Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Richard Fairhurst writes: > I suspect I'm more attuned to finding these traces than you > are. I call it "raildar" or "ferroequinology". It's when you look down that tree line and say "Hey, that's an old railroad", then you go to OSM (possibly using OSMAnd), find that spot, and yep ... old railroad. > A few metres from the URL you cited is > http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/263868309 Yeah, Condie Street, hehe. I drove down it and then said "um, that's barely a track, and certainly not highway=residential." I asked Tom Hynes about all those identically-sized rectangles. He imported them from his 911 dataset, wherein the vendor tagged every building that wasn't directly digitized with that rectangle. He knows it's not perfect, but his plan is to import whatever corrections people make in OSM back into his database. Speaking of Kingston, NY, the mayor who decided to shut down the tourist railroad by parking a dump truck on the tracks (a felony in the US) lost the Democratic primary, so he won't be mayor after November. #WINNING > (Also, NY State Bike Route 32 sucks rocks. The traffic is heavy and the > shoulder is either non-existent or too narrow to ride. I would love to find > a way of mapping that.) On behalf of the entire state of New York, I apologize for allowing that road to be marked as a bicycle route. I should probably make that my next project -- make sure that all the bicycle routes are in OSM and are tagged properly for quality. I *have* bicycled on NY-32 and yeah, it's not a shining example. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 3:45 AM, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: > Lots of former railway land is now privately owned, sometimes even > before the rails get removed. So the fact that there was an abandoned > (dismantled ?) railroad in his backyard didn't, on its own, mean that > he didn't own the place. > In some case the ROW is an easement, meaning the railroad gained the right to cross private land. Many roads and a huge fraction of utility lines are easements, not fee ownership. The easement may or may not expire when the railroad stops running. In the USA the process of "railbanking" keeps the easement active, on the notion that the contiguous land may needed in the future or far future for restoration of rail or other transport services. Thus the active railroad, or active trail, may in fact be on private land. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 01:41:20AM -0700, Richard Fairhurst wrote: > (Also, NY State Bike Route 32 sucks rocks. The traffic is heavy and the > shoulder is either non-existent or too narrow to ride. I would love to find > a way of mapping that.) class:bicycle=-3 ? Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Thu, Sep 10, 2015 at 01:18:46AM -0700, Richard Fairhurst wrote: > Mateusz Konieczny wrote: > > Now it is done with railways and may be stopped. But if > > completely dismantled railways are not deleted from OSM > > what would stop somebody interested in mapping completely > > destroyed buildings, canals etc? > > You're absolutely right. > > We should also stop mapping bus routes. These are often not supported by > on-the-ground evidence, just by patterns of usage, and that might lead > someone to map (say) the functionally equivalent corridors most often used > by taxis or Uber vehicles. absolutely support that one. The current practice where bus-routes are often tied to particular lanes or road links is just useless waste of our resources. Perhaps those relations should be relations between bus stops? Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 10/09/2015 05:12, Russ Nelson wrote: I don't get to see them in my own rendering. IMO *This* is the operative point in his argument. He wants to tag for the renderer (himself). Dave F. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
moltonel 3x Combo wrote: > The line is going through multiple buildings and a wide low > wall. That's as unambiguous as it gets. The lack of any > other sign on the grass and highway areas are an additional > good hint. If you're mapping a railroad here, you're mapping > the past. Haha. I have, actually, been to the place you cited. Or, nearly. I cycled a couple of miles away from that example in June this year (I took a three-day bike tour after SOTM-US) and saw that railway - I actually explored its course for a few metres at one point. It was plenty in evidence if you knew what you were looking for, whether or not you can see it from the aerials. From what I saw elsewhere on the line, I cannot say with any confidence that there aren't distinctive traces of a former railroad there at the lat/long you cited. There might be. There might not. I suspect I'm more attuned to finding these traces than you are. Conversely I suspect you're more attuned than I am to some other stuff which you enjoy mapping. But I don't go and delete your mapping thousands of miles away just because I can't see it on some imagery. Come on. (And let's not get hung up about "if you're mapping a railroad". railway=dismantled does not mean it's a usable railway now, and no-one is claiming that. You have been in OSM long enough to know that the characters that make up a k/v combination are just that, characters. highway=footway is Not Actually A Highway. highway=trunk is Just Some Letters Indicating Importance And Isn't Even A Trunk Road In The UK. And so on.) But really... can we get a sense of perspective here? A few metres from the URL you cited is http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/263868309 which doesn't exist, at all. No building. No sign of a building. It's fiction. Then there's http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/263878931 which is an imported square footprint that looks nothing like the actual building. Pan south a mile and you get http://www.openstreetmap.org/edit#map=17/41.88892/-74.03297 which is a textbook example of TIGER barf - a cluster of "highway=residential"s that are neither highways nor residential and whose geometry bears little or no relation to what's actually there. (Also, NY State Bike Route 32 sucks rocks. The traffic is heavy and the shoulder is either non-existent or too narrow to ride. I would love to find a way of mapping that.) If I were going to write 40 messages to a thread trying to make OSM better (I'm angry enough with myself that I've been drawn into writing four), in this area or anywhere, I would not choose deleting a few "railway=dismantled"s as my top priority. I really wouldn't. Please, give it a break, have a bit of respect for others' differing views, and go and make OSM better somewhere where it matters. Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Re-Abandoned-Rails-tp5852866p5854394.html Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Mateusz Konieczny wrote: > Now it is done with railways and may be stopped. But if > completely dismantled railways are not deleted from OSM > what would stop somebody interested in mapping completely > destroyed buildings, canals etc? You're absolutely right. We should also stop mapping bus routes. These are often not supported by on-the-ground evidence, just by patterns of usage, and that might lead someone to map (say) the functionally equivalent corridors most often used by taxis or Uber vehicles. We should stop mapping official council boundaries. These aren't on the ground, and they are just administrative delineations of certain services. What would stop someone taking this and mapping pizza companies' delivery boundaries? We should stop adding postcodes. These usually aren't on the ground and they are just the reference system of one private company[1] among many. Someone might add the internal reference identifiers used by utility companies or indeed any other company with assets to manage. And we should stop making hypothetical points on the mailing list, because what would stop someone interested in applying those hypothetical points to other bits of OSM? Richard [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Mail#Privatisation -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Re-Abandoned-Rails-tp5852866p5854391.html Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
sent from a phone > Am 09.09.2015 um 19:12 schrieb moltonel 3x Combo : > > The line is going through multiple buildings and a wide low wall. > That's as unambiguous as it gets. yes, looking at google maps I noticed an offset compared to the road and to the railway parcel in google, I guess the position of the railway in osm is slightly offset. cheers Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Frederik Ramm writes: > The total number of such things is relatively small. I can continue > to state that abandoned railways should not be in OSM(**) and Russ > Nelson can continue to claim otherwise but that is really a minor > skirmish that won't bring the project to a halt. Kinda-sorta. You're from Germany, where you can't throw a stone without hitting a mapper. New York State is about a third the size of Germany, and has maybe two dozen active mappers (Simple check: look for landuse.) Can you see how I am feeling lonely and desperate for company? Even if we have to tolerate that company putting their feet up on the table and mapping abandoned railroads? -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Mateusz Konieczny writes: > Now it is done with railways and may be stopped. But if completely > dismantled railways are not deleted from OSM what would stop somebody > interested in mapping completely destroyed buildings, canals etc? This is a strawman argument. Nobody is proposing this. You're just borrowing trouble from the future. Don't do that. The present has enough trouble already. Like not having enough people mapping in the US, which is my point here. We have a set of people who are interested in maps and mapping, AND YOU GUYS ARE THRUSTING THEM AWAY. Let me tell you a little story. The USGS has been mapping the US for well over a hundred years now. Very precisely mapping it, including railroads. Some people who wanted to find these old railroads realized this, and started digitizing the maps so that everyone can have them. That set of maps is still available at http://docs.unh.edu/nhtopos/nhtopos.htm even though the USGS has begun its own digitization program. Thank you railfans, not "get lost" railfans. Another railfan took those scans (which are four scans per map sheet), combined them into a single map sheet, geo-rectified them, color-corrected them, and marked the collar so it may be removed, and published them. Thank you railfans, not "get lost" railfans. Another railfan took those maps, stripped off the collars, pasted them into MSMaps-style 200x200 pixel UTM tiles, and published them at http://rutlandtrail.org/mapview.cgi under the "Historical" style. Thank you railfans, not "get lost" railfans. Am I being unreasonable to suggest that we should welcome railfans to OSM, and tolerate their wild and crazy desire to map every part of an old railroad, even the dismantled portions? Particularly when (in another thread) there is a discussion of how to recruit specialized groups like the 4-H into OSM? You guys are saying "get lost" because OSM rejects (some of) the data railfans want to contribute. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Mateusz Konieczny writes: > On Wed, 9 Sep 2015 01:54:20 -0400 > Russ Nelson wrote: > > > Why do you persist? You can't win, because you're wrong. > > Please, stop treating it as some zero-sum game. I am not trying to > "win". You're arguing with me, and you don't expect to win the argument?? Why would you bother? In particular, it *is* a zero-sum game. If you get to delete abandoned railways, I don't get to see them in my own rendering or in OpenRailwayMap. > I am trying to ensure that editing of OSM will not be made > harder by presence of ways representing completely destroyed objects > or ridiculous relations containing features approximately following > track of former, no longer existing objects. That's the sticky problem: the railway still exists. Part of it may be an embankment, or a cut, or a bridge, or a straight line of trees, or a track. Part of it may go through a field where the farmer has plowed it away (but I can point you to fields where you can still see cinders). Part of it may go through a housing development (but I can show you tree lines where it went). Those latter two parts should be tagged railway=dismantled. > Editing OSM is already complicated, there is no good reason to make it > even harder by adding confusing features editable only by experts. Here's how to make it less hard: Don't delete things you didn't add. (Oh, and don't edit coastlines). Isn't that easy? Now, it's not always true, but it's a simple rule of thumb that will allow everyone to add their favorite thing to OSM, whether stores, park benches, fire hydrants, trees, cliffs, etc. Are there other problems that you fear will occur when people map all the parts of a railway? I'm thinking that maybe what we need is a censoring OSM API, where the people who would be confused by dismantled railways could say "I want the censored OSM", and then they wouldn't get any dismantled railways in their data download. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 09/09/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: >> Am 09.09.2015 um 13:14 schrieb moltonel 3x Combo : >> >> Martin, have a look at http://osm.org/go/Zc9j8qfSV-?m (near Russ's >> most recent example) and tell me how this section "somehow has lasted >> or has had a strong impact that is still observable today". > > how could I tell without going there? I thought I had preemptively answered that : On 09/09/2015, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: > When stuff have been contructed over the former railroad like this, > there's no need for a local survey to see that nothing is left. IMHO, > at most a section of Albert Street could have railway=abandoned as an > additional tag. I have my doubts about the sections under the forest > too, but that requires a survey to assert. The line is going through multiple buildings and a wide low wall. That's as unambiguous as it gets. The lack of any other sign on the grass and highway areas are an additional good hint. If you're mapping a railroad here, you're mapping the past. Or are you saying that the imagery might be too old, the railway could have been restored since ? The imagery was taken around the same time as the first changeset, and the changeset sources either say nothing, or bing, or osm wiki (!). Talking about past features, tagging gauge=* on a railway=abandoned way (which by definition does not have any tracks left) should be an impossible combination. Tagging electrified=* is also a funny idea. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
2015-09-09 16:43 GMT+02:00 Martin Koppenhoefer : > > Martin, have a look at http://osm.org/go/Zc9j8qfSV-?m (near Russ's > > most recent example) and tell me how this section "somehow has lasted > > or has had a strong impact that is still observable today". > > > how could I tell without going there? > interestingly Google Maps displays parcel boundaries in that area. Have a look... https://www.google.com/maps/place/Albert+St,+Kingston,+NY+12401/@41.9125927,-74.0154805,17.54z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x89dd0f93267eeead:0xaec8bc9c0194fb45 Cheers, Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
