Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Stephen Gower]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 07:18:04AM -0700, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>
> Sorry, where was I?

I don't know about you, but I was in mid-Wales.  It was very sunny.

s

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Tom Hughes]

On 11/06/12 16:18, Richard Fairhurst wrote:


Which is a shame, because mid-Wales is lovely.


Well it is to you as a boater ;-) To everybody else right now it's a big 
lake...


Tom

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Richard Fairhurst]

Russ Nelson wrote:
> I think that the people who wish that the USA had been mapped
> just like Europe have NO IDEA how big the USA is, nor how 
> empty it is.

True enough, but then, I often think that the people who scoff at the people
who wish that the USA had been mapped just like Europe and who have NO IDEA
how empty the USA is... have never been to mid-Wales.

Which is a shame, because mid-Wales is lovely.

Sorry, where was I?

cheers
Richard



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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Simon Poole]

That is naturally offset by big empty places, being

EMPTY

(except if you are in to mapping non-road stuff, but then you get what
you deserve).

Simon

Am 11.06.2012 15:08, schrieb Stephen Hope:
> Or how big almost any place not in Europe is.  I still remember
> somebody suggesting a kayak safari to map the Australian coast rather
> than using imagery/PGS imports.
>
> Stephen
>
>
>
> On 10 June 2012 14:56, Russ Nelson  > wrote:
>
> Me too. I think that the people who wish that the USA had been mapped
> just like Europe have NO IDEA how big the USA is, nor how empty it is.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_County,_New_York
> It is comparable in size to Fiji, Kuwait, Slovenia, or Israel, but
> only 5,000 people live there. There is only one diesel station in the
> entire county.
>
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Stephen Hope]

Or how big almost any place not in Europe is.  I still remember somebody
suggesting a kayak safari to map the Australian coast rather than using
imagery/PGS imports.

Stephen



On 10 June 2012 14:56, Russ Nelson  wrote:

> Me too. I think that the people who wish that the USA had been mapped
> just like Europe have NO IDEA how big the USA is, nor how empty it is.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_County,_New_York
> It is comparable in size to Fiji, Kuwait, Slovenia, or Israel, but
> only 5,000 people live there. There is only one diesel station in the
> entire county.
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Russ Nelson]

Phil! Gold writes:
 > I can only speak for myself, but I'm happy that TIGER was imported.  I
 > grumble about its quality problems and quirks all the time, usually while
 > I'm fixing them, but I think the US is much better off with that import
 > than it would have been without it.

Me too. I think that the people who wish that the USA had been mapped
just like Europe have NO IDEA how big the USA is, nor how empty it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamilton_County,_New_York
It is comparable in size to Fiji, Kuwait, Slovenia, or Israel, but
only 5,000 people live there. There is only one diesel station in the
entire county.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Russ Nelson]

Worst Fixer writes:
 > Hello Frederik,

You mean "Hallo".

 > I see.

You mean "Ich see."

 > I would not expect that.

You mean "Ich would nicht expect that."

Suddenly, your English becomes better once your trolling becomes
successful and people start to oppose you directly. Odd how that
happens.

 > OSM has strict privacy policy, that says
 > "nothing but your user name will ever be disclosed". User name is
 > needed only to fight vandalism and have way to contact. Not to find
 > people in real world.

Um, no. It is also used to establish a reputation, so that people know
what kinds of things to expect from you. So far, all we know to expect
from you is 1) challenges to the existing import policy, 2) really bad
imitations of German typos, and 3) an attempt to rewrite the import
policy presumably more in line with how you think it should work.

You're trying to game the process of doing imports. I suggest that you
will make more friends and fewer enemies if you 1) admit that you're
really a long-term OSM editor, 2) quit pretending that you're trying
to comply with a system you obviously think is broken, and 3) tell us
how you think it's broken and how you think it should be
fixed. Because, really, this misdirection is getting tiresome.

"Ich" my ass.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Nathan Edgars II]

On 6/6/2012 3:11 PM, Tirkon wrote:

Worst Fixer  wrote:


It means that we must revert things like TIGER and CanVec. Am I right?


I think fundamentally you are right with this point. My impression is
that many people at OSM regret these imports - in fact the longer they
are involved in the project.


Most opinions I've seen are that TIGER is imperfect but better than 
nothing as a starting point.


I imagine Wikipedia would have
been imported so far and the user were damned to correct it and only
add bits and bobs. I am pretty sure it never ever would have had that
success it had.


