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# System prepended metadata

title: Editor Inclusion Policy

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# OSM Operations Editor Inclusion Policy

**DRAFT**: see [Draft Ops policy for adding editor to Edit Button Dropdown · Issue #877 · openstreetmap/operations · GitHub](https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/877)

Proposed **new editors** that will be featured on the OSM website should follow the following guidelines. Anyone may propose new editors for consideration and any such proposed additional editor should be added to the proposals section of the [Featured Editors](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Featured_Editors) page.

The acceptance of an additional editor is not automatic and must be assessed on a case-by-case basis using the following criteria as a guide.

## Definitions

**Editor**: A GUI application that provides its users with the capability of downloading, reviewing and modifying current OSM data, and committing changes to the data back to the OSM database.

## Criteria for possible inclusion

A proposed editor must satisfy the following hard criteria:

* **Internally Supported**. The editor’s maintainer must be in favor of having their editor included on the OpenStreetMap website.
* **General Purpose and General Audience**. The proposed editor must be a general purpose GUI map editor aimed at a broad audience of potential mappers.
* **Actively Used by Mappers**. The proposed editor must have been in active public use for a while and demonstrated its usefulness by attracting an active community of mappers. 
* **Best Practices**. The proposed editor should make a reasonable effort to support widely accepted best editing practices to discourage mappers from making harmful edits to OpenStreetMap data.
* **Open Source**. The proposed editor’s source code and supporting code must be published under an open and permissive license.
* **Community Feedback**. The proposed editor must have an open community feedback channel where its maintainers actively respond. The editor must be part of the [Software Dispute Resolution Panel](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Software_dispute_resolution_panel).
* **Reliable Service**. The proposed editor must be reliable in terms of uptime and availability.
* **Privacy Policy**. The proposed editor must publish a Privacy Policy that clearly lays out how any PII is stored and handled.
* **Acceptable to Website Maintainers**. Web based editors must be embedded on openstreetmap.org in a way that is acceptable to the OpenStreetMap.org website maintainers. If the editor is not embedded the method by which the editor is called must be acceptable to the OpenStreetMap.org website maintainers.

A proposed editor should satisfy the following soft / arbitrary criteria:

* **Open Contribution**. The proposed editor’s maintainers should be open to receiving community contributions to the code and adding new people as maintainers.
* **Internationalisation**. The proposed editor should offer languages other than English for its graphical user interface.
* **Help and Documentation**. Help and / or documentation should be available to aid mappers in using the proposed editor.
* **Unique**. The proposed editor should offer something unique in approach or execution.

## Additional notes

* Requests for new editors to go to the Operations Working Group who will use these guidelines to evaluate the proposed editor and, if accepted, implement the change.
* There is a practical limit to the number of editors presented. That limit is currently undetermined.
* Editors are not guaranteed a permanent place on the website, they may be removed at any time.
* If a large number of new editor requests is being made, the strategy will have to be re-evaluated at that time.