My name is Peter Fox. I'm married, and we have one daughter. My chief hobby is cartography, including editing OSM and taking 360 photos for Mapillary and Google Street View. That's all about me for now; to the map.

What does it matter?

Augusta County is both large and diverse. There are rural and populated areas. Emergency Services depend on maps being accurate to direct them to an addressed building. Commercial maps like Google and Apple maps lack the level of detail that is possible with Open Street Map. And, they are sometime inaccurate, most significantly in rural parts of the county. In my experience, Google maps has plotted an incorrect address point many times. Apple maps has never plotted an incorrect location for an address. However, both of these lack many driveways, and if an address plots closer to one road than the where the driveway goes, it will try to navigate you to the road closest to the address which may not be correct.

Open street map data is 100% user edited. It is open source, just like Wikipedia. In many areas, OSM lacks level of detail and accuracy because few edits have been made. However, other areas contain extreme level of detail, like fire hydrants, park benches, and trees. Within minutes of submitting an edit, the changes are visible on online maps. People with the free version of offline maps get the updated maps monthly, but can receive hourly updates with a subscription.

Because OSM can be edited by anyone, people can add many details about their local area they are familiar with. This is the most accurate kind of mapping, better than any import or bulk edit can ever be. You can help, too.

Take a look at Augusta County on the map. Craigsville and Weyers Cave are probably the areas with the most detail at present such as addresses and buildings.

• Read about OSM
• create an account

There are multiple methods to edit the map. Two of the easiest are simply using a web browser. There is the OSM ID editor, which is what you will get when clicking the edit button at the top left of the screen when view the map. You should open this one first because when you login, you will be prompted to 'start walkthrough' which will instruct how to use it.

The second, which I recommend, is using the RapiD editor. This editor has the main advantage of buildings that you can add.

As of November, 2022, all Augusta county addresses have been added to the map. The present focus is adding buildings and driveways. Also, forest roads and trails.