sent from a phone > Am 09.09.2015 um 13:14 schrieb moltonel 3x Combo : > > Martin, have a look at http://osm.org/go/Zc9j8qfSV-?m (near Russ's > most recent example) and tell me how this section "somehow has lasted > or has had a strong impact that is still observable today". how could I tell without going there? Cheers Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed, Sep 09, 2015 at 01:14:28PM +0200, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: > TL;DR: argument repeat, sorry. > > On 09/09/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: > >> OSM is map of the current state of the world - not map > >> of the world how it was yesterday, 10 years ago or five thousands ago. > > > > Nobody is advocating to map the past, what is discussed is mapping those > > elements of the past which somehow have lasted or have had a strong impact > > that is still observable today. > > Martin, have a look at http://osm.org/go/Zc9j8qfSV-?m (near Russ's > most recent example) and tell me how this section "somehow has lasted > or has had a strong impact that is still observable today". Whenever I > looked at some examples posted by Russ, these kind of sections weren't > far. Not much is visible from the satelite but this is true for many other objects. Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Hi, On 09/09/2015 12:44 PM, Mateusz Konieczny wrote: > it is almost certain > that sooner or later somebody will decide to import for example > buildings that were documented to exist in the past. Fortunately the self-healing powers of OSM will step in at that point and revert the import. Just because the project grows larger doesn't mean we have to tolerate bullshit. Taking a small step back from the discussion, even the avid proponents of mapping un-railways claim that (at least to their expert eye) the railway is still very much visible. This thread might look like we're fighting over SOMETHING BIG but in fact we all(*) agree that stuff that is visible can go into OSM and stuff that is long built-over will not; the disagreement is only about stuff that has ceased to exist but hasn't (yet?) been overbuilt or otherwise obliterated. The total number of such things is relatively small. I can continue to state that abandoned railways should not be in OSM(**) and Russ Nelson can continue to claim otherwise but that is really a minor skirmish that won't bring the project to a halt. Bye Frederik (*) everyone else is with OpenHistoricalMap (**) abandoned railways, of course, should not be in OSM -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
TL;DR: argument repeat, sorry. On 09/09/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: >> OSM is map of the current state of the world - not map >> of the world how it was yesterday, 10 years ago or five thousands ago. > > Nobody is advocating to map the past, what is discussed is mapping those > elements of the past which somehow have lasted or have had a strong impact > that is still observable today. Martin, have a look at http://osm.org/go/Zc9j8qfSV-?m (near Russ's most recent example) and tell me how this section "somehow has lasted or has had a strong impact that is still observable today". Whenever I looked at some examples posted by Russ, these kind of sections weren't far. When stuff have been contructed over the former railroad like this, there's no need for a local survey to see that nothing is left. IMHO, at most a section of Albert Street could have railway=abandoned as an additional tag. I have my doubts about the sections under the forest too, but that requires a survey to assert. So there is at least one contributor who "is advocating to map the past". I have a feeling Russ is an exception in this respect (Lester's view are close but more nuanced), but he is so passionate that this thread keeps resurecting. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed, Sep 09, 2015 at 09:01:53AM +0200, Mateusz Konieczny wrote: > On Wed, 9 Sep 2015 01:54:20 -0400 > Russ Nelson wrote: > > > Why do you persist? You can't win, because you're wrong. > > Please, stop treating it as some zero-sum game. I am not trying to > "win". > > I am trying to ensure that editing of OSM will not be made > harder by presence of ways representing completely destroyed objects > or ridiculous relations containing features approximately following > track of former, no longer existing objects. never had a problem editing around abandoned railways, they don't cause even a tiny fraction of the problems that are caused by landuse multipolygons. Do you have some special problem on your mind? Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed, 9 Sep 2015 09:33:45 +0200 Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: > > > sent from a phone > > > Am 09.09.2015 um 09:01 schrieb Mateusz Konieczny > > : > > > > Currently it is done on really limited scale and still may be > > stopped. > > > I doubt this has the potential to become a big scale "problem" > because there aren't sufficient sources and traces to reconstruct the > world as it was hundreds or thousands of years ago (not to forget > that there were much fewer people in these times, and much fewer > alteration of the world in general). > > FWIW, there have been several mentions of historic objects naming > "hundreds" or thousands of years in this context of former railways > on the lists. Actually the first railway was built in 1830, that is > not even 200 years ago, and this is also more or less the period > where you can get detailed spatial information (good maps) from. > Please stop FUD about people completely mapping the past into OSM and > obfuscating the present thereby. Now it is done with railways and may be stopped. But if completely dismantled railways are not deleted from OSM what would stop somebody interested in mapping completely destroyed buildings, canals etc? Given that some are happily mapping in detail individual bicycle parkings or individual trees (I encountered forests and parks where mapping of every single tree is in progress) etc - it is almost certain that sooner or later somebody will decide to import for example buildings that were documented to exist in the past. > > > > OSM is map of the current state of the world - not map > > of the world how it was yesterday, 10 years ago or five thousands > > ago. > > > Nobody is advocating to map the past, what is discussed is mapping > those elements of the past which somehow have lasted or have had a > strong impact that is still observable today. You say these objects > would make mapping more difficult and confusing but the opposite is > true: it makes mapping more sensible when the relevant context is > present (including traces of the past). For some "strong impact that is still observable today" is set so low that extreme amount of completely dismantled structures will pass it. Maybe people interested in mapping completely gone features may propose what they consider as minimum threshold so we would be able to make this discussion more useful? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
sent from a phone > Am 09.09.2015 um 09:01 schrieb Mateusz Konieczny : > > Currently it is done on really limited scale and still may be stopped. I doubt this has the potential to become a big scale "problem" because there aren't sufficient sources and traces to reconstruct the world as it was hundreds or thousands of years ago (not to forget that there were much fewer people in these times, and much fewer alteration of the world in general). FWIW, there have been several mentions of historic objects naming "hundreds" or thousands of years in this context of former railways on the lists. Actually the first railway was built in 1830, that is not even 200 years ago, and this is also more or less the period where you can get detailed spatial information (good maps) from. Please stop FUD about people completely mapping the past into OSM and obfuscating the present thereby. > > OSM is map of the current state of the world - not map > of the world how it was yesterday, 10 years ago or five thousands ago. Nobody is advocating to map the past, what is discussed is mapping those elements of the past which somehow have lasted or have had a strong impact that is still observable today. You say these objects would make mapping more difficult and confusing but the opposite is true: it makes mapping more sensible when the relevant context is present (including traces of the past). cheers Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed, 9 Sep 2015 01:54:20 -0400 Russ Nelson wrote: > Why do you persist? You can't win, because you're wrong. Please, stop treating it as some zero-sum game. I am not trying to "win". I am trying to ensure that editing of OSM will not be made harder by presence of ways representing completely destroyed objects or ridiculous relations containing features approximately following track of former, no longer existing objects. Editing OSM is already complicated, there is no good reason to make it even harder by adding confusing features editable only by experts. Currently it is done on really limited scale and still may be stopped. OSM is map of the current state of the world - not map of the world how it was yesterday, 10 years ago or five thousands ago. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Mateusz Konieczny writes: > And "abandoned railway" that was not noticed by somebody in his/her > own back yard seems to be a good example of object that should not be > mapped in OSM. Oh, and he didn't notice the railroad bridge about 90m east of his property either. This bridge: https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/240308433 Nor the right-of-way underneath the NYS Thruway. This right-of-way (which pre-existed the trail): https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/237524740 . Nor the bridge remains on the west side (which I didn't put into OSM, but they're there). You can read the Wikipedia page for the railroad -- it will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about why the railroad right-of-way under the Thruway was destroyed. All of those should have been clues to the homeowner. They are *certainly* verifiable evidence of an abandoned railroad right-of-way. Why do you persist? You can't win, because you're wrong. I know far, far more about abandoned railroads than you do, and I can provide as many examples of the verifiability of abandoned railroads as it will take to convince you. Assuming that facts will actually change your mind. Of which I am in doubt at this point. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Thu, Sep 03, 2015 at 08:38:08PM +0200, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Hi, > > On 09/03/2015 02:25 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: > > also there are good arguments why it shouldn't be secret who owns which > > pieces of land > > "shouldn't be secret" != "should be in OSM" what should be in OSM where possible is pubilc/private land. This is in many countries relevant for path/track routing. Parcel boundaries probably should be included at least for commercial use lands - it is good to know that a piece of land belongs to a company spraying poison on their fields or to a mining company and may fly around your ears anytime. Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Hi, On 09/03/2015 02:25 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: > also there are good arguments why it shouldn't be secret who owns which > pieces of land "shouldn't be secret" != "should be in OSM" Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
sent from a phone Am 02.09.2015 um 15:25 schrieb Paul Johnson : >> land ownership has massive privacy and data protection issues. > > Depends on the region. +1 also there are good arguments why it shouldn't be secret who owns which pieces of land cheers Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed Sep 2 14:39:00 2015 GMT+0100, Lester Caine wrote: > On 02/09/15 14:25, Paul Johnson wrote: > > But in most (all?) of the US, land ownership (and vehicle ownership, for > > that matter) records are open and subject to public inspection, and why > > land transfers are typically published conspicuously in the regional > > news periodical of record. > > And in the UK you just buy a copy of the Electoral Register ... The edited register, which most people aren't on, or at least those who read the form aren't on. Phil (trigpoint) -- Sent from my Jolla ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed Sep 2 14:25:52 2015 GMT+0100, Paul Johnson wrote: > On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 7:23 AM, wrote: > > > We can map barriers and visible dividing marks, but land ownership has > > massive privacy and data protection issues. > > > Depends on the region. I've even heard it from county officials > (incorrectly!) citing this regarding trying to get address centroids here > (even though I'm not interested in who owns the land or even necessarily > what the property lines are, just where one can expect to find an address > along a street, and only requested the centroids; see the OKGIS archive > from August for how that went). But in most (all?) of the US, land > ownership (and vehicle ownership, for that matter) records are open and > subject to public inspection, and why land transfers are typically > published conspicuously in the regional news perodical of record. Which is > why landowners get phone calls by name from roofing contractors after > storms have gone through, and why you'll get junkmail from lawyers and body > shops if your plate number (or sometimes even a similar one if someone > fudged it, as I discovered when someone in Ohio who has the same plate > number as me was apparently involved in a bad wreck) was reported in an > accident. > That is scary,and the reason most home numbers in the UK are ex-directory/unlisted. It prevents cold-callers having a foot in the door. The phonebook is a fraction of the size it was when I was a kid. Phil (trigpoint) -- Sent from my Jolla ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/15 14:25, Paul Johnson wrote: > But in most (all?) of the US, land ownership (and vehicle ownership, for > that matter) records are open and subject to public inspection, and why > land transfers are typically published conspicuously in the regional > news periodical of record. And in the UK you just buy a copy of the Electoral Register ... -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed, Sep 2, 2015 at 7:23 AM, wrote: > We can map barriers and visible dividing marks, but land ownership has > massive privacy and data protection issues. Depends on the region. I've even heard it from county officials (incorrectly!) citing this regarding trying to get address centroids here (even though I'm not interested in who owns the land or even necessarily what the property lines are, just where one can expect to find an address along a street, and only requested the centroids; see the OKGIS archive from August for how that went). But in most (all?) of the US, land ownership (and vehicle ownership, for that matter) records are open and subject to public inspection, and why land transfers are typically published conspicuously in the regional news perodical of record. Which is why landowners get phone calls by name from roofing contractors after storms have gone through, and why you'll get junkmail from lawyers and body shops if your plate number (or sometimes even a similar one if someone fudged it, as I discovered when someone in Ohio who has the same plate number as me was apparently involved in a bad wreck) was reported in an accident. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed, 2 Sep 2015 08:08:45 -0500 Paul Johnson wrote: > On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 7:22 PM, Russ Nelson wrote: > > > Too bad for that guy that he didn't check OpenStreetMap first, > > because there was an abandoned railroad mapped in his back yard. > > Now that the trail has been built, he has a fence about 5' behind > > his house. I can't imagine he's happy now. > > > > Wait, what? I understand that OSM does incorporate *some* cadastre > data, such as is the case for situations where it makes more sense to > map out a landuse=* parcel and give it the appropriate name and > access tags. However, attempting to use OSM as a substitute for using > the official cadastre from the county clerk, land office or other > regional equivalent for landuse planning regarding legal encroachment > would be woefully ill-advised. This is something you really want to > hire a licensed surveyor to stake out your legal property lines on > and not just guess. Or you're likely to build a swimming pool in the > middle of an abandoned railroad that's being converted into a > cycleway. And "abandoned railway" that was not noticed by somebody in his/her own back yard seems to be a good example of object that should not be mapped in OSM. