This is to celebrate my 500th edit since joining the OSM community in ‘09.

I know, not much in 4 years, but the majority of those edits were done in the last 4 months!

I always enjoyed mapping but the arrival of Bing imagery and my local knowledge of the area I am mapping (the town of Ennis in Ireland) really got me excited! And certainly also the friendly and helpful OSM community and the brilliant tools that are available.

The mantra I kept hearing was: Do not tag (or map) for the renderer! And I bought into it. And I still believe it’s important and true.

HOWEVER!

I came to the conclusion that what actually made this creative work so compelling and addictive was to look at the rendered work! To see how your town’s representation on a map changes from the bare skeleton of roads into a living, colourful ‘painting’ is breathtakingly and satisfying. And to know that you played not a small part in it makes it even better!

So yes, “don’t map for the renderer”, but I love to see my work in a gaudy representation and my appreciation goes to all tools and web sites who …

… render for the mapper!

;-)

Happy mapping!

MaKs.