updating the elements around them. I learned that, in OSM, you can get a lot more detail on land use in an area, which I thought was a really nice feature. One of the challenges for me was finding the aforementioned resources. If I had not frequented this area, it would be difficult for me to understand what to update or add, as the larger mapping services are also outdated. I foresee this as a challenge with OSM: without someone in a small town committed to making changes, they will slowly lag behind the already slow giants in the industry.
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