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/15 13:43, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: >> Ideally I would like to add the NLPG reference >> > to each but currently that is blocked by possible licensing problems. It >> > WOULD be nice to complete the 'hidden' data > Assuming the license issue gets resolved, how will you import it, > conflate with existing data, tag ? How will you keep it up to date > when a field or a chunk of garden changes hand between neighbours ? > Who do you expect will make use of the data ? My main client base is council based systems, so I HAVE the LLPG data for each client. I just can't use it in OSM. The main problem here is I'm using OSM to display location information so that staff can manage things like 'change of address', and YES recording changes to the LLPG data in order to amend the raw data which is then uploaded to NLPG. Using OSM allows much more flexible options on the user interface than OS does and potentially the whole country can be kept up to date simply because the data is already being digitised and we the UK public are paying for that! Drawing a line around each boundary is still a problem as are areas in general in OSM. I'm not happy with using 'relations' to draw areas, but simply drawing a polygon for a field or property boundary is messy when one needs to add gates, boundary style, and yes 'hidden' elements such as open driveways. So one is essentially limited to creating a relation for each property and then does one include the buildings within the area in the relation? Which is why I've stopped at just drawing boundary types so far. Actually the property boundaries on our road include the area of grass outside the front fence, but not the path which is another detail not yet added ... -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Tue, Sep 1, 2015 at 7:22 PM, Russ Nelson wrote: > Too bad for that guy that he didn't check OpenStreetMap first, because > there was an abandoned railroad mapped in his back yard. Now that the > trail has been built, he has a fence about 5' behind his house. I > can't imagine he's happy now. > Wait, what? I understand that OSM does incorporate *some* cadastre data, such as is the case for situations where it makes more sense to map out a landuse=* parcel and give it the appropriate name and access tags. However, attempting to use OSM as a substitute for using the official cadastre from the county clerk, land office or other regional equivalent for landuse planning regarding legal encroachment would be woefully ill-advised. This is something you really want to hire a licensed surveyor to stake out your legal property lines on and not just guess. Or you're likely to build a swimming pool in the middle of an abandoned railroad that's being converted into a cycleway. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/15 13:23, p...@trigpoint.me.uk wrote: >> The principle of "what data belongs in OSM" is about the propeties of >> > that data, not what kind of data it is. But as it happens, a given >> > kind of data usually has the same properties, so "this kind of data >> > doesn't belong in OSM" is a usefull simplification. >> > > We can map barriers and visible dividing marks, but land ownership has > massive privacy and data protection issues. Adding actual names against a property is perhaps the question here? And that is a step to far. Even NLPG data does not have personal data included IN it, but simply putting an address into a phone book on the internet will more than likely provide that data. I don't see any problem identifying what fields belong to a particular farm or what area belongs to a particular dwelling. That is essentially 'land use' and part of this came about because of a blanket application of 'farmland' to some areas of the UK but where proper verification of boundaries throws up various problems with THAT data and now tidying that up needs 'non-visible' information in addition to the visible stuff to correct the mistakes. I have tried simply hiding the data which works around here, but another area nearer London is obviously using a different tag to 'farmland' ... just not identified yet what else to ignore. -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/2015, p...@trigpoint.me.uk wrote: > We can map barriers and visible dividing marks, but land ownership has > massive privacy and data protection issues. In many countries, the geometry of land parcels is public data. Not "this bit of land is owned by Phil Trigpoint" nor "this and that parcel are owned by the same guy" but just how the land is geographically divided. I'm not saying that property data should go into OSM (:p), just that it's probably not the privacy issue you think it is. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Sometimes land ownership is a matter of public record, it seems. Zoom in and click on a plot: http://gis.stlouiscountymn.gov/planningflexviewers/County_Explorer/ Sure there are privacy considerations, but they are not the same in all jurisdictions. And the face that some jurisdictions would have a problem with OSM having data that other jurisdictions would frown upon, is no reason in itself to disqualify that whole category of data from OSM. We have similar challenges with military stuff and disputed borders as well. We don't want to become a least common denominator with only data that is agreed by the entire world. On 2015-09-02 14:23, p...@trigpoint.me.uk wrote: > On Wed Sep 2 13:15:42 2015 GMT+0100, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: On 02/09/2015, > Colin Smale wrote: I see two separate issues getting > mixed up: firstly, what types of data > "belong" in OSM as a matter of principle, and secondly what quality > criteria would apply. Clearly for the second point the data needs to be > suitably licensed (if it is externally sourced) and it needs to be > verifiable so "Joe Public" without any form of privileged access can > verify its correctness. These are clearly principles which have existed > in OSM for a long time. But a statement that certain whole categories of > data do not belong in OSM *because* it sometimes might not be easily > verifiable, is going a bit far. > Saying that land property has no place in OSM is just a conclusion > that comes from the observation that this kind of data generally poses > big chalenges to verifyability and corrrectness, and that its > usefullness in osm is limited because ownership is one thing where you > have no choice to use the official authoritative source. > > If there's somewhere in the world where those concerns are not valid, > then go on and map properrty data there. Again, do you know of any > property data in osm ? What's the tagging schema ? > > The principle of "what data belongs in OSM" is about the propeties of > that data, not what kind of data it is. But as it happens, a given > kind of data usually has the same properties, so "this kind of data > doesn't belong in OSM" is a usefull simplification. We can map barriers and visible dividing marks, but land ownership has massive privacy and data protection issues. Phil (trigpoint) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/2015, Lester Caine wrote: > On 02/09/15 12:56, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: >> Sorry, I see residential areas, hedges, postcodes, etc, overall a well >> maped area with usefull detail, but nothing mapping land property ? I >> never suggested that this kind of data was out of scope for OSM, >> please go ahead and map more of it. When I mentioned "land property" >> I'm talking about legal ownership, parcels, cadastre, etc. > > The boundaries mapped are property boundaries as are the field > boundaries around them. When I think of mapping properties I expect a multipolygon, hopefully following many physical objects such as hedges and fences, is that what you have in mind ? > Ideally I would like to add the NLPG reference > to each but currently that is blocked by possible licensing problems. It > WOULD be nice to complete the 'hidden' data Assuming the license issue gets resolved, how will you import it, conflate with existing data, tag ? How will you keep it up to date when a field or a chunk of garden changes hand between neighbours ? Who do you expect will make use of the data ? I'm not saying that this data doesn't belong in OSM as much as I am saying "I won't touch that kind of data with a 10 foot pole, it's too hard to import/maintain, it's a huge amount of data (bloat) that will complicate editing, and anyway it won't be usable for most usecases". Go ahead and map the fences and anything else that gives a visual clue as to where the property ends. But the actual legal property data ? It's not worth it. > in much the same way the > postcode is added here so that searches can be done properly. Just > because a post has not been put in the ground to identify a location, > the location still exists if properly documented. Postcodes, like all address components, are always welcome in OSM even though they are not always phisically visible. Addresses are a major OSM usecase. A postcode has a much lower granularity than a parcel. It doesn't have to be exact and authoritative, it only has to lead to the correct location. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed Sep 2 13:15:42 2015 GMT+0100, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: > On 02/09/2015, Colin Smale wrote: > > I see two separate issues getting mixed up: firstly, what types of data > > "belong" in OSM as a matter of principle, and secondly what quality > > criteria would apply. Clearly for the second point the data needs to be > > suitably licensed (if it is externally sourced) and it needs to be > > verifiable so "Joe Public" without any form of privileged access can > > verify its correctness. These are clearly principles which have existed > > in OSM for a long time. But a statement that certain whole categories of > > data do not belong in OSM *because* it sometimes might not be easily > > verifiable, is going a bit far. > > Saying that land property has no place in OSM is just a conclusion > that comes from the observation that this kind of data generally poses > big chalenges to verifyability and corrrectness, and that its > usefullness in osm is limited because ownership is one thing where you > have no choice to use the official authoritative source. > > If there's somewhere in the world where those concerns are not valid, > then go on and map properrty data there. Again, do you know of any > property data in osm ? What's the tagging schema ? > > The principle of "what data belongs in OSM" is about the propeties of > that data, not what kind of data it is. But as it happens, a given > kind of data usually has the same properties, so "this kind of data > doesn't belong in OSM" is a usefull simplification. > We can map barriers and visible dividing marks, but land ownership has massive privacy and data protection issues. Phil (trigpoint) -- Sent from my Jolla ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/2015, Colin Smale wrote: > I see two separate issues getting mixed up: firstly, what types of data > "belong" in OSM as a matter of principle, and secondly what quality > criteria would apply. Clearly for the second point the data needs to be > suitably licensed (if it is externally sourced) and it needs to be > verifiable so "Joe Public" without any form of privileged access can > verify its correctness. These are clearly principles which have existed > in OSM for a long time. But a statement that certain whole categories of > data do not belong in OSM *because* it sometimes might not be easily > verifiable, is going a bit far. Saying that land property has no place in OSM is just a conclusion that comes from the observation that this kind of data generally poses big chalenges to verifyability and corrrectness, and that its usefullness in osm is limited because ownership is one thing where you have no choice to use the official authoritative source. If there's somewhere in the world where those concerns are not valid, then go on and map properrty data there. Again, do you know of any property data in osm ? What's the tagging schema ? The principle of "what data belongs in OSM" is about the propeties of that data, not what kind of data it is. But as it happens, a given kind of data usually has the same properties, so "this kind of data doesn't belong in OSM" is a usefull simplification. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/15 12:56, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: >> So I should remove all the detail on >> > http://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=wr12%207ep#map=17/52.04851/-1.85665 >> > rather than adding the missing detail to the right? > Sorry, I see residential areas, hedges, postcodes, etc, overall a well > maped area with usefull detail, but nothing mapping land property ? I > never suggested that this kind of data was out of scope for OSM, > please go ahead and map more of it. When I mentioned "land property" > I'm talking about legal ownership, parcels, cadastre, etc. The boundaries mapped are property boundaries as are the field boundaries around them. Ideally I would like to add the NLPG reference to each but currently that is blocked by possible licensing problems. It WOULD be nice to complete the 'hidden' data in much the same way the postcode is added here so that searches can be done properly. Just because a post has not been put in the ground to identify a location, the location still exists if properly documented. -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/2015, Lester Caine wrote: > On 02/09/15 11:30, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: >> I always understood that land property was out of scope for OSM. Do >> you know of any osm data which records property ? > > So I should remove all the detail on > http://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=wr12%207ep#map=17/52.04851/-1.85665 > rather than adding the missing detail to the right? Sorry, I see residential areas, hedges, postcodes, etc, overall a well maped area with usefull detail, but nothing mapping land property ? I never suggested that this kind of data was out of scope for OSM, please go ahead and map more of it. When I mentioned "land property" I'm talking about legal ownership, parcels, cadastre, etc. > And the 'Abandoned Railway' to the left is a protected route which HAS > encroachments onto it, but which is still potentially re-enstatable once > the line to Broadway becomes active again. Using the ground for a long > period does not always allow to take possession of it and rail routes > are one of those documented exceptions. Sure. It looks well mapped to me. Again, I don't see how your answer relates to the subject of mapping land ownership, there's no ownership mapped on these osm objects. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed, 2 Sep 2015 12:36:26 +0100 Lester Caine wrote: > On 02/09/15 11:30, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: > > I always understood that land property was out of scope for OSM. Do > > you know of any osm data which records property ? > > So I should remove all the detail on > http://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=wr12%207ep#map=17/52.04851/-1.85665 > rather than adding the missing detail to the right? Can you be more specific? You linked to general location in map rendering that is not showing legal property rights. Can you link to specific OSM elements that you propose for removal? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/15 11:30, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: > I always understood that land property was out of scope for OSM. Do > you know of any osm data which records property ? So I should remove all the detail on http://www.openstreetmap.org/search?query=wr12%207ep#map=17/52.04851/-1.85665 rather than adding the missing detail to the right? And the 'Abandoned Railway' to the left is a protected route which HAS encroachments onto it, but which is still potentially re-enstatable once the line to Broadway becomes active again. Using the ground for a long period does not always allow to take possession of it and rail routes are one of those documented exceptions. -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
