This is called "tagging for the renderer":

- osm.wiki/Tagging_for_the_renderer

This is accidentally drawing it so it "looks good" in OSM.org (the default "Carto" map colors), but it breaks other apps and styles!

For example, on Organic Maps, I see:

- 2 baseball icons completely overlapping right on top of each other.
- And the actual "baseball field" only shows the little infield "mushroom"-looking shapes.
- Night / Dark Mode only shows little "mushrooms".

So if you are marking stuff up correctly:

- 1 actual baseball field = 1 `leisure=pitch`!

- - -

If you wanted to go super "pretty", then there are Multipolygons:

- https://learnosm.org/en/beginner/id-editor/#drawing-multipolygons
- osm.wiki/Relation:multipolygon#iD

Multipolygons are used for the more complicated shapes, like when you:

- "Draw a building with a doughnut hole in the middle."

You could then mark the:

- "Outside" piece
-- leisure=pitch
-- sport=baseball
-- surface=grass
- "Inside" piece
-- natural=sand
-- surface=dirt

where the `surface`s are optional. (If you don't know if it's grass, turf, sand, or dirt, just leave it BLANK.)

- - -

To create a Multipolygon using OSM.org...

You can:

1. Press the "Area" button.
2. Draw the outer shape.
3. Draw the inner shape.
4. Shift+Left-Click on the outer shape and inner shape so both are highlighted.
5. Press 'C' (Merge) on your keyboard.
- (Or you can "Right-Click > Merge", it's the very first item if you select 2 objects.)

- - -

For example, you can see Multipolygons in:

- way/92483447/history
--- Citizens Bank Park
--- Where the Phillies play.

Or even the "fancier" track & field I drew:

- relation/17615316/history
--- Northwestern Lehigh High School

So instead of it just being a simple line around the track, it actually fills in the entire "oval" with the center cut out. :)

(That's actually how I learned about Multipolygons! I wondered how those track and field tracks looked so cool at many of the schools!)

- - -

So you can think:

- Areas are used whenever you have 1 solid shape.
- Lines are used when you have a super thin object.
- Multipolygons are used whenever you have more complex shapes (or "cutouts" in the middle!).

- - -

And note: Multipolygons get a bit trickier to edit... that's why I don't mess with them too much.

Hey dmjab13,

Thanks for adding lots of stuff around the map. :)

I noticed you redrew baseball fields. (I love drawing baseball fields too!) See:

- sport=baseball#How_to_Map_Baseball_Fields

Draw a "fan shape", then mark the entire thing with:

- `leisure=pitch`
- `sport=baseball`

If there is a fence, then:

- Draw the entire field, out to the fence.

If there is no fence, then:

- Draw the "fan", and end roughly 2 to 4 times further than the diamond.

I mostly like to start drawing at home base, which makes it really easy, because you can usually follow the foul ball line out a ways.

(And I just guesstimate based on home->first base, then go about 2 or 3 times further.)

- - -

The `leisure=sports_centre` and `leisure=stadium` are mostly for a much bigger facility, like at a college, high school, or large park.

For example:

A `sports_centre` might be:

- Northern Lehigh High School
--- way/204233649/

A big area for all sorts of sports. (Or to the SE of that "track & field", there's 2 baseball fields right near each other!)

A `stadium` would be:

- Coca Cola Park (Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs)
--- way/266057188/

A serious building (or fenced in area) with large `bleachers` or `grandstand`, a ticket booth, etc.

For your typical 1 baseball field in a park though, I don't think you need to add anything special. Just the field itself is fine! :)

- - -

THEN, if you want to go much much more detailed, see:

- baseball=*

and take a look at MLB stadiums. Some of those people go really crazy, drawing multipolygons and things.

Anyway, have fun mapping. :)

Yes, thanks for spotting that.

I fixed it in next changelog:

- changeset/173207717

Hey Jacob,

I recently came across this data through taginfo.

I see a *huge* amount of junk "addr:street" names that are in:

- ALL CAPS
- 1 word only

and they are missing the endings, like:

- Street
- Road

- - -

I fixed some of these up in:

- changeset/169583339

- - -

I noticed a similar pattern in many of your older changesets, and it looks like it happens across York County.

If you could help chip away at cleaning that up, that would be great! :)

Hey _jcaruso,

I see you've been adding a massive amount of Microsoft AI buildings.

If you want to add slightly better buildings in North Carolina, it looks like "Cabarrus County, NC Buildings" (and a few others) are available in Rapid instead.

1. Just click the "Rapid" button.
2. Click "Add/Manage Datasets".
3. Search for ", NC" and it should pop up.
4. Press the "Add Dataset" button.

You should be able to pick a color, and continue using it like you have been. :)

- - -

On the Microsoft buildings... a few of these are *extremely* low quality, like these 2 houses:

- way/1411200237/history
- way/1411200138/history

Microsoft just detected a straight square, but you can clearly see:

- House #1 looks more like "3 rectangles stuck together".
- House #2 looks like a "fat L with a rectangle porch sticking out of bottom middle".

Or this crazy one, where Microsoft was just completely wrong, where it drew "a crooked rectangle":

- way/1411200057/history

The County GIS stuff should hopefully be much better in many cases.

- - -

I wrote a few posts on the OSM forums about this "low-quality AI Buildings" issue:

- https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/editors-adding-buildings-through-ai-tools/127720/20
- https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/how-to-keep-track-of-ai-building-outlines-corrected-tag/130714/6

Thanks,

Tex

This changeset was AWESOME for State of the Map US 2025.

