I will try to clear some misconceptions, the tool I actually used to make an edit was the browser interface at ://www.openstreetmap.org I think you call it iD, my frustration with this tools misbehavior, was what made me take a look at JOSM just to see if it was any better than iD. I didn’t attempt to use josm to commit an edit. Didn’t take me long to work out that josm was more difficult to use than iD and It was quickly purged from my system without blinking. I thank a user slice0 who reached out and helped me with the edit at Changeset: 146656721 so that I didn’t leave a mess. As you may or may not have guessed by the username fossilised I am not a young man, but I have been a computer user since about 1983 and used an Apple mac at work in the late 80’s and early 90’s I didn’t use a Windows computer until 1996. I lost interest in windows at about win 10 and adopted Debian GNU as my daily drive. I still use a GNU OS but lost interest in Debian when Buster was released and changed to an Ubuntu based system because it is a much more user friendly OS and other members of my family find it much easier to use and don’t complain as much, I’m no stranger to a learning curve. My point is that there is no need in this day and age for an operating system or user interface to be so unfriendly. I use the example of Ubuntu and other Debian like OS’s like Linux Mint which are Debian derived because they prove that there is no need for user unfriendly systems and internal politics are the reason for the degradation and the reason there are so many forks.
I am an experienced user but I often wonder why user friendly features are slowly depreciated in favor of cli options. I could site many specific examples but I’m already way off topic. Your UI is much more difficult to use than it needs to be and I wonder if internal politics are preventing improvement. (first impressions) In my experience there is usually an agenda for persisting with systems that are unnecessarily difficult to use and Judging by some condescending comments that have been made, experienced users may actually like a pig of a system because it solidifies their position. (more first impressions) Contrary to comments made I have spent many hours reading the wiki, reached out for help when needed and still think that the browser interface is a pig and needs considerable improvement. Personally I would be embarrassed to be an administrator in a community that thinks that the tools initially offered are suitable for those who are are learning, because they’re not. The consequences for a community like OSM is that you will not recruit enough new blood to remain relevant or have enough people to improve in a world where technology is moving so rapidly and you might even get forked. I thank those of you who’s comments are generally helpful and I will check out the suggestions that you have made.

I wont make any more edits until I’m confident that I can make useful contributions and will do more reading before I make a decision to stay or leave. If you think that I ‘m judgmental about the OSM community and the difficulty of using the tools offered and the reasons that the difficulty persists then your right, I’ve read a lot of stuff on the site, quite probably more than you think. I can see that politics are most certainly in play. I have also seen by the “users near me” that there is a very high number of new users who have dropped out, have none of you noticed or ever thought to wonder why?

Leave a comment, ask and you will receive. Fossilised