I see two separate issues getting mixed up: firstly, what types of data "belong" in OSM as a matter of principle, and secondly what quality criteria would apply. Clearly for the second point the data needs to be suitably licensed (if it is externally sourced) and it needs to be verifiable so "Joe Public" without any form of privileged access can verify its correctness. These are clearly principles which have existed in OSM for a long time. But a statement that certain whole categories of data do not belong in OSM *because* it sometimes might not be easily verifiable, is going a bit far. On 2015-09-02 12:30, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: > On 02/09/2015, Colin Smale wrote: > >> Are you suggesting that parcel boundaries have no place in OSM, or that >> only verifiable sources should be used? Suppose there was a suitably >> licensed source of such boundaries, with authoritative provenance. Would >> you be against this being in OSM on principle? Or is it only your >> supposition that such information cannot be sufficiently verifiable >> which gives rise to your concern? >> >> Anyway, fences, signs etc are not reliable indicators of parcel >> boundaries (where there are land registries), unless the boundary is >> legally described with reference to these physical artefacts. > > I always understood that land property was out of scope for OSM. Do > you know of any osm data which records property ? > > IMHO verifyability is a major issue here. Real-world barriers don't > match the legal ones, borders change regularly (that's a major > difference with admin boundaries), and even the authoritative source > is often murky (I'm now 3-4 months into the process of figuring out > wether I own a piece of land at the back of my garden). > > On top of that, whenever you need to know about land ownership, you > are legally obliged to refer to the authoritative source. Looking up > the info in a crowdsourced db, even if it was completely correct, > would most often be a waste of time. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/2015, Russ Nelson wrote: > Too bad for that guy that he didn't check OpenStreetMap first, because > there was an abandoned railroad mapped in his back yard. Lots of former railway land is now privately owned, sometimes even before the rails get removed. So the fact that there was an abandoned (dismantled ?) railroad in his backyard didn't, on its own, mean that he didn't own the place. In many countries (not sure about the USA), there's also a legal concept of "if you build on a piece of land and nobody complains for X years (with X being quite high), then that piece of land defacto belongs to you". This leads to people sometimes building on land with a unclear ownership status, chancing it and hoping for the best. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/2015 01:22, Russ Nelson wrote: Bryce Nesbitt writes: > I've worked on "rails to trails" projects where the physical trace > of the railbed was subsumed by fences, lines of trees and (in once > case) a swimming pool. I'll bet you're talking about the Wallkill Valley Trail north of Rosendale! I think I know the very place you're talking about! Guy had built his house right up to the ROW property line, and put his swimming pool on the ROW itself. Too bad for that guy that he didn't check OpenStreetMap first, because there was an abandoned railroad mapped in his back yard. Now that the trail has been built, he has a fence about 5' behind his house. I can't imagine he's happy now. I think Bryce's observation lays this issue to rest. No, you should not delete railways you cannot see, because they might still exist in the property lines, and if you haven't checked, you don't know. If somebody added it to OSM, they probably have better reason to have done so than you have reason to delete it, so leave it there! Thanks for your cooperation! Map entities that you can see on the ground. i realise there are some, like boundaries, but we have verifiable proof they exist. For old railway line map the entities that remain, such embankments, bridges etc, but not the actual track if it's been removed or there's a housing estate built over it. To repeat myself: OSM is a database of *current* entities. Dave F. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 02/09/2015, Colin Smale wrote: > Are you suggesting that parcel boundaries have no place in OSM, or that > only verifiable sources should be used? Suppose there was a suitably > licensed source of such boundaries, with authoritative provenance. Would > you be against this being in OSM on principle? Or is it only your > supposition that such information cannot be sufficiently verifiable > which gives rise to your concern? > > Anyway, fences, signs etc are not reliable indicators of parcel > boundaries (where there are land registries), unless the boundary is > legally described with reference to these physical artefacts. I always understood that land property was out of scope for OSM. Do you know of any osm data which records property ? IMHO verifyability is a major issue here. Real-world barriers don't match the legal ones, borders change regularly (that's a major difference with admin boundaries), and even the authoritative source is often murky (I'm now 3-4 months into the process of figuring out wether I own a piece of land at the back of my garden). On top of that, whenever you need to know about land ownership, you are legally obliged to refer to the authoritative source. Looking up the info in a crowdsourced db, even if it was completely correct, would most often be a waste of time. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Wed, 02 Sep 2015 11:57:19 +0200 Colin Smale wrote: > Are you suggesting that parcel boundaries have no place in OSM, or > that only verifiable sources should be used? Suppose there was a > suitably licensed source of such boundaries, with authoritative > provenance. Would you be against this being in OSM on principle? Or > is it only your supposition that such information cannot be > sufficiently verifiable which gives rise to your concern? > > Anyway, fences, signs etc are not reliable indicators of parcel > boundaries (where there are land registries), unless the boundary is > legally described with reference to these physical artefacts. > only verifiable sources should be used? Yes. And objects unverifiable on the ground should be added only after really careful consideration. > Are you suggesting that parcel boundaries have no place in OSM I think that this data is too hard to maintain, unlikely to be useful and importing it would result in editing problems due to adding massive amount of objects unverifiable on the ground. It would be basically mirroring official database what is pointless. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Are you suggesting that parcel boundaries have no place in OSM, or that only verifiable sources should be used? Suppose there was a suitably licensed source of such boundaries, with authoritative provenance. Would you be against this being in OSM on principle? Or is it only your supposition that such information cannot be sufficiently verifiable which gives rise to your concern? Anyway, fences, signs etc are not reliable indicators of parcel boundaries (where there are land registries), unless the boundary is legally described with reference to these physical artefacts. On 2015-09-02 11:36, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Hi, > > On 09/02/2015 02:22 AM, Russ Nelson wrote: > >> I think Bryce's observation lays this issue to rest. No, you should >> not delete railways you cannot see, because they might still exist in >> the property lines, > > Mapping property lines in OSM isn't something I think makes sense. There > are reasons why we don't map land parcels. > > The strength of OSM lies in verifiability, just like (one of) the > strength(s) of Open Source software is that anyone can look a the code > and check it. > > Invisible property lines have to place in OSM because they cannot be > easily verified and therefore they will never come close to the > reliability that OSM has in other areas. > > Unless marked by fences, signs, or other verifiable means, property > lines should not be in OSM. > > Bye > Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Hi, On 09/02/2015 02:22 AM, Russ Nelson wrote: > I think Bryce's observation lays this issue to rest. No, you should > not delete railways you cannot see, because they might still exist in > the property lines, Mapping property lines in OSM isn't something I think makes sense. There are reasons why we don't map land parcels. The strength of OSM lies in verifiability, just like (one of) the strength(s) of Open Source software is that anyone can look a the code and check it. Invisible property lines have to place in OSM because they cannot be easily verified and therefore they will never come close to the reliability that OSM has in other areas. Unless marked by fences, signs, or other verifiable means, property lines should not be in OSM. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Bryce Nesbitt writes: > I've worked on "rails to trails" projects where the physical trace > of the railbed was subsumed by fences, lines of trees and (in once > case) a swimming pool. I'll bet you're talking about the Wallkill Valley Trail north of Rosendale! I think I know the very place you're talking about! Guy had built his house right up to the ROW property line, and put his swimming pool on the ROW itself. Too bad for that guy that he didn't check OpenStreetMap first, because there was an abandoned railroad mapped in his back yard. Now that the trail has been built, he has a fence about 5' behind his house. I can't imagine he's happy now. I think Bryce's observation lays this issue to rest. No, you should not delete railways you cannot see, because they might still exist in the property lines, and if you haven't checked, you don't know. If somebody added it to OSM, they probably have better reason to have done so than you have reason to delete it, so leave it there! Thanks for your cooperation! -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 9:32 PM, Russ Nelson wrote: > > Speaking of housing developments, I earlier pointed to the south end > of Cazenovia, where a housing development has an obvious railbed to > the north, and an obvious railbed to the south, and in people's > backyards, a treeline where the railbed was. > > Should the map look like this (A)? ___ __ > > Or should it look like this (B)?___---__- > > Some people are arguing for A. I argue that B is a better > representation of what is there (the underscores) because it includes > the dismantled portions (the dashes). > I've worked on "rails to trails" projects where the physical trace of the railbed was subsumed by fences, lines of trees and (in once case) a swimming pool. But the legal right of way still existed. Those homeowners were using property they did not own tax free: encroaching. Once the encroachments were cleared, the railroad was turned into a trail (connecting A to B). Thus something existed of the railway even through the backyards: the legal right of way, the arsenic and lead, and ultimately the desire to reconnect the bits. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 08:37:55PM +0100, Lester Caine wrote: > On 29/08/15 08:50, Mateusz Konieczny wrote: > >> In OSM we do that by tagging the small elements properly. Deletion is > >> > vandalism. No smiley. > > > And in case of elements no longer present correct tagging is a complete > > lack of tagging, therefore deleting is perfectly OK. > > The current situation is quite simple ... one view of the data is that > only currently visible data will be displayed and to make life easy any > well documented history is now simply scrap. The fact that people are > also documenting the future developments in the database and that this > needs to be hidden until it becomes valid is no different to simply > hiding historic material. > > That there are a proportion of users who would like access to the very > data that others think should be scrapped is a simple fact. So we need > two versions of the database. One with only 'physical precedence' > elements only, and a second which simply allows a view at different > points in time. josm has filters. They also help if your screen is flooded with pebblestones mapped as natural=stone. Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 29/08/15 08:50, Mateusz Konieczny wrote: >> In OSM we do that by tagging the small elements properly. Deletion is >> > vandalism. No smiley. > And in case of elements no longer present correct tagging is a complete > lack of tagging, therefore deleting is perfectly OK. The current situation is quite simple ... one view of the data is that only currently visible data will be displayed and to make life easy any well documented history is now simply scrap. The fact that people are also documenting the future developments in the database and that this needs to be hidden until it becomes valid is no different to simply hiding historic material. That there are a proportion of users who would like access to the very data that others think should be scrapped is a simple fact. So we need two versions of the database. One with only 'physical precedence' elements only, and a second which simply allows a view at different points in time. At the current time the OHM is of no use for the second database, so we need to create another view of the main database which provides the very data that some people think has no place in a map. We currently have a growing catalogue of historic mapping sources, and this area is just as useful if it an be made available via essentially the same interface as a 'today' version of the map, and 'tomorrow' showing a hypothetical new road and rail links is little different to 'yesterday' where we actually have factual data already correctly documented. OHM provides a platform to document more speculative historic material, but that needs current material to provide a background. Just as we can maintain our own rendering of data such as a 'UK' map, there is nothing stopping a different view of the base data to provide that map as long as we have a mechanism in place to maintain access to that data for those who in many cases have created the data in the first place! The current interface can be used in different ways to achieve these ends, so 'delete' invalid data, but tagging an end_date should be normal practice for objects that have evolved beyond original use. -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 29/08/2015 05:03, Russ Nelson wrote: Also why is there a rail route relation attached to this entity when you clearly can't go by train along it? https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/366610457#map=16/42.9193/-75.8514 Dave F. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 29/08/2015 08:50, Mateusz Konieczny wrote: And in case of elements no longer present correct tagging is a complete lack of tagging, therefore deleting is perfectly OK. +1 --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 29/08/2015 05:03, Russ Nelson wrote: Dave F. writes: > On 23/08/2015 01:27, Balaco Baco wrote: > >>> What we need is a > >>> database that already has all the data and simply identify when some > >>> small elements of it cease to be current. > >> In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) > > I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. > > Are you saying if a building gets demolished & replaced with a new one, > you wouldn't remove the original outline from OSM? This is also a strawman argument. Stop it. How can it be a straw man when it's a question? I genuinely didn't understand the previous comment so asked for clarification. This is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in reasoning & discussion. Instead, I and others have said that since you can see a railway at point A, and you can see a railway at point B, it only makes sense to map it between those points for several reasons: o Chances are good that there are artifacts between point A and B that further investigation will reveal. Then map those artefacts, not the non-existent rail track o Mappable entities exist between those points which can only be understood by including the dismantled railways (e.g. bridges, roads, or buildings). Rubbish. A bridge is still recognisable as a bridge without stating its history. o It's possible that cadastral data would reveal the presence of a right-of-way, and (I think, but correct me if I'm wrong) everybody agrees that there is way too much cadastral data to include in OSM, and it's something that must be imported because it only exists in a real property office's database. Please clarify what you mean by cadastre. I can point to examples of all of the above. Please don't doubt me. You don't want me to have more facts on my side. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Sorry in advance, this mail just rehases arguments that I made before, but it seemed polite to reply. On 29/08/2015, Russ Nelson wrote: > moltonel 3x Combo writes: > > One can often assert that something was here even when nothing is left > > of that thing. And is nothing is left of that thing, it shouldn't be > > mapped. > > What about point A? What about point B? The *endpoints* do indeed > continue to exist, so "nothing is left of that thing" is not true > about most dismantled railways. That's precisely it, point A and B continue to exist, they can be mapped as abandoned/disused. What's between A and B did not continue to exist, and should not be mapped. We know perfectly where New York's World Trade Center used to be but there's no tower=dismantled at that location. > Should the map look like this (A)? ___ __ > > Or should it look like this (B)?___---__- > > Some people are arguing for A. I argue that B is a better > representation of what is there (the underscores) because it includes > the dismantled portions (the dashes). And unsurprisingly, I argue for A. Because it reflects the current state of the railroad. I do understant the appeal of being able to create a relation where each member follow the previous one without holes. But if reality has holes, so should the relation. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 23:46:58 -0400 Russ Nelson wrote: > Frederik Ramm writes: > > On 08/22/2015 11:07 PM, Lester Caine wrote: > > > What we need is a > > > database that already has all the data and simply identify when > > > some small elements of it cease to be current. > > > > In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) > > In OSM we do that by tagging the small elements properly. Deletion is > vandalism. No smiley. > And in case of elements no longer present correct tagging is a complete lack of tagging, therefore deleting is perfectly OK. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
