personal guide in the UK needed for a newbie to add 200+ places in the right way the first time

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Nottingham/Pub_Meetup has some info, and the next one is next week: "Tuesday 23rd August Derby 19:30. Old Silk Mill" (that's http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/55082687 ). It's very near the bus station and not far from the railway station.

Just to add to Rovastar's invitation, yes we'd love to see in Derby or if that's a little too far in Nottingham in later on!

Your response raises some interesting questions, so thank you for that.

• Currently, the data is just point data, that is, location only, not buildings (though some boundary data has been collected). The location data is Longitude and Latitude of the entrance to the facility plus the main building or, failing that, the centre of the complex.

• The point data has been collected in many cases by me physically going to that place. Yet more is supplied by the facility itself or by someone who has gone there on my behalf and the precise long/lat may well have been corroborated using Google Maps/Earth. Very rarely, the data has come from plans of the location in question.

• I am well on with managing the data in Wikimapia and Google Maps so I have no need to create a non public layer for my own purposes. My goal was to contribute to the OSM base data but it is always possible that the OSM does not want the data on offer.

• A secondary purpose of my trying to get to grips with OSM is to help improve the data relevant to my own project which already exists in OSM. Take <51.93673, -2.717365> for example. There are many small mistakes that I could correct but it requires that I understand not just the editing tools (most of which I am familiar with) but the OSM organisational hierarchy. In this example, there are in fact 2 distinct facilities neither of which bear the overall label give to the top level grouping that has been created. The actual names of these facilities have been assigned to individual buildings rather than to groups of buildings. So, although these two facilities are related, it would better describe the reality on the ground to show them as 2 separate entities which share a common entrance. I mention all this just as an example of this secondary purpose.

So, I am left with 2 questions. Does OSM want the location only data I have and does it want more nuance added to some of the data it already has?

If it's surveyed data, great ! That's more than welcome. The "small" amount from plans might violate the license.

You might have a chat with the person that last modified http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/395464497 so see how he/she came to the current representation and how it can be improved with your findings. OSM is not just map data, it is community, so talking/writing to previous mappers is important.

Furthermore such campusses might be represented in different ways, which all can be correct. I hope some of the UK members will participate here (or you could go to the UK mailing list), as the Vipassana Meditation Centre (see way above) was mapped as part of the UK school quarterly project.

First let me thank you for your helpful ideas.

When I say 'plans' I mean the plans of the facilities that the managing organisation itself owns, that is, their own building plans.

You hit on another core issue which is that the facility in question is not a school at all. Admittedly, you do learn something there but then you can learn something in prison but that does not make it a school and certainly not a Further Education College (that's the best analogy I could come up with on the spur of the moment).

I will certainly contact its creators. Another good tip.