On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 12:13 PM, da...@glenlake.ca wrote:
Hey there, I'm pretty new to OSM, but I've read through the wiki articles
related to GeoBase (as well as this month's talk-ca archive). I figured since
people are asking for opinions, I may as well share mine.
I'll start off by saying how AMAZED I am at the current state of the map for
Toronto (where I live). It's quite incredible what a bunch of people can
produce given access a powerful collaborative toolset.
And now there is the possibility of adding roads (and other) for the entire
country, at 'one fell swoop', thanks to the existence and availability of a
huge dataset, likely created by a huge number of people, over a long period of
time, at great expense. That's pretty exciting! But how to proceed?
There is talk about one option being direct replacement of portions of the OSM
db (imported area by area, I guess), but I'm not certain what happens to OSM
map objects that are not roads...
I would be content to have a GeoBase-based road network replace roads that are
(otherwise) user-contributed via GPS tracks, and yahoo tracing... provided
that
non-road elements (subway lines, bus routes, bike paths, foot paths, malls,
recreational trails, buildings, bus routes, etc.) remain.
That said, I've contributed very little road data, and am not attached to
that
which I've added. I also understand that the data contributed to date may be
more accurate, or more up-to-date than what's contained within GeoBase. I also
have respect for the contributors of this data, and can understand that other
people would be 'attached' to it; they contributed it with the understanding
that it be freely shared; but not likely with the understanding that it might
be just-as-freely deleted.
So I would more happy with GeoBase roads uploaded, on-top of the existing
data. If folks don't like the maps that are produced in this case of double
data, they could modify their renderer to ignore one data set or the other; I
presume it would also be possible to pre-filter the data to ignore one set or
another.
This presumes it has been appropriately tagged during import.
I would think pre-tagging all existing roads as user-contributed (or
something) might make sense in this case.
I've no opinion on how to address the issue of GeoBase updates, and how to
incorporate these, other than to point out that keeping old data as well as
new
data could allow for maps to be produced that relate to a certain point in
time. Obviously the most common rendering would be what is current.
I expect further versions of the OSM database published via openstreetmaps.org
may support more complexity. Perhaps this update problem will be easily
addressed by future technological tools. Version control is not a problem
unique to mapping, and future technology may present a solution.
In any case, I look forward to the continued improvement of the platform, as
well as the data. I will continue to contribute, as I am able.
Having duplicated data is a giant mistake, imho. It ignores the
reality that we will need to integrate it at some point and that
working on the existing stuff pre-Geobase is just duplicating work.
Now, this is going to be a lot of work, especially for a large city
partially mapped like Victoria where I live.
Corey
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