Pull up five articles on small-to-midsized U.S. cities in English 
Wikipedia. You'll probably see many similarities. This is because they 
were created in the early days of Wikipedia by user Rambot, using US 
Census Bureau data (which TIGER also happens to be).


IMHO the community impact of imports should be described in extenso
before any technical stuff is mentioned. And yes - it should be
mentioned that TIGER and its friends were early mistakes of OSM.


This view that they were mistakes is far from widespread.

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Maarten Deen]

On 2012-06-07 00:20, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:

2012/6/7 Clifford Snow :
I've only been involved with OSM for a short while, but I believe 
that
imports do help.  I have fixed some of the bad TIGER imports but 
without

them much of the US wouldn't be mapped.



That is an open question. Maybe there would be more mappers if all 
the

data was crowdsourced. It is much more fun for many mappers to be the
first to draw a road than to fix errors in apparently complete data.
But we will never know, what actually would have happened if we 
didn't
import the Tiger. Maybe you're right and there would just be an 
almost

empty map...


Until you hold a survey, nobody knows. The Netherlands was completely 
filled with AND data and I'm very happy with that. It meant that there 
was a working correct baseline to work from. Germany and Belgium were 
all OSM mapped, and still there are area's with lesser coverage.
Especially in remote areas of the world the coverage is poor without 
proper imports. It is true that imports should be correct. The IGBE 
import in Brazil is not so good.


But on the whole I am very happy with the imports.

Regards,
Maarten


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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2012/6/7 Clifford Snow :
> I've only been involved with OSM for a short while, but I believe that
> imports do help.  I have fixed some of the bad TIGER imports but without
> them much of the US wouldn't be mapped.


That is an open question. Maybe there would be more mappers if all the
data was crowdsourced. It is much more fun for many mappers to be the
first to draw a road than to fix errors in apparently complete data.
But we will never know, what actually would have happened if we didn't
import the Tiger. Maybe you're right and there would just be an almost
empty map...

cheers,
Martin

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Clifford Snow]

On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 12:44 PM, Phil! Gold  wrote:

>
> I can only speak for myself, but I'm happy that TIGER was imported.  I
> grumble about its quality problems and quirks all the time, usually while
> I'm fixing them, but I think the US is much better off with that import
> than it would have been without it.  I've only been here for a couple of
> years, so maybe I haven't been around long enough to regret it, but I
> probably wouldn't have gotten started with OSM if the TIGER-imported
> framework hadn't already made it reasonably useful to start with.
>
> I've only been involved with OSM for a short while, but I believe that
imports do help.  I have fixed some of the bad TIGER imports but without
them much of the US wouldn't be mapped.  My cousin moved to a new house
north of Minneapolis.  When I looked on OSM to see where she lived, there
are no streets.  Yet Bing imagery shows all of the streets.  It is an
indication that more mappers are needed.  But until then, imports fill that
gap.

Import guidelines are good. Guides can help minimize errors up front but
there should also be contingency plans when an import doesn't go well.  The
Import Guidelines have plenty to say about having the community review the
scope and process of the import.  To me, more is needed on the process of
converting data into suitable imports.  What is there is good, for example,
cleaning up excess nodes and removing extraneous tags.  Unfortunately I
don't have enough knowledge to write that, but I suspect others do.

Clifford
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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Phil! Gold]

* Tirkon  [2012-06-06 21:11 +0200]:
> Worst Fixer  wrote:
> >It means that we must revert things like TIGER and CanVec. Am I right?
> 
> I think fundamentally you are right with this point. My impression is
> that many people at OSM regret these imports - in fact the longer they
> are involved in the project.

I can only speak for myself, but I'm happy that TIGER was imported.  I
grumble about its quality problems and quirks all the time, usually while
I'm fixing them, but I think the US is much better off with that import
than it would have been without it.  I've only been here for a couple of
years, so maybe I haven't been around long enough to regret it, but I
probably wouldn't have gotten started with OSM if the TIGER-imported
framework hadn't already made it reasonably useful to start with.

-- 
...computer contrarian of the first order... / http://aperiodic.net/phil/
PGP: 026A27F2  print: D200 5BDB FC4B B24A 9248  9F7A 4322 2D22 026A 27F2
--- --
The universe is complex, but it's usefully complex.
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 --- --

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Paul Johnson]

On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 5:59 AM, Werner Poppele  wrote:

> Dont forget that an importer can produce thousands of errors in a very short
> period of time. All these must be fixed by humans. In some cases years after
> the import

Notorious North American example: TIGER...