By the way, I want to apologize for dumping so many messages in a row onto the list. I've not had a lot of sitting-in-front-of-the-computer time lately because I've been spending a lot of time gathering map data in the field: I'm ONE rail-trail short of cycling every rail-trail in New York State. Over a hundred of them, around 2800 miles, taking about two months of bicycling if I spent a full 8 hours every day on the trail, but in reality it's been an 11-year-long project. moltonel 3x Combo writes: > One can often assert that something was here even when nothing is left > of that thing. And is nothing is left of that thing, it shouldn't be > mapped. What about point A? What about point B? The *endpoints* do indeed continue to exist, so "nothing is left of that thing" is not true about most dismantled railways. Speaking of housing developments, I earlier pointed to the south end of Cazenovia, where a housing development has an obvious railbed to the north, and an obvious railbed to the south, and in people's backyards, a treeline where the railbed was. Should the map look like this (A)? ___ __ Or should it look like this (B)?___---__- Some people are arguing for A. I argue that B is a better representation of what is there (the underscores) because it includes the dismantled portions (the dashes). -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Dave F. writes: > On 23/08/2015 16:49, Frederik Ramm wrote: > > Hi, > > > > On 08/23/2015 02:27 AM, Balaco Baco wrote: > >> I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. To have no data and to > >> have the most recently obtained data are two very different things. > > Certainly you're not suggesting we map all these negatives. > > I think I'd rather map Dark Matter. Seems easier ;-) As I've pointed out many times in the past and apparently must point out again, because some people are not paying attention, nobody is asking you to map things you don't want to map. This is an open source project, and as such, NOBODY gets to make demands that anybody else do something. We can't demand that somebody write a module, or map a county. We CAN, however, demand that somebody stop deleting modules or ways that somebody else has added to the project. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Dave F. writes: > On 23/08/2015 01:27, Balaco Baco wrote: > >>> What we need is a > >>> database that already has all the data and simply identify when some > >>> small elements of it cease to be current. > >> In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) > > I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. > > Are you saying if a building gets demolished & replaced with a new one, > you wouldn't remove the original outline from OSM? This is also a strawman argument. Stop it. You are hurting your own case, and making my case. Do you really want to help the railway=dismantled people? No, you do not. So abandon this line of argument -- it is failure incarnate. Not a single person so far has suggested that everything that used to exist, or everything that has already been mapped but since changed, should remain. NOT ONE PERSON. Instead, I and others have said that since you can see a railway at point A, and you can see a railway at point B, it only makes sense to map it between those points for several reasons: o Chances are good that there are artifacts between point A and B that further investigation will reveal. o Mappable entities exist between those points which can only be understood by including the dismantled railways (e.g. bridges, roads, or buildings). o It's possible that cadastral data would reveal the presence of a right-of-way, and (I think, but correct me if I'm wrong) everybody agrees that there is way too much cadastral data to include in OSM, and it's something that must be imported because it only exists in a real property office's database. I can point to examples of all of the above. Please don't doubt me. You don't want me to have more facts on my side. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
moltonel writes: > Wrong data is worse than absent data. Right. So tag dismantled railways with (oh, dare I say it?) railway=dismantled. Correct data is better than wrong data, right? -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Frederik Ramm writes: > The fact "there is no railroad here", however, is not something that I > would consider useful; because where would it end? I'm standing at a > lakeshore - there's no railway here, also there's no forest here, and no > building, and no rugby pitch, no telephone booth, and no power lines. > Certainly you're not suggesting we map all these negatives. IN FACT NOBODY IS SUGGESTING THIS. This is called a "strawman argument". You create a position that nobody actually holds, which is unreasonable, and then you say "This Is Unreasonable" and then you use everyone's agreement to claim that a different position is wrong. The use of a strawman argument is evidence that you have no viable argument against the position that people actually hold. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Frederik Ramm writes: > On 08/22/2015 11:07 PM, Lester Caine wrote: > > What we need is a > > database that already has all the data and simply identify when some > > small elements of it cease to be current. > > In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) In OSM we do that by tagging the small elements properly. Deletion is vandalism. No smiley. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
I don't understand why people suggest things that don't work. How do I make a route in OSM that includes the active railways, disused railways, washed_out railways (where you can SEE rails in the river), cycleways, footways, bridges, hedges, cuttings, embankments, and shadows in fields if there is not a way in every case? Or conversely, how does OHM allow for a route that includes ways going through a farmer's field where everything has been plowed away, the cinders scattered, the spikes buried beyond the reach of metal detectors, where I, even I, agree that there is nothing to be seen there AND ways where any damned fool can see that this used to be a railroad because it lines up with existing tracks? (hint: like OSM, it doesn't.) Perhaps some day in the future, what you suggest will be practical when the data schema has been revised to implement layers stored in different databases. For now, no. Please stop suggesting this. -russ Tim Waters writes: > I'd like to recommend OpenHistoricalMap.org (OHM) which will welcome > all types of historical, disused and abandoned features. Please, go > add every abandoned railway to OHM, and then together we can > eventually get an accurate map of 1880s railway network compared to a > 1940's, compared to yesterdays world! > > Tim > > > > On 22/08/2015, Jason Remillard wrote: > > Hi > > > >> I'd therefor like to propose that abandoned railways be treated like > >> borders. Even if you can't see it along a given stretch there are people > >> who can and they have put a huge amount of effort into that work. Lets > >> respect that and strengthen the community rather than deleting it and > >> doing > >> the opposite. > > > > I 100% agree. The amount of data required to map abandoned railroads > > is tiny. An occasional way through a new development is not going to > > hurt anybody or impair normal mapping activity. > > > > Apparently, the people that like to map railroads think OSM is the > > best place to do this. We are not in any position to be chasing them > > off. OSM has a long, long way to go still. Above all else, it needs to > > more active mappers if we are serious about being the best map for the > > entire world. Also, It seems likely they are also mapping non > > controversial things like roads while working on the railroads. > > > > Dave F, OSM is doing just fine. It is full of contradictions, > > redundancies, disagreements, and broken rules (see the tagging list). > > It is not some kind of business database that requires normalization, > > strict schema definitions, and vigilant protection. It can't have any > > once sentence rules defining its boundaries. It is a great big blank > > sheet of paper, relax and let the railroad people draw on it a bit. > > Nobody is going to get hurt. > > > > Jason > > > > ___ > > talk mailing list > > talk@openstreetmap.org > > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > > > > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 8/27/2015 11:02 AM, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: There is no real-life trace left of https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/366610457 (amongst others) but it is currently in OSM. To me that is mapped fine for a dismantled/abandoned railway. There are visible signs of the railway on each end of that segment and if you know what you are looking at, the line of trees along the east side of the abandoned segment might even indicate something to an experienced mapper. But more importantly, if you are mapping the visible segments to the sw and ne, why have gaps between them? Using the abandoned tag on that now less obvious segment seems like the most constructive, precise and useful way to map the overall former active line, much (most?) of which is still visible on the landscape. Perhaps, "zooming out" and looking at the overall mapping context helps make the use of the "dismantled/abandoned mapping conventions clearer rather than only looking at one short, 10 meter segment in isolation. cheers blake ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
(I hadn't subscribed to this list, so the reply is to a seemingly random message and not directly related to that) I believe much of this recent discussion is happening because there's a ... misconception that hasn't been addressed, and the actual tags that have been mentioned suggest readers to believe so. I believe I've mentioned this idea in the past, but I feel compelled to have it included in the discussion so that the arguments on either side refer to the same concepts. When a way no longer is an intact railway (or railbed), we don't want to claim it "is a railway" but rather "this was a railway"; the railwayness becomes an attribute of what is, i.e. "this row of trees and this embankment were for a railway and part of the railbed"), when previously it described "an object", i.e. "this is a railway and railbed". In short, they shouldn't use the same *key* in the tag. I therefore propose ** instead of changing the tag value to railway=dismantled, it would be better if mappers changed the tag key to "was:railway"="rail" following the method of lifecycle prefixes (quotation marks only for added readability) ** http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lifecycle_prefix The prefix can be dismantled: or razed: or destroyed: or removed: or was: or something else; I personally prefer "was:" as it's applicable to a lot of other cases, and applies to all that "were" something. At least that way the information (that the real world object no longer is an object) is stored in osm, in contrast to plain deleting which doesn't tell anyone if it was deleted because the way was a mapping mistake or just replaced by a better version. Even if it's deleted later by someone who finds it impeding his editing, it is still *possible* to extract that difference. With a change of key, even those who blindly draw all ways with railway=* (for example the humanitarian layer on osm.org seems to do so) won't be drawing false features. Reassembling straight-away-deleted railway ways and figuring out which ways presented the last coherent state of things requires manual work from everyone who wants to see that information (think 30 years from now), but if the real world removal is first tagged, the most manual part of that work is already done, even if somebody later deletes the ways. And it would be at least possible to automatically watch for and store all those objects in OHM or similar, but discard the "technical deletions". At least in urban environments the small details that tell a railway existed can remain for centuries: unusual colonnades, loading platforms, fasteners on the walls, curved buildings in an otherwise square road network etc., so the line between "totally gone" and identifiable isn't a clear cut line; why would it be paramount to delete stuff just when the iron beams were lifted, or when new asphalt was poured there? A possible life of a railway section in urban environment, a simple case: - the railway construction starts: railway=construction - the railway is in active use: railway=rail (say, in this example, in the middle of the city harbour, between warehouses which even have loading platforms at the height of the freight carriage floors) - the railway is no longer needed, no trains run there: railway=disused (everybody sees it's a railway). (a road had been built between the warehouses) - the track is converted to a sidewalk (the harbour is scaling down), but the loading platforms and the geometry remains; the way was a railway, and can be identified as such with expertice, and/or local knowledge and/or old sources: following the method of lifecycle prefixes, the best tag: "was:railway"="rail" The road under my window is a bus-only road, that was a freight rail track for decades (tracks ran in the center) before the buses started to run there, then only occasionally used at night, then disused for some years before the tracks were removed last summer. They'll build, eventually, tram tracks where the driving lanes are now, but then the road (emergency vehicles only) will still be something that was a railway track. A linear clearing with some scrubby young trees in a small but healthy wood area nearby is also there because that freight track was partially realigned a few decades ago (only the tracks were removed, still railway=abandoned). If nothing is built there, the line could, in some or several decades, become indistinguishable; at that point it would be appropriate to change to was:railway=rail. Verifiability doesn't mean it's easily seen with the naked eye at ground level, but that the next person can use any combination of observations, previously mapped related data, and reliable sources to make up their mind if the feature is or isn't (or wasn't) correct. That way drawing multiple generations of past buildings in cities with a long history (an example mentioned here) wouldn't be verifiable, because even if some preindustrial maps are suprisingly accurate, the sources don't have enough acc