Having the full 3D building really helped navigation and being able to recognize you were heading to the right place.

Thanks a lot for putting in the effort. :)

Thanks. :)

This was a missing donut hole, so I had to fill it in!

(There's still a nice big triangle chunk to the S of this, then this whole bottom corner of the County will be completed!)

Thanks. :)

Occasionally, I flip over here when I need to "take a break".

I saw someone did a lot of good work here years ago, but everything was marked with generic "building=yes", so I decided to touch it up and add little details too.

A huge chunk of the E is done, but the S+W still needs some work.

Hey PizzaTreeIsland.

Is there any reason why a handful of circles are using *thousands* of nodes?

Each one can be represented with a few dozen nodes, spread out every so often.

- - -

For example, 1 circle:

- ~825 nodes = yours.
- ~96 nodes = JOSM's "Ctrl+O".
--- (Almost 1/10th as much.)

That largest circle in the NE even used over 1200 nodes!!!

Hey liebezeit, I believe you accidentally added "Troy Street" back in this changeset:

- way/1271600354#map=19/42.25009/-83.59833

This road does not exist in real life.

This was first reported by Newdayvow a few months ago in this Note:

note/4282937

Hello Lyft!

I believe this satellite imagery used for this changeset was old.

This area was being expanded/redesigned in 2022/2023.

For example, the:

- building with the "Wind Creek Bethlehem Hotel" has now been expanded far North.
- The parking lot (way/82536509) to the N is gone, completely built-over by the building now.
- Some of the old "service ways" need to be updated/removed, since the building changed shape.

Thank you. :)

YES to `building=grandstand`.

Do you want to update them?

- - -

Random Note: I didn't even know that "grandstands" existed as an option (until very recently)!

I only started OSM about 2 months ago, and definitely wasn't mapping big stadiums. (Mostly just baseball/sports fields in small parks/schools which only had bleachers.)

Usually when I arrive at bigger stadiums, they were already mapped!

Hello Aniya.

Thanks for adding these small churches/houses to the area! :)

Do you happen to live near here?

- Is this church named "Mooresburg Presbyterian Church"?

(I found their Facebook page, so was able to add a little more info to it.)

- - -

Note: And I also saw you drew 10 houses in the area, but accidentally named them "house" + "home" + "large house".

There's no need to do that.

In the upper-left dropdown, as long as you pick:

- House

that will categorize them correctly. :)

Another trick, after you draw the shape of the house, is to:

- Press 'Q' on your keyboard.

That will "square" the shape, so the building won't have all sorts of wobbly + weird edges.

Hey 4_0_4.

I see you accidentally made U-Haul's building HUGE (taking up their entire parking lot too).

(I noticed same thing with church to the East + apartments to the North.)

I corrected them in:

- changeset/152065237

- - -

Building shapes are only supposed to be drawn around "the building itself".

You can mark the business's Parking Lots separately if you wanted to as well.

On OpenStreetMap.org:

1. Draw your shape covering the parking lot.
- (Just like if you were tracing outline of a building.)
2. In the upper-left corner dropdown:
- Choose "Parking Lot".

The rectangle you drew should turn into a light gray square. That's how you know you got it correct. :)

Then you'll want to follow the instructions here:

- service=parking_aisle

and add at least 1:

- Service Road
- Going from nearest road into the parking lot itself, so cars can know how to drive drive in/around!

Noticed you accidentally marked baseball as "little_leaque" (q) instead of "little_league" (g). I fixed it in:

- changeset/151795185

(I was looking at baseball metadata values from the Wiki in "overpass turbo" and spotted 5 typos! 3 were from this changeset! :P)

Hey MxxCon, thanks for the info. (This was my very first time dealing with large/complicated apartments. I only started OSM a few weeks ago!)

Hmm...

- - -

If you look at on-the-ground footage, you can see each inner corner having:

- big doors (facing the main street) marking each set of address numbers.

Like:

- https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6651915,-74.1159954,3a,84.2y,44.64h,91.06t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1skDnZJaCIx6ENLRxjn1_WtQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DkDnZJaCIx6ENLRxjn1_WtQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D110.254974%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu
- https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6658765,-74.114894,3a,90y,214.38h,73.23t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sUUX-Pobpv7bRN8hq62XaKg!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DUUX-Pobpv7bRN8hq62XaKg%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D94.61627%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu

Knowing that... I'm unsure how those "+" shaped buildings should be divided.

I think:

- chopping them into evenly distributed '+' signs

might work in this specific case... but I'm completely unsure how to do that in OSM currently.

Thanks. I'll adjust that in my next changeset.

There was a similar horseriding place a few towns over:

- osm.org/edit#map=18/40.66984/-75.71313

Do you believe that one is tagged correctly too?

(I tried to tag the arenas as well according to the Wiki + I checked images on their site to try and see what the inside of that building was.)

Thanks. I am very new to OpenStreetMap. (Only started 2 weeks ago!)

I'll adjust this similar to the one you linked to. Thanks. :)

- - -

Note: This was the very first horseriding place I ran across too, so guess I just chose:

- Horesback Riding

in ID, and assumed it was for buildings.

(I was just marking all buildings in the area as best as I could, comparing/verifying data with Google Maps.)

Absolutely crazy the amount of granular detail you can go down to in some of these building types.

Thanks again. :)