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Tirkon]

Worst Fixer  wrote:

>It means that we must revert things like TIGER and CanVec. Am I right?

I think fundamentally you are right with this point. My impression is
that many people at OSM regret these imports - in fact the longer they
are involved in the project. The problem is that today you cannot
isolate them from the other edits because the users improved the tags
and dragged the objects to the correct position instead of making them
new. "Reverting" is simply not possible any more. The only way to
remove the imports was to clear the maps completely. But this would
produce another community impact of course.

I think I was one of the early refusers of big imports that can be
derived from the reality by users as well. (This is impossible for
non-physical objects like borders.) I imagine Wikipedia would have
been imported so far and the user were damned to correct it and only
add bits and bobs. I am pretty sure it never ever would have had that
success it had. 

IMHO the community impact of imports should be described in extenso
before any technical stuff is mentioned. And yes - it should be
mentioned that TIGER and its friends were early mistakes of OSM.


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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Pieren]

On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 3:07 PM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:

> A note of caution though; in France, the approach "make available instead if
> import" has been tried for buildings as far as I know, and it has lead to a
> very small number of people taking the data that was "made available" and
> importing it all over the place, with essentially the same results as a
> standard "empty the bucket" import - lots of buildings in places where no
> mappers are.

We also see often newcomers starting to draw manually 2 or 3 building
footprints from the aerial imagery (because they see nice ones in
neighbourhoods) and stoping to contribute when they realize the effort
it would imply. They simply don't realize that a building footprints
repository "ready to be merged and maintained" exists somewhere...
We know that we had some mass-importers not taking care about our
recommendations but, as a responsible "local community", we have no
possibility to restrain or block them (and we know that DWG is not
reacting fast enough).

Pieren

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Philippe Rieffel]

2012/6/6 Worst Fixer :

>> I am very reluctant to have someone who
> ...
>> (4) continues to make misleading and offensive statements in their OSM user
>> blog
>
>> play any part in rewriting our import guidelines, or helping to enforce
>> them.
>
> I see. Personality and charisma matters for you, thus, for DWG
> decisions. That is why we need strict guidelines. Agreed by everyone.
> Not just people who Frederik likes. Or dislikes.

I think Frederik just speaks out, what some people (which i know in
real life as well, not only by nickname) think about you. When i
answered earlier to one of your post, i put aside everything, that
simply reading your fake-german-english mixture startles in my stomach
and focus on your ideas, which are to be honest, not entirely bad. But
in your latest reply to this list, you go on provoking ad spreading a
foul mood in general, which is simply not the way, osm operated so
far. So i support Frederiks claim, and even make it my own (so you can
not just blame Frederik or the DWG for opposing you) that you should
not continue your work on rewriting the terms and even the less
"helping" to enforce them, until you change your attitude towards the
people who co-work (the "co" part is what osm is actually about) with
you on such a great project like osm.


>> I know that we don't operate a strict real-name policy at OSM but I would
>> expect someone who wants to be involved at a level where they make mass
>> edits and help shape project guidelines to be a real person with an identity
>> and not just some nickname.
>
> I would not expect that. OSM has strict privacy policy, that says
> "nothing but your user name will ever be disclosed". User name is
> needed only to fight vandalism and have way to contact. Not to find
> people in real world.

Still, since what you are doing, rewriting rules and on the same time
doing large mechanical edits while violating said rules, reqires at
least some basic trust in your person and your work, it would be nice
to know who you are, what your profession is, what your history with
osm is and if you have been involved in osm before...just to get to
know you, you know..


>> I support Jaak's points; I dislike the flow chart presentation;
+1


>
> I was tempted to write "tl;dr" after this, even though I read this. 8
> lines of nice bookish English is nice for some newspaper article. But
> it is not the way to write guide lines. Keep in mind people who not
> spik inglish.
i am tempted to write ts;dr after each of your email, but this is
exactly the kind of offensive behaviour i mentioned above. Be nice, be
cooperative, be open to criticism and everbody will appreciate and
gladly discuss your contributions. But like thisnot. At least not
me.

Cheers

Philippe Rieffel

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 06/06/2012 02:59 PM, Tobias Knerr wrote:

So I agree with Frederik that we should evaluate imports for their
impact on the community. I also feel that "make available instead of
import" is a good way to ensure that a) there is a local community to
maintain the data and b) that local community is fine with the import.