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 27/08/2015, Andy Townsend wrote: > Back in > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2015-August/073669.html I > had a look at what caused the current flurry of discussion. Part of > the line in question was deleted by a mapper new to OSM; it was their > second and last OSM edit. I find it hard to believe that this new OSM > mapper "had a thing about deleting abandoned railways". Likely they just > didn't understand something, were confused, and it somehow got deleted. Good catch, sorry I forgot about it. I agree that http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/259134943 should not have been deleted, and that it certainly was just a mishap that the contributor didn't even notice. So restore the way, send a "watch out" message to the newbie, and call it a day (well, do also improve the tagging of that abandoned railway : some sections are dismantled and some have been converted to various types of highway, etc). But I doubt that Russ would have had such a strong reaction if it was just for that case. I'm sure there were other willfull deletions, and lacks of communication. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Thu, Aug 27, 2015 at 4:02 AM, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: > On 27/08/2015, Paul Johnson wrote: > > I believe we're talking about abandoned railroad rights of way that > still > > mark the landscape, not something that no longer has a trace. > > No : > > Russ Nelson nelson at crynwr.com wrote Thu Aug 20 05:12:49 UTC 2015 > > Here's a perfect example of how a railway should be mapped: > > > https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/42.92237423246795/-75.8534094581493 Well, I stand corrected. On that area, where the railway=dismantled section exists, based on what I'm seeing in iD, I wouldn't map it at all. There is no real-life trace left of > https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/366610457 (amongst others) but it is > currently in OSM. > > At we're not least not exclusively about still-visible abandoned; the > OP hasn't given a list of guilty deletions so it's hard to judge how > justified each deletion was. > Yeah, that's definitely chasing ghosts. If that's what we're talking about for railway=dismantled, then that should probably go into some other database instead. About the closest to something like that I would map is like the abandoned railways seen at https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/45.50828/-122.83817, which at last time I was on the ground, was a bit more visually apparent on the ground than in the aerial thanks to the more solid railway ballast slowly sinking into the surrounding silt. No idea when the railway was abandoned, but I'm guessing sometime during my childhood as Jenkins Road still had railroad crossing symbols painted on it during high school, the bike lanes still had it during the last decade and were finally completely removed last decade. Along with an infill for the grade crossing which was tall and rough enough that had it been intentional rather than shoddy worksmanship would have been a traffic_calming=table. However, it couldn't have been too recent before I started high school (1996) as the Reeser's Fine Foods factory across Jenkins from that abandoned wye had been there long enough to get a rather weather-worn look and a fuel pump located in their yard was old enough to have reel dials for the readout. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 27/08/2015 10:02, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: ... the OP hasn't given a list of guilty deletions so it's hard to judge how justified each deletion was. Back in https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2015-August/073669.html I had a look at what caused the current flurry of discussion. Part of the line in question was deleted by a mapper new to OSM; it was their second and last OSM edit. I find it hard to believe that this new OSM mapper "had a thing about deleting abandoned railways". Likely they just didn't understand something, were confused, and it somehow got deleted. If just 10% of the effort that's been put into this discussion had been put into welcoming new mappers and explaining things to them* we'd be in a far better place as a project. Cheers, Andy (SomeoneElse) * yes, this also means explaining why "amenity=Bank" is not a good tag rather than "just fixing it". Of course if they don't reply it does make sense to fix obvious typos - but explain the problem in a human message (not just "you did it wrong") first. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 27/08/2015, Paul Johnson wrote: > I believe we're talking about abandoned railroad rights of way that still > mark the landscape, not something that no longer has a trace. No : Russ Nelson nelson at crynwr.com wrote Thu Aug 20 05:12:49 UTC 2015 > Here's a perfect example of how a railway should be mapped: > https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/42.92237423246795/-75.8534094581493 There is no real-life trace left of https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/366610457 (amongst others) but it is currently in OSM. At we're not least not exclusively about still-visible abandoned; the OP hasn't given a list of guilty deletions so it's hard to judge how justified each deletion was. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 3:32 PM, Tim Waters wrote: > I'd like to recommend OpenHistoricalMap.org (OHM) which will welcome > all types of historical, disused and abandoned features. Please, go > add every abandoned railway to OHM, and then together we can > eventually get an accurate map of 1880s railway network compared to a > 1940's, compared to yesterdays world! > I believe we're talking about abandoned railroad rights of way that still mark the landscape, not something that no longer has a trace. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 25/08/2015, Blake Girardot wrote: > I am not a railway enthusiast, but I do recognize the important role > they play in the development and landscape of the US and probably other > countries. > > I really appreciate those who map in-use, disused and abandoned > railways, thank you for adding important, rich and useful data to the map. > > I think part of this conversation should be reprized: Abandoned railways > are recognizable by people who know what they are looking at, they are > in essence "there on the ground currently", just because I don't have > the knowledge to recognize and map them, does not mean they do not exist. For the record again, lest people think that my views are more extreme than they are, I agree with the above. Where I draw the line is against railway=dismantled, which by definition don't exist anymore. Typical examples are going thru a housing estate, a demolished (and rubble cleared) bridge, or a field where the former railway isn't even visible in crop groth differences. When the state goes from "not obviously there" to "obviously not there". > All I understood Russ to be asking was to stop deleting and suggesting > deletion of abandoned railways without checking with the person or > people who know what they are doing in regards to mapping them and I > agree that should stop. Heavy changes to someone else's work should come with a message to that someone else, but I'd argue that whoever deleted a railway=* going thru a housing estate knew what they were doing. > As mentioned above, I see no harm to mapping an abandoned railway, even > if it is based on two end points and knowledge of the railway system. One can often assert that something was here even when nothing is left of that thing. And is nothing is left of that thing, it shouldn't be mapped. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 24/08/2015, Richard Fairhurst wrote: > cycle.travel's rendering is 1300 lines of CartoCSS, 1400 of .mml, 300 lines > of Lua preprocessing, and 350 lines of Ruby/PostGIS postprocessing. > > Of this, the code required to show only operational railways is 100 > characters - a rounding error. It's a detail in a 1400-character line of > .mml and it was copied directly from OSM-Bright, the base style used by > switch2osm. In other words, anyone setting up an OSM tileserver from the > canonical instructions already gets this for free. Fair enough, it's easy to get a bootstrap (for the record, I was talking about knowledge, not lines of code). The bootstrap might not have been used or might not be available for a particular usecase, but I get your point. Sorry for placing the principle of least surprise bar too high. > There are plenty of issues with OSM railway tagging that make decent > rendering, routing and analysis hard. (railway=station covering both > mainline stations and preserved heritage attractions is the first that > springs to mind.) railway=dismantled is not one of them. > > As to whether utterly dismantled railways belong in the OSM database, I > couldn't really care less. In terms of doctrine, they probably don't, though > let's not overstate the issue: I suspect more bytes have been spilled in > this thread than it would take to encode a dump of current > railway=dismantled in .pbf format. I'm aware of that (and skewing the ratio even further as I write this), but this is about more than just railways. Sorry for the fearmongering, but letting one kind of nonexistent objects into OSM opens the door to more. Countering with "existing crap in the db doesn't justify adding more crap" hasn't worked well in the past. To be honest, I too could live with a few railway=dismantled in the db. The bigger issues are the idea of allowing some data in even when you agree it shouldn't be there, protecting that data for political rather than technical reasons, and the precedent this would set. > But Gregory, Greg and Jason have it > right. This is not about some precious notion of purity, it's about > community. > > Outside the two fundamentals of "openly licensed" and "crowdsourced", OSM is > characterised by its pragmatism. We do what works. What works is a community > of people who feel respected and empowered. By preventing contributors to fix errors in the db (as miscommunicated as they were, I'm sure the deletions that started this thread were meant as fixes) just because they come from some kind of Most Valued Contributor, you're disempowering the community as a whole to empower a fraction of it. I'm not going to pull statistics out of my magick hat, but to me this looks like a net long-term loss. > And bearing in mind that we're > talking about the US here, we need all the community we can get. > > Read Minh Nguyen's excellent new diary post > (http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Minh%20Nguyen/diary/35646). Even in the > super-affluent, super-educated Bay Area, OSM is barely at the stage that > Europe reached five or more years ago. It is "an endless parade of outdated > street configurations, missing landmarks, test edits". > > But, he notes, there is "plenty of rail and bike infrastructure". > > This is what characterised OSM adoption here in Britain. The enthusiasts are > the first to "get it": the railfans, the cyclists. Widespread take-up comes > later, once the enthusiasts have built something good. > > The last thing we want to do in the US is drive away the few enthusiasts we > currently have. I know :( I'd hate to see someone leave because of that discussion. I'd love to see improvements in the OSM tooling and/or schemas so that we can properly map historical features. So that dismantled railways (amongst other no-longer-existing features) can be mapped without hurting present-day mapping, which was initially OSM's only usecase. So that entering that kind of data isn't a deletion-worthy error anymore, but a normal usecase. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 8/21/2015 8:51 PM, Gregory Arenius wrote: The OSM community is what OSM is even more than it is a map. People that are passionate about railways are a part of that community and they do contribute a lot, especially in the US where we don't have as many mappers. They pour lots of time and love and passion into their efforts. I don't think a policy of deleting that work just because what they're mapping isn't immediately visible on the ground is a good way of building and strengthening our community. In fact, as it is easy to see in this thread, its actively doing the opposite. And community is what makes OSM. I'd therefor like to propose that abandoned railways be treated like borders. Even if you can't see it along a given stretch there are people who can and they have put a huge amount of effort into that work. Lets respect that and strengthen the community rather than deleting it and doing the opposite. Cheers, Greg I just want to add my voice to those who support the above approach. I am not a railway enthusiast, but I do recognize the important role they play in the development and landscape of the US and probably other countries. I really appreciate those who map in-use, disused and abandoned railways, thank you for adding important, rich and useful data to the map. I think part of this conversation should be reprized: Abandoned railways are recognizable by people who know what they are looking at, they are in essence "there on the ground currently", just because I don't have the knowledge to recognize and map them, does not mean they do not exist. All I understood Russ to be asking was to stop deleting and suggesting deletion of abandoned railways without checking with the person or people who know what they are doing in regards to mapping them and I agree that should stop. As mentioned above, I see no harm to mapping an abandoned railway, even if it is based on two end points and knowledge of the railway system. No one has to render it, but people like me who print custom maps for hiking / exploring / geocaching might very well choose to render it for our activities as they are part of the landscape even if not obvious. I would also like to see them in OHM just help OHM along, but not instead of in OSM. Regards, Blake ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 24/08/2015 04:23, Balaco Baco wrote: Are you saying if a building gets demolished & replaced with a new one, you wouldn't remove the original outline from OSM? I'm saying that simply deleting the original outline, leaving nothing in its place is different than putting the *same quality outline* for the newer building that should be there. And while this new data does not exist, the old one should stay there as it is. It should, at most, be marked with a tag such as "end date" or "demolished" or anything similar. Simply deleting it is bad. No. If it's gone, it's gone. If there's no new structure to replace it, then leave the area empty. If it's becomes a construction site, tag it as that. If it becomes a brownfield site, tag it as that. Please base your editing on facts & evidence. And to justify the deletion for a currently demolished building is silly and naive: buildings are usually replaced much faster than maps are expected to last, and the work of updating it twice, once for the "empty space, dem. building" and the future "new building outline" is better done only one time. I've read this a few times & I'm struggling to comprehend. You're saying I shouldn't remove a building from OSM that's already been demolished in the real world because... ? <& that's where you lost me> --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
