On Fri, 1 Mar 2013 10:08:31 -0700 Sean Gillies <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi all, > > I'm very excited about OHM developments, there's enormous potential > here. I manage a site and dataset about places in the Greek and Roman > world (plus some older Ancient Near East places, some Byzantine > places) called Pleiades. Users continually ask me about adding > detailed map data to Pleiades – locations of monuments, buildings, > walls, and streets – but this is really outside the scope of my > project. I think that OHM is possibly the better destination for such > detailed data. And I think getting archaeologists and other > researchers involved here could be good for OHM. Imagine the Penn > Museum's maps of Ur > (http://www.penn.museum/blog/museum/ur-digitization-project-february-2013/) > in OHM. Or Eric Poehler's maps of Pompeii (http://www.pompeiana.org/). > > A major question for me: will OHM reflect past reality on the ground? > And if so, what will the standards be? For example, say I create in > OSM (the current OSM) a new continent in the Atlantic Ocean and name > it "Atlantis." This is fiction, of course, but only determinable as > fiction because we can visit that part of the ocean today by boat or > plane, or virtually by satellite and falsify the assertion of its > existence. Past features aren't so easily verified or falsified and > their nature is essentially hypothetical, only approaching the > factuality of existing features after much study. To restate my > question: how good must a hypothesis about an ancient feature be to > warrant its inclusion in OHM? Hypothetical lost civilizations of > Atlantis abound despite lack of evidence – including these in OHM > would be a departure from OSM's principle of reality on the ground, at > least in my view. > > I've assumed that OHM would adopt and adapt OSM's best practice > rubrics. Looking at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice, > I think it would be worth amending (for OHM) "Map what's on the > ground" to "Map strong and falsifiable hypotheses about what was on > the ground" and develop a practice of citing research and historical > documents. Nodes and ways of > Old Babylonian Ur can cite published work. If I trace the hypothetical > trail over the Alps that Hannibal's army left in its wake, I feel like > I ought to cite evidence supporting it. > > I realize that showing is better than telling, and I'll try to do some > leading by example when the OHM database is ready to go. > > -- > Sean Gillies > My tuppence worth: what is proven by accepted scientific investigation is a definite target for OHM. scientifically valid projections should be flagged with a 'confidence value'. Suppositions based on known principals are worth adding provided they are tagged as such. Example: Roman roads run in straight lines until they encounter obstacles like rivers, then deviate to a suitable crossing place, so could be added AND UPDATED as further evidence arises. mick _______________________________________________ Historic mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/historic
