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Comment by aendruk | Hacker News Reader

What do you recommend to beginners for mapping in the field? Walk around with a laptop? Or just notes on paper for later data entry?

In the mapping events I’ve attended a clear goal was to onboard people into contributing casually and frequently as they go about their everyday lives.

(For context I can’t see the linked Twitter thread and have no idea why you’re talking about Steve)

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The easiest thing people can do these days is to take georeferenced photographs with their phones, best with a photo app that will record the direction the phone was pointing, for example OpenCamera on Android. Then take their time and then add the information either with iD (the javascript based editor on openstreetmap.org) on a desktop (or JOSM if they are savy enough), or on either of the mobile editors, but most importantly sitting down in peace and quiet.

While direct entry (on the phone) is what I would do and would recommend for anybody that already knows the ropes, it is going to be overwhelming for a beginner.

PS: I was commenting on the whole thread, and if you look through it you will see Steve mentioned as the OSM savant.

the iD editor https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/ID

That’s great to hear. The OSM website hides the Edit link on my phone and I’d inferred that iD must therefore not be sufficiently usable on mobile.

It's not usable on an iPad, so likely not on mobile either.

I was able to do edits in RapID (the Facebook fork), although you need to reload between each edit.

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