Absolutely do not create imaginary cities in the main OpenStreetMap database. People use this map for navigation. It won't be much use if you've drawn a city where there isn't one.

If you really want to, you could use the test server at http://api06.dev.openstreetmap.org/ . But bear in mind this may be wiped at any time.

The eTrex 'click' detection is very sensitive to movement. If you try really hard not to move the rocker in any direction while clicking, but simply to press down, it'll usually work. But that's a lot harder when you're walking (or cycling).

Upload frequently. Don't do 30 minutes of changes and then upload; rather, upload every 5 minutes or so. Otherwise for large relations, in particular, the server can take so long sending the "ok" message back that Flash Player times out.

Make sure you're zoomed in a long way before trying to edit.

If you click 'Edit' when a whole city is visible, that's a lot of data to pull down from the server, and it will take a long time.

I'm hoping to come back some time next year to do York-Bridlington. But I suspect you'll have mapped the short new NR164 by then!

Where there is a dataset that supplies something that can't be practically mapped by on-the-ground survey, yes, I don't see a problem with a careful import. Generally building imports will fall into this category: there's not a whole heap of difference between importing good-quality building data and tracing it from aerial imagery.

But where imports replace on-the-ground survey, that's where the problem lies. The import surveyor will likely not have looked for the data that OSM mappers would be gathering (for example, Ordnance Survey OpenData for the UK, though excellent, doesn't include footpaths or cycleways). But because the area now looks "complete", and because it's more fun to survey virgin territory than resurvey someone else's work, the imported area will neither get the same quality of data nor attract the same community of OSM contributors.

Example: USA. Other example: the city of Worcester, UK. I and a few other contributors were slowly working on surveying this, bit by bit, to a reasonably high standard. Now some idiot has come along and traced it all from Ordnance Survey StreetView (effectively what you might call a "manual import").

The result is a carbon copy of StreetView with a load of missing streetnames, no footpaths, no amenities, and so on (osm.org/go/euwvVf2K--). How does that help anyone? The long-term quality of the OSM map has suffered for a tiny bit of short-term gain. Nothing good has been created: if people wanted StreetView, they could have just downloaded the original (under better licensing terms than OSM, too!).

I would point the Honourable Gentleman towards this article, recently featured on Slashdot of all places, which shows that - in a world dominated by industrial manufacturers - top quality, hand-made products are still prized.

We already have free data in very large parts of the world (TIGER, OS OpenData, the Canadian, Australian and NZ stuff... and seemingly more every year). Countless websites offer "good enough" machine-made maps - Google Maps, for one. If OSM isn't top quality, OSM is nothing.

On Linux, such problems are usually a result of a dumb window manager not passing clicks/keypresses through to Flash Player. But, yes, if you're the sort of person who likes Debian then you'll probably also be the sort of person who likes JOSM. :)

If you want to join two nodes at the same place, select one and press J for join.

It's probably just an early bit of data. People used to do this in the very early days of OSM. It's really not worth getting so exercised about.

Ugh, and the fricking caching meant that my reply echoed what several people had said earlier. :| Ah well.

When someone splits a way (let's say, they split ABCDE into ABC and CDE) for whatever reason, the original way is truncated to ABC, and a new way formed comprising CDE. The new way is just that - new - so doesn't have any history. Therefore the attribution is lost.

It looks like this is what's happened in case 1. OSM is not really a project for putting your own name in lights, it's a communal project.

For case 2, I'd suggest you drop the mapper who deleted the bridge a friendly note saying "hey, could I ask what you were doing?". It might have been an accident or there might be a good reason. You can contact him/her by clicking on their name then on "send message".

In Potlatch (the online editor) you can press 'L' to see the co-ordinates at the mouse pointer. There is no way to directly enter a co-ordinate.

If you have a GPX file with your waypoints _and_ at least one trackpoint, you can upload this to OSM. Then find it in the 'GPS Traces' listing and click 'edit' next to it (not the Edit tab at the top). Your waypoints will be imported as 'locked' points which you can edit, unlock and upload.

I think you mean social-network-spammingg

http://help.openstreetmap.org/

You can't.

Something has gone wrong either with your editing or (less likely) with JOSM. osm.org/api/0.6/node/38/history , for example, shows that node 38 was deleted - and had been since 2005 - until you uploaded a new node with that id.

"How difficult can it be to draw 100 line segments?"

Suggest you look at the source code for client-side renderers like Cartagen (http://code.google.com/p/cartagen/) or Halcyon (http://svn.openstreetmap.org/applications/editors/potlatch2/net/systemeD/halcyon/) to find out. Then compare against the bitmap images rendered (server-side) by Mapnik, which arguably produces much nicer results (and I say that as a developer of Halcyon!).

Incidentally, don't base corrections on Google Maps - OSM takes a clean-room approach.

osm.wiki/FAQ#I_have_just_made_some_changes_to_the_map._How_do_I_get_to_see_my_changes.3F

"Has someone just walked on _on_side_ of the road, and called that the center line?"

Not sure why you're remotely surprised by this!

OSM is iterative. If there's nothing there, you put down the best information that you have to hand. That might be a walk you took along one side of the road. It might be a tracing from an out-of-copyright map that, thanks to warp and weft, is 100m out. Or whatever.

Over time, OSM will tend to complete accuracy, simply because the more information you have, the better average you can take.