A note of caution though; in France, the approach "make available 
instead if import" has been tried for buildings as far as I know, and it 
has lead to a very small number of people taking the data that was "made 
available" and importing it all over the place, with essentially the 
same results as a standard "empty the bucket" import - lots of buildings 
in places where no mappers are.


So, even if the person who procures the data and makes it available for 
the community to import does everything right, there's still the 
potential for community members to fuck it up ;)


Bye
Frederik

--
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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Worst Fixer]

Hello Frederik,

>> I did a redraw of them. To make understanding easier.
>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/WorstFixer/diary/17025
>> Do you have any comments? What to add? What to remove?

> I am very reluctant to have someone who
...
> (4) continues to make misleading and offensive statements in their OSM user
> blog

> play any part in rewriting our import guidelines, or helping to enforce
> them.

I see. Personality and charisma matters for you, thus, for DWG
decisions. That is why we need strict guidelines. Agreed by everyone.
Not just people who Frederik likes. Or dislikes.

> I know that we don't operate a strict real-name policy at OSM but I would
> expect someone who wants to be involved at a level where they make mass
> edits and help shape project guidelines to be a real person with an identity
> and not just some nickname.

I would not expect that. OSM has strict privacy policy, that says
"nothing but your user name will ever be disclosed". User name is
needed only to fight vandalism and have way to contact. Not to find
people in real world.

> Also, I know that it would be good practice to separate the message from the
> messenger, and even someone who does lots of stupid things could in theory
> come up with helpful documentation.
>
> In this case, I really have a problem. Yes, the import guidelines could be
> improved; but no, I cannot trust "WorstFixer" to do a good job at it. The
> complete overhaul suggested by "WorstFixer" is not the way to go.

It is made from current Import Guidelines looking at latest
discussions on imports@. It changes almost nothing. Only
representation.

> I support Jaak's points; I dislike the flow chart presentation;

Flow chart representations lets you fit everything into one screen.
For major things like guidelines it is better than making 300 page
book that nobody will read.

Look at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/. It says
everything in one screen.

> and I think that
> WorstFixer's chart introduces too many of his own ideas (e.g. where does
> "shape aligns well with satellite" come from - it certainly makes no sense
> without further qualifying it to a degree not possible in a flow chart).

I can drop this statement if you wish. But we need replacement for it then.

Potential data sources are sometimes badly generalised, or are not to
scale at all. See some parts of TIGER for example. We need to avoid
this before data gets to database.

> I very strongly support Jaak's mentions of "make available instead of
> import" (technology for that is becoming ever easier with e.g. Josh Doe's
> conflation plugin for JOSM and Potlatch's vector backgrounds and snapshot
> server). This is the future of imports that involves the local mappers
> instead of just emptying a bucket over the map.

Then it has to be in import guide lines. So people adopt it and use it.

> Any import with a reasoning of "there's no mappers there anyway, so it's
> either import or no data", or "there are no mappers in X but at least when I
> do the import my company has something they can show our customers in X",
> is, in my opinion, not acceptable.

It means that we must revert things like TIGER and CanVec. Am I right?

> If you build a factory then this usually has lots of advantages for the
> local economy - you create jobs, you pay money to the government, you
> increase the importance of the region. But factories can also harm the
> environment, something that you don't see immediately; something that
> becomes obvious only later. That's why many countries now require people to
> assess the environmental impact before a factory is built; and I would
> request the same from would-be importers in OSM. Assess the impact that your
> import will have on the community.

I was tempted to write "tl;dr" after this, even though I read this. 8
lines of nice bookish English is nice for some newspaper article. But
it is not the way to write guide lines. Keep in mind people who not
spik inglish.

-- 
WorstFixer, twitter: http://twitter.com/WorstFixer

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Werner Poppele]

Pieren wrote:

On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 2:05 PM, Frederik Ramm

Assess the impact that your import will have on the community.


But you can say the same for manual editions too. What is the impact
of adding indoor mapping, rooms, floors, private footpaths, 3D roofs
and textures, tons of lane tags making data interpretation almost
impossible for newcomers ?

Pieren

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Dont forget that an importer can produce thousands of errors in a very 
short period of time. All these must be fixed by humans. In some cases 
years after the import

Werner

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Tobias Knerr]

On 06.06.2012 14:38, Pieren:
> On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 2:05 PM, Frederik Ramm
>> Assess the impact that your import will have on the community.
> 
> But you can say the same for manual editions too. What is the impact
> of adding indoor mapping, rooms, floors, private footpaths, 3D roofs
> and textures, tons of lane tags making data interpretation almost
> impossible for newcomers ?