moltonel 3x Combo wrote: > Remember that interpreting osm data is actually a lot of work. > Very few people have the manpower to verify what railroad= > dismantled actually mean to decide wheter they want to use > or filter out that data. Most of them will just match railway=*, > plus perhaps some special cases for railway=rail and railway= > subway. Now they're looking at historical data without even > knowing it. They are confused. Please don't make stuff up. cycle.travel's rendering is 1300 lines of CartoCSS, 1400 of .mml, 300 lines of Lua preprocessing, and 350 lines of Ruby/PostGIS postprocessing. Of this, the code required to show only operational railways is 100 characters - a rounding error. It's a detail in a 1400-character line of .mml and it was copied directly from OSM-Bright, the base style used by switch2osm. In other words, anyone setting up an OSM tileserver from the canonical instructions already gets this for free. There are plenty of issues with OSM railway tagging that make decent rendering, routing and analysis hard. (railway=station covering both mainline stations and preserved heritage attractions is the first that springs to mind.) railway=dismantled is not one of them. As to whether utterly dismantled railways belong in the OSM database, I couldn't really care less. In terms of doctrine, they probably don't, though let's not overstate the issue: I suspect more bytes have been spilled in this thread than it would take to encode a dump of current railway=dismantled in .pbf format. But Gregory, Greg and Jason have it right. This is not about some precious notion of purity, it's about community. Outside the two fundamentals of "openly licensed" and "crowdsourced", OSM is characterised by its pragmatism. We do what works. What works is a community of people who feel respected and empowered. And bearing in mind that we're talking about the US here, we need all the community we can get. Read Minh Nguyen's excellent new diary post (http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Minh%20Nguyen/diary/35646). Even in the super-affluent, super-educated Bay Area, OSM is barely at the stage that Europe reached five or more years ago. It is "an endless parade of outdated street configurations, missing landmarks, test edits". But, he notes, there is "plenty of rail and bike infrastructure". This is what characterised OSM adoption here in Britain. The enthusiasts are the first to "get it": the railfans, the cyclists. Widespread take-up comes later, once the enthusiasts have built something good. The last thing we want to do in the US is drive away the few enthusiasts we currently have. Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Re-Abandoned-Rails-tp5852866p5853037.html Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 24/08/2015 7:25 PM, moltonel 3x Combo wrote: On 24/08/2015, Balaco Baco wrote: buildings are usually replaced much faster than maps are expected to last, and the work of updating it twice, once for the "empty space, dem. building" and the future "new building outline" is better done only one time. It's nice to avoid unecessary version churn, but if a mapper keeps up with the real-world changes there's nothing wrong with updating OSM too. If you search the archives you'll find plenty of discussions on "mapping temporary features" and how ephemeral a feature needs to be before it loses its mapworthyness. For example a road closed during a weekend is a clear no-map, but construction work is usually considered mappable if it'll last a few months and there is a local mapper to keep track of the updates. "how long a map is expected to last" is a tricky question especially for OSM. Paper maps are often updated yearly but kept for decades in people's homes. I have an old map passed down though the family .. 1860s .. still has features present today. Some features have gone, some replaced with new structures, a few moved. While the intention was a map ... back then there was little though given to how long it would last .. well worn and folded many times it has lasted well. The scale varies, hand drawn and then printed on a printing press. Would I map its features into OSM? No, most would not be interested, some would be confused by them, some would not believe some features. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 24/08/2015, Balaco Baco wrote: > buildings are usually > replaced much faster than maps are expected to last, and the work of > updating it twice, once for the "empty space, dem. building" and the > future "new building outline" is better done only one time. It's nice to avoid unecessary version churn, but if a mapper keeps up with the real-world changes there's nothing wrong with updating OSM too. If you search the archives you'll find plenty of discussions on "mapping temporary features" and how ephemeral a feature needs to be before it loses its mapworthyness. For example a road closed during a weekend is a clear no-map, but construction work is usually considered mappable if it'll last a few months and there is a local mapper to keep track of the updates. "how long a map is expected to last" is a tricky question especially for OSM. Paper maps are often updated yearly but kept for decades in people's homes. Google Map has TOS that mostly forbid cacheing data yourself for later. Data on osm.org is updated minutely, but the osm data on a satnav may never get an update at all. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
> Are you saying if a building gets demolished & replaced with a new one, > you wouldn't remove the original outline from OSM? I'm saying that simply deleting the original outline, leaving nothing in its place is different than putting the *same quality outline* for the newer building that should be there. And while this new data does not exist, the old one should stay there as it is. It should, at most, be marked with a tag such as "end date" or "demolished" or anything similar. Simply deleting it is bad. And to justify the deletion for a currently demolished building is silly and naive: buildings are usually replaced much faster than maps are expected to last, and the work of updating it twice, once for the "empty space, dem. building" and the future "new building outline" is better done only one time. Further, in places like OSM, where contributors for the second part cannot even be guaranteed, it should be mandatory to follow guidelines and ideas similar to this one. -- Balaco On Sun, Aug 23, 2015, at 15:03, Dave F. wrote: > On 23/08/2015 01:27, Balaco Baco wrote: > >>> What we need is a > >>> database that already has all the data and simply identify when some > >>> small elements of it cease to be current. > >> In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) > > I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. > > Are you saying if a building gets demolished & replaced with a new one, > you wouldn't remove the original outline from OSM? > > --- > This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. > https://www.avast.com/antivirus > > > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- http://www.fastmail.com - Access your email from home and the web ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 24/08/2015 4:24 AM, Dave F. wrote: On 23/08/2015 19:11, Mike N wrote: On 8/23/2015 2:03 PM, Dave F. wrote: Are you saying if a building gets demolished & replaced with a new one, you wouldn't remove the original outline from OSM? In my case, I've begun to do just that, adding a note to alert the 'Bing tracers' that something has changed. But I would eventually remove it after Bing is updated. Only historic or notable buildings would go into OHM. To clarify, I'm talking about the main OSM database, not the Historic one. I'm unsure why you think Bing is somehow the primary arbitrator of valid data. If it's gone in the real world delete it in OSM. OSM is a database of *current* entities. I think it is to stop some mapper using the 'old' bing image to 'update' OSM - thus removing Mikes building that is actually current. Start and end dates on the features may help .. but both features need to be present to ensure that fellow mappers see the history. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 23/08/2015, Mike N wrote: > On 8/23/2015 2:03 PM, Dave F. wrote: >> Are you saying if a building gets demolished & replaced with a new one, >> you wouldn't remove the original outline from OSM? > > In my case, I've begun to do just that, adding a note to alert the 'Bing > tracers' that something has changed. But I would eventually remove it > after Bing is updated. Only historic or notable buildings would go > into OHM. That's actually something I do as well: http://www.openstreetmap.org/node/2554879309 but I only add a note=* node, I certainly don't keep any building=* closed way. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 23/08/2015, Balaco Baco wrote: > I don't think so. Wrong data happens to Bing Maps, to Google Maps and > probably to any other map we can obtain, electronically or in a paper. > Maps have dates attached to them - or should have, most of the time. The > fact is that: if I browse around my city, looking for streets and > brindges created in the last fews years, I will see mistakes (as I did > before). Yes, all maps have errors, wether it is outdated data, data that was never right, or missing data. > But it's better to have there what existed, as it was before, > than have just an emptyness in the area. How so ? Say I'm walking along an old railroad which OSM led me to believe continued for 10km, but is impassable at various points including a wheat field and a housing estate. Or I'm heading to the convenience store only to find it has closed years ago. Outdated data is wrong data, it is misleading and lowers the overall quality of the map. > Until someone fix it > (hopefully) or at least mark it as old, potentially wrong (without > deleting until an update is made!). That's just the normal mapping workflow, nobody is arguing against this. Nobody is proposing to "delete first, improve later". We make the best map we can, within the bounds of our knowledge and time constraints. > In the context being discussed here, recent changes should also cause > data deletion, but that's wrong, in my opinion. Data may be *replaced* > with newer data, with everything that's needed. Same thing here, we improve the map as much as we can. But maybe you don't have enough time right now to map everything, or meadows are so far off in your todo list that you never bother with them. But leaving known-outdated data in place just because you can't yet make a fully detailed mapping of the area doen't make sense either. > If people are doing something that is fiercely against the community > idea of OpenStreetMap, that it could be deleted. But that really seem > far from the truth. There are very few rules in OSM, but one of them is that we map on the ground and that we don't map historical features/events http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice#Map_what.27s_on_the_ground http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice#Don.27t_map_historic_events_and_historic_features Ways like https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/366610457 (and presumably many other railway=dismantled) fail these checks. > So that should be preserved, and its deletion, if > decided to be made, should give a reasonable opportunity for the data > contributors to backup that data - so their work is not lost, but may be > used somewhere else. Yes, giving a heads-up to a mapper when you edit a lot of his work is good etiquette. As for backup, the data is versioned in the db, you can always get the old data back. > Further, I'm not one of the users that would be confused with that. I > would find it unsual to see in a map. But being tagged and noted > somehow, should not be a problem at all. And to say the users who would > be confused with it are the "majority of them", is an vague argument you > do just to give some apparent strength to your idea. And I repeat: I > would not be confused with it, I don't think the majority of users would > be. Since OSM has always had a policy of containing only current data, it stands to reason that the majority of users only expect to find current data in OSM (or rather that anything that isn't current anymore needs to be fixed, and that it was current when it was added to osm). Wether you get confused when stumbling uppon data which violates that rule depends on what you're doing with the data. Remember that interpreting osm data is actually a lot of work. Very few people have the manpower to verify what railroad=dismantled actually mean to decide wheter they want to use or filter out that data. Most of them will just match railway=*, plus perhaps some special cases for railway=rail and railway=subway. Now they're looking at historical data without even knowing it. They are confused. > P. S.: this mailing list does not add a "Reply-to" header to mail > messages, as I'm used to. So I initially sent the answer to just one > person. This should be changed - may it not confuse the majority of > users!? It normally does, not sure what happened here. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 23/08/2015 19:11, Mike N wrote: On 8/23/2015 2:03 PM, Dave F. wrote: Are you saying if a building gets demolished & replaced with a new one, you wouldn't remove the original outline from OSM? In my case, I've begun to do just that, adding a note to alert the 'Bing tracers' that something has changed. But I would eventually remove it after Bing is updated. Only historic or notable buildings would go into OHM. To clarify, I'm talking about the main OSM database, not the Historic one. I'm unsure why you think Bing is somehow the primary arbitrator of valid data. If it's gone in the real world delete it in OSM. OSM is a database of *current* entities. --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 22/08/2015 00:57, Jason Remillard wrote: Hi I'd therefor like to propose that abandoned railways be treated like borders. Even if you can't see it along a given stretch there are people who can and they have put a huge amount of effort into that work. Lets respect that and strengthen the community rather than deleting it and doing the opposite. Dave F, OSM is doing just fine. It is full of contradictions, redundancies, disagreements, and broken rules (see the tagging list). So what? Already having crap in the database is not a valid reason to accept it, do nothing about it or add to it.. It is not some kind of business database that requires normalization, strict schema definitions, and vigilant protection. It can't have any once sentence rules defining its boundaries. It is a great big blank sheet of paper, relax and let the railroad people draw on it a bit. Nobody is going to get hurt. Nothing more irritating than someone telling you to "relax". So, if you're allowing the 'railroad people', who else would you give permissions to? Where will you stop? How cluttered would the database have to become until you decide that you might have made a judgemental error? Jason ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 8/23/2015 2:03 PM, Dave F. wrote: Are you saying if a building gets demolished & replaced with a new one, you wouldn't remove the original outline from OSM? In my case, I've begun to do just that, adding a note to alert the 'Bing tracers' that something has changed. But I would eventually remove it after Bing is updated. Only historic or notable buildings would go into OHM. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 23/08/2015 16:49, Frederik Ramm wrote: Hi, On 08/23/2015 02:27 AM, Balaco Baco wrote: I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. To have no data and to have the most recently obtained data are two very different things. Certainly you're not suggesting we map all these negatives. I think I'd rather map Dark Matter. Seems easier ;-) --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 23/08/2015 01:27, Balaco Baco wrote: What we need is a database that already has all the data and simply identify when some small elements of it cease to be current. In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. Are you saying if a building gets demolished & replaced with a new one, you wouldn't remove the original outline from OSM? --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Certainly not. But that's an extreme example of what I have read here, what I have seen in pictures and the (also extreme, unnecessary) actions taken with it. -- Balaco On Sun, Aug 23, 2015, at 12:49, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Hi, > > On 08/23/2015 02:27 AM, Balaco Baco wrote: > > I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. To have no data and to > > have the most recently obtained data are two very different things. > > I think you're arguing a different case here - one that is also > interesting but about something else, and that's "negative mapping". > > There is indeed a difference between "a road that doesn't have a name in > OSM" (the name might simply not have been surveyed yet) and "a road that > does not have a name in the real world". > > How to signal the fact that the road doesn't have a name, is indeed > something that people think about, and it is useful information not > least because it keeps mappers from unnecessarily trying to find out the > correct name ;) > > The fact "there is no railroad here", however, is not something that I > would consider useful; because where would it end? I'm standing at a > lakeshore - there's no railway here, also there's no forest here, and no > building, and no rugby pitch, no telephone booth, and no power lines. > Certainly you're not suggesting we map all these negatives. > > Bye > Frederik > > -- > Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" > > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- http://www.fastmail.com - A fast, anti-spam email service. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
