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Who and Where? Analyzing the New Company and Location Fields in OpenStreetMap Profiles

did:plc:4tuge3k3comfj4nfvqnwkemn March 6, 2026
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In May 2025 the OSM website introduced two new optional fields in user profiles: company and location. I recently analyzed whether these fields could be useful for detecting organized (paid) editing accounts for my How Did You Contribute (HDYC) pages. Short summary: * Around 66k active user profiles analyzed * About 1,000 unique company entries * About 2,200 location values Interestingly, large companies such as Apple, Amazon, or Meta still mostly appear in the profile description, not in the dedicated company field. I wrote a more detailed blog post here. While working on this analysis I also added username history to HDYC, derived from the full changeset replication history. I am not fully happy with the current presentation and would appreciate feedback: 1. Move the username section further down? 2. Add a time-based filter (e.g. last 5–10 years)? 3. Remove it.

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