Hello and welcome to OpenStreetMap. It’s great reading all that, your experience so far with OSM.

Diaries are indeed somewhat not as prominent and usable as they should, that’s why they are not being used much. They may not be searchable (I think there’s a third-party tool that can search them, not entirely sure), but at least there’s the categorization per language (it’s something :p).

OSM-related services/tools may use the accounts of osm.org via OAuth2. I assume by what you wrote that maybe openstreetmap.fr doesn’t use it, hence you need separate account there.

The wiki is one of the complicated parts of the OSM, because what tags/values are preferred to be used, has to reach community consensus (at least of those who are participating in the related-discussions), which sometimes may change after years if another mapper comes in with their own proposal for that thing that is already documented. And then you would have to get the services that use or would need these tags, to update their software according to any changes the community decided.

About AI pre-processing, I think there’s a plugin in JOSM that’s related to that. Not sure if it’s the RapiD one or something else. But regardless, AI-related tools such as RapiD have indeed been used for mapping in sub-Saharan Africa.

OSM’s forum is a usual place for questions and discussions that sometimes make the wiki been updated, but yes, usually people forget to add the needed info from the forum to the wiki, and thus the next mapper who has the same issue may end up asking what may have already been answered on forum but not mentioned on wiki.

You can check out HOTosm which is an organization (no affiliation with OSMF) and they regularly do mapping activities for humanitarian purposes, so that’s a certain place where you will find where in the world there’s a called need for mapping using OpenStreetMap.

@GreekMountains, your second paragraph refers to tagging in general, and not specifically to changeset descriptions. The tagging for names has its own rules, already discussed a lot by others and established in wiki. Also, don’t forget that the names you see on map, changes depending on which app you use and sometimes which settings your device has. There are apps/services which utilize OSM data and by default showing the local name, others which show the English name and others which the local to you name. In other words, don’t tag for the app :d.

What did you comment there that got hidden?