We have traditionally held imports to a higher standard than manual
editing in this regard, and for good reason: A mapper with unusual
mapping practices may be a problem for his or her immediate
surroundings, but an import can do damage on a much larger scale,
possibly delaying the formation of communities in entire countries.

And obviously, there has to be at least a minimum amount of mappers in
the area for them to create all that potentially controversial data
manually. So there is a chance that if there are enough mappers to
create it, there should also be enough of them to maintain it. This is
not at all true for imports: They can add much more data to an area than
a local community is able to handle, and automatically updating imports
once the data is in OSM has never worked in my experience.

So I agree with Frederik that we should evaluate imports for their
impact on the community. I also feel that "make available instead of
import" is a good way to ensure that a) there is a local community to
maintain the data and b) that local community is fine with the import.

Tobias

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Philippe Rieffel]

> But you can say the same for manual editions too. What is the impact
> of adding indoor mapping, rooms, floors, private footpaths, 3D roofs
> and textures, tons of lane tags making data interpretation almost
> impossible for newcomers ?

I guess the important part here is simply scale. No one in/around osm
will hinder you from adding tags to any object manually, if they may
be of use for somebody. Because when you do it manually, one (at least
i) assumes, that you check the object, if it makes sense and whatever.
If you do it automated without checking each and every impacted
object, you need to have other people helping you (=discussing)
assesing the impact.


Cheers

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Pieren]

On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 2:05 PM, Frederik Ramm
> Assess the impact that your import will have on the community.
>

But you can say the same for manual editions too. What is the impact
of adding indoor mapping, rooms, floors, private footpaths, 3D roofs
and textures, tons of lane tags making data interpretation almost
impossible for newcomers ?

Pieren

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Re: [OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 06/06/2012 11:09 AM, Worst Fixer wrote:

I did a redraw of them. To make understanding easier.
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/WorstFixer/diary/17025
Do you have any comments? What to add? What to remove?


I am very reluctant to have someone who

(1) has created their OSM account only a few weeks ago

(2) has deliberately engaged in behaviour that was clear to upset many 
people, including mass-editing without prior discussion, and doing wrong 
so that it had to be reverted


(3) now claims that he cannot say his real name because he has made too 
many enemies because of (2)


(4) continues to make misleading and offensive statements in their OSM 
user blog


play any part in rewriting our import guidelines, or helping to enforce 
them.


I know that we don't operate a strict real-name policy at OSM but I 
would expect someone who wants to be involved at a level where they make 
mass edits and help shape project guidelines to be a real person with an 
identity and not just some nickname.


Also, I know that it would be good practice to separate the message from 
the messenger, and even someone who does lots of stupid things could in 
theory come up with helpful documentation.


In this case, I really have a problem. Yes, the import guidelines could 
be improved; but no, I cannot trust "WorstFixer" to do a good job at it. 
The complete overhaul suggested by "WorstFixer" is not the way to go. I 
support Jaak's points; I dislike the flow chart presentation; and I 
think that WorstFixer's chart introduces too many of his own ideas (e.g. 
where does "shape aligns well with satellite" come from - it certainly 
makes no sense without further qualifying it to a degree not possible in 
a flow chart).


I very strongly support Jaak's mentions of "make available instead of 
import" (technology for that is becoming ever easier with e.g. Josh 
Doe's conflation plugin for JOSM and Potlatch's vector backgrounds and 
snapshot server). This is the future of imports that involves the local 
mappers instead of just emptying a bucket over the map.


The current import policy, as well as WorstFixer's picture, don't 
mention one thing at all which I think is very important - a "community 
impact analysis". I think that everyone who proposes an import needs to 
show how the import will benefit *the community* (for example: "I want 
to import buildings in X, I have talked to the local community and they 
are eager to start working with the data, adding house numbers and 
metadata...").


Any import with a reasoning of "there's no mappers there anyway, so it's 
either import or no data", or "there are no mappers in X but at least 
when I do the import my company has something they can show our 
customers in X", is, in my opinion, not acceptable.


If you build a factory then this usually has lots of advantages for the 
local economy - you create jobs, you pay money to the government, you 
increase the importance of the region. But factories can also harm the 
environment, something that you don't see immediately; something that 
becomes obvious only later. That's why many countries now require people 
to assess the environmental impact before a factory is built; and I 
would request the same from would-be importers in OSM. Assess the impact 
that your import will have on the community.


Bye
Frederik

--
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frede...@remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"

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