After years of development, I am excited to introduce a proposed feature for OpenStreetMap called Communities. Formerly called Microcosms, this feature is designed to bring mappers together and facilitate collaboration. On the main OSM website, it will be located on the Communities page.

What is Communities?

Communities are groups of mappers who share a common goal or interest. They can be formed around a specific geographic region, such as a city or neighborhood, or centered on a particular theme, like humanitarian mapping. The purpose of Communities is to provide a platform for mapping teams to connect with one another, work together as a team, and organize events.

Key Features

• Create communities of mappers based on geography or shared interests
• Assist local mappers by reviewing local changesets
• Organize events, such as “mappy hours”, learn-to-map sessions, armchair mapping meetups, HOT mapping initiatives, and on-the-street mapping
• RSVP to events and connect with other attendees
• Focus on diary entries in your geographic area

Try it out!

You can test the Communities feature at our demo site: https://microcosms.apis.dev.openstreetmap.org/. Register an account to start exploring. If you just want to watch a video, see my talks from old State of the Map US conferences

Development and Feedback

The Communities feature was developed on GitHub: https://github.com/openbrian/osm-microcosms. If you have any comments, suggestions, or requests for features, please leave them there as issues.

This may be merged soon, but I want to make sure Communities works for organizers and members. Going forward, there are numerous ideas to explore such as integrations with completeness tools, delegating changeset review by vicinity, filtering on relevant historical changes, comments/discussion on events, and export and event feed to calendars.

Thanks to Clifford Snow, Adam Hoyle, and the OSM Local Chapters and Communities Working Group.

Let’s bring Communities to OSM!

If you think this feature would be a valuable addition to OpenStreetMap, please let me know. Your support will help bring Communities to the wider OSM community.

Note: This is not to be confused with the OpenStreetMap Forum. The Communities feature is more closely related to the Community Index and aims to provide a platform directly on the OpenStreetMap site.