> Wrong data is worse than absent data. Osm has so far only contained > current data, so that's what 99.99% of consumers expect to find in it, so > historical data is wrong data. That'll remain true as long as osm lacks a > good way to store historical data that doesn't confuse the vast majority > of users who are looking for current data. I don't think so. Wrong data happens to Bing Maps, to Google Maps and probably to any other map we can obtain, electronically or in a paper. Maps have dates attached to them - or should have, most of the time. The fact is that: if I browse around my city, looking for streets and brindges created in the last fews years, I will see mistakes (as I did before). But it's better to have there what existed, as it was before, than have just an emptyness in the area. Until someone fix it (hopefully) or at least mark it as old, potentially wrong (without deleting until an update is made!). In the context being discussed here, recent changes should also cause data deletion, but that's wrong, in my opinion. Data may be *replaced* with newer data, with everything that's needed. If people are doing something that is fiercely against the community idea of OpenStreetMap, that it could be deleted. But that really seem far from the truth. So that should be preserved, and its deletion, if decided to be made, should give a reasonable opportunity for the data contributors to backup that data - so their work is not lost, but may be used somewhere else. Further, I'm not one of the users that would be confused with that. I would find it unsual to see in a map. But being tagged and noted somehow, should not be a problem at all. And to say the users who would be confused with it are the "majority of them", is an vague argument you do just to give some apparent strength to your idea. And I repeat: I would not be confused with it, I don't think the majority of users would be. -- Balaco P. S.: this mailing list does not add a "Reply-to" header to mail messages, as I'm used to. So I initially sent the answer to just one person. This should be changed - may it not confuse the majority of users!? On Sun, Aug 23, 2015, at 12:06, moltonel wrote: > > > On 23 August 2015 01:27:54 GMT+01:00, Balaco Baco > wrote: > >> > What we need is a > >> > database that already has all the data and simply identify when > >some > >> > small elements of it cease to be current. > >> > >> In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) > > > >I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. To have no data and > >to > >have the most recently obtained data are two very different things. > > The most recently obtained data is that the objects are no longer here. > The 'no data' case matches no osm policy that i know, existing or > proposed. > > >With the first one you just end with something that isn't worth to ever > >try consulting because it may not have what you're looking for, so > >better not expend time with it. > > Wrong data is worse than absent data. Osm has so far only contained > current data, so that's what 99.99% of consumers expect to find in it, so > historical data is wrong data. That'll remain true as long as osm lacks a > good way to store historical data that doesn't confuse the vast majority > of users who are looking for current data. > > -- > Vincent Dp -- http://www.fastmail.com - The professional email service ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Hi, On 08/23/2015 02:27 AM, Balaco Baco wrote: > I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. To have no data and to > have the most recently obtained data are two very different things. I think you're arguing a different case here - one that is also interesting but about something else, and that's "negative mapping". There is indeed a difference between "a road that doesn't have a name in OSM" (the name might simply not have been surveyed yet) and "a road that does not have a name in the real world". How to signal the fact that the road doesn't have a name, is indeed something that people think about, and it is useful information not least because it keeps mappers from unnecessarily trying to find out the correct name ;) The fact "there is no railroad here", however, is not something that I would consider useful; because where would it end? I'm standing at a lakeshore - there's no railway here, also there's no forest here, and no building, and no rugby pitch, no telephone booth, and no power lines. Certainly you're not suggesting we map all these negatives. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 23 August 2015 01:27:54 GMT+01:00, Balaco Baco wrote: >> > What we need is a >> > database that already has all the data and simply identify when >some >> > small elements of it cease to be current. >> >> In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) > >I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. To have no data and >to >have the most recently obtained data are two very different things. The most recently obtained data is that the objects are no longer here. The 'no data' case matches no osm policy that i know, existing or proposed. >With the first one you just end with something that isn't worth to ever >try consulting because it may not have what you're looking for, so >better not expend time with it. Wrong data is worse than absent data. Osm has so far only contained current data, so that's what 99.99% of consumers expect to find in it, so historical data is wrong data. That'll remain true as long as osm lacks a good way to store historical data that doesn't confuse the vast majority of users who are looking for current data. -- Vincent Dp ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 22 August 2015 22:07:20 GMT+01:00, Lester Caine wrote: >BUT OHM has avoided importing all of the existing material. Manually >adding all that again is a pointless exercise. What we need is a >database that already has all the data Yes (or find a way to constantly merge current data into ohm) > and simply identify when some >small elements of it cease to be current. Identifying is simple, but what to do with those elements is much more complicated. Sorry, but foo=dismantled and end_date=* have a lot of issues, they're not good enough. So far we've avoided the problem by sticking to the "we map the present" principle (meaning stuff that no longer exists gets deleted). Before we can change that stance, we need a credible solution to the "map the past" usecase. -- Vincent Dp ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
> > What we need is a > > database that already has all the data and simply identify when some > > small elements of it cease to be current. > > In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. To have no data and to have the most recently obtained data are two very different things. With the first one you just end with something that isn't worth to ever try consulting because it may not have what you're looking for, so better not expend time with it. With the later one, you can be satisfied many times, and if it's not the current real situation, it should be close enough - or you can even contribute to correct or improve it, which should be much easier to do than making it all from the start, from nothing. -- Balaco On Sat, Aug 22, 2015, at 18:16, Frederik Ramm wrote: > Hi, > > On 08/22/2015 11:07 PM, Lester Caine wrote: > > What we need is a > > database that already has all the data and simply identify when some > > small elements of it cease to be current. > > In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) > > Bye > Frederik > > -- > Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" > > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk -- http://www.fastmail.com - Choose from over 50 domains or use your own ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Hi, On 08/22/2015 11:07 PM, Lester Caine wrote: > What we need is a > database that already has all the data and simply identify when some > small elements of it cease to be current. In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
On 22/08/15 21:32, Tim Waters wrote: > I'd like to recommend OpenHistoricalMap.org (OHM) which will welcome > all types of historical, disused and abandoned features. Please, go > add every abandoned railway to OHM, and then together we can > eventually get an accurate map of 1880s railway network compared to a > 1940's, compared to yesterdays world! BUT OHM has avoided importing all of the existing material. Manually adding all that again is a pointless exercise. What we need is a database that already has all the data and simply identify when some small elements of it cease to be current. -- Lester Caine - G8HFL - Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
I'd like to recommend OpenHistoricalMap.org (OHM) which will welcome all types of historical, disused and abandoned features. Please, go add every abandoned railway to OHM, and then together we can eventually get an accurate map of 1880s railway network compared to a 1940's, compared to yesterdays world! Tim On 22/08/2015, Jason Remillard wrote: > Hi > >> I'd therefor like to propose that abandoned railways be treated like >> borders. Even if you can't see it along a given stretch there are people >> who can and they have put a huge amount of effort into that work. Lets >> respect that and strengthen the community rather than deleting it and >> doing >> the opposite. > > I 100% agree. The amount of data required to map abandoned railroads > is tiny. An occasional way through a new development is not going to > hurt anybody or impair normal mapping activity. > > Apparently, the people that like to map railroads think OSM is the > best place to do this. We are not in any position to be chasing them > off. OSM has a long, long way to go still. Above all else, it needs to > more active mappers if we are serious about being the best map for the > entire world. Also, It seems likely they are also mapping non > controversial things like roads while working on the railroads. > > Dave F, OSM is doing just fine. It is full of contradictions, > redundancies, disagreements, and broken rules (see the tagging list). > It is not some kind of business database that requires normalization, > strict schema definitions, and vigilant protection. It can't have any > once sentence rules defining its boundaries. It is a great big blank > sheet of paper, relax and let the railroad people draw on it a bit. > Nobody is going to get hurt. > > Jason > > ___ > talk mailing list > talk@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Hi > I'd therefor like to propose that abandoned railways be treated like > borders. Even if you can't see it along a given stretch there are people > who can and they have put a huge amount of effort into that work. Lets > respect that and strengthen the community rather than deleting it and doing > the opposite. I 100% agree. The amount of data required to map abandoned railroads is tiny. An occasional way through a new development is not going to hurt anybody or impair normal mapping activity. Apparently, the people that like to map railroads think OSM is the best place to do this. We are not in any position to be chasing them off. OSM has a long, long way to go still. Above all else, it needs to more active mappers if we are serious about being the best map for the entire world. Also, It seems likely they are also mapping non controversial things like roads while working on the railroads. Dave F, OSM is doing just fine. It is full of contradictions, redundancies, disagreements, and broken rules (see the tagging list). It is not some kind of business database that requires normalization, strict schema definitions, and vigilant protection. It can't have any once sentence rules defining its boundaries. It is a great big blank sheet of paper, relax and let the railroad people draw on it a bit. Nobody is going to get hurt. Jason ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Gregory Arenius writes: > The OSM community is what OSM is even more than it is a map. People that > are passionate about railways are a part of that community and they do > contribute a lot, especially in the US where we don't have as many > mappers. They pour lots of time and love and passion into their efforts. > I don't think a policy of deleting that work just because what they're > mapping isn't immediately visible on the ground is a good way of building > and strengthening our community. In fact, as it is easy to see in this > thread, its actively doing the opposite. And community is what makes OSM. > > I'd therefor like to propose that abandoned railways be treated like > borders. Even if you can't see it along a given stretch there are people > who can and they have put a huge amount of effort into that work. Lets > respect that and strengthen the community rather than deleting it and doing > the opposite. Well said. I agree that community is being harmed by the deletionist mentality. pgpljzVYnofbV.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails
Err.. Ok. In that case we should keep all of Europe's borders within OSM going all the way back to the Roman empire & before. Not such a good idea eh? If you want to map irrelevant data just to keep users happy then you'll be happy with me mapping every route I've walked & ridden? I'll name them 'Dave's Routes' Not such a good idea eh? Do you keep old buildings. roads, schools etc? No. So why railways? There was a group who wanted to add historic data in the current database. I live in a city which dates back to Roman times. How unusable would that be if just all the buildings were added? If someone wants a historic railway map they should scrape the data into a separate database & overlay onto a current OSM rendering. As an aside, personally I don't feel OSM is a community. I feel little comradeship to you or any other mappers. I contribute as I see it as better map to the alternatives. Dave F. On 21/08/2015 19:51, Gregory Arenius wrote: The OSM community is what OSM is even more than it is a map. People that are passionate about railways are a part of that community and they do contribute a lot, especially in the US where we don't have as many mappers. They pour lots of time and love and passion into their efforts. I don't think a policy of deleting that work just because what they're mapping isn't immediately visible on the ground is a good way of building and strengthening our community. In fact, as it is easy to see in this thread, its actively doing the opposite. And community is what makes OSM. I'd therefor like to propose that abandoned railways be treated like borders. Even if you can't see it along a given stretch there are people who can and they have put a huge amount of effort into that work. Lets respect that and strengthen the community rather than deleting it and doing the opposite. Cheers, Greg ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk