Re: [Talk-us] USA Rail: Calling all OSM railfans! (especially in California)
Simon Poole writes: > Am 02.04.2015 um 05:20 schrieb Russ Nelson: > > Maps with insufficient creative content to be > > copyrightable. > > They may exist, but are you seriously saying that we (as in individual > mappers and the OSM community as a whole) should make that determination? No, that would be up to a judge, and if you're talking to a judge, you're already losing even if you're winning. No, my point was to make the caution less absolute. > > There are maps which are canonical sources of facts about the world, > > such as a BNSF map naming subdivisions. No one can own a fact about > > the world, because it's a fact. Just like you can't patent math. Same > > idea. You can copyright a collection of facts. You can copyright the > > arrangement of facts. You can copy the presentation of facts. But you > > can't copyright the individual facts. > > > While is true that you can't own a fact in isolation, the problem is > they are rarely presented in that form. I'll bet if you called up the railroad's public relations office and said "What do you call the line between towns X and Y?", they would be happy to tell you. There seems to be a certain amount of anal retentiveness around copyright, as if it is absolute protection without restriction. > What you seem to be saying in your above statement, followed by stevea's > battle call to actually do so, that wholesale extraction of facts from > any source is unproblematic I'm sorry if you think I said that. A typical railroad system map will name two, three, ten or twenty lines. Said line names will be uncreative and derivative (e.g. the line that runs through my town goes up to the St. Lawrence River and is called the St. Lawrence Subdivision). Now, copying railroad logos to use as shields?? Absolutely not. Belt and suspender lawyers will have advised their railroad customers to claim their logos as both copyrighted works AND trademarks. Some railroads are well-known to object to (say) their logo appearing on a model railroad car. You could use the trademark without pause as a shield, but I wouldn't advise using the logo on a shield without permission. Balance is needed, and I saw absolutely no balance in the posting I was replying to. > BTW you live in the country of software patents which -is- > essentially patenting math. BTW, you can't patent math. Seriously. Precedents out the wazoo. -- --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-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
> > > I'm fully with Russ and Greg on this one. For the few vocal deletionists > who > seem to have ants in their pants about this, may I suggest that you just > learn to read 'railway=abandoned' as 'manmade=former_railway_grade', which > is entirely verifiable and consistent with OSM's approach of meaningful > broad-brush duck tagging. Thanks. > > I don't get what's with this "deletionist" talk. It's hyperbolic name-calling which I don't think is a helpful way to resolve issues. We ALL delete stuff from OSM. "Let ye that have never deleted a node cast the first stone!" That is, if a building exists, we tag it. If it is disused, we tag it as such. If it falls into ruin, we can tag that. If it is removed (demolished, burned down, etc), usually, it is deleted. There is provision for some tagging like demolished:building=* on the life cycle page, but it's not used in the majority of cases. (sidebar: for an example where this is used, and a new building has been built and added to OSM at the same location, see http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/183167659) So, is the argument here that we should no longer delete features that no longer exist, just retag them? Is the argument that we generally should delete such features, but railways are a special case where we shouldn't? Which leads to one more thing, I think there's an important distinction to be made in this conversation between the tags railway=abandoned and railway=razed. According to the railway wikipage, railway=abandoned means "the track has been removed and the line may have been reused or left to decay but is still clearly visible" and railway=razed means "all evidence of the line has been removed". Many of the reasons given in this thread for keeping ex-railway features seem to apply to abandoned, not razed. At this point I don't remember how this thread started (abandoned or razed), but if you look back at previous discussions (for ex http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Demolished_Railway or the linked thread), it seems like most people have been OK in the end with keeping abandoned in OSM but not keen on the demolished/razed features. Brad > > > -- > View this message in context: > http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Moving-historic-railroad-ways-from-OSM-to-OpenHistoricalMap-tp5839116p5839518.html > Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > ___ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
Greg Troxel writes: > More seriously, a wave of deletionism is really bad for the project in > terms of morale. +1 -- --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-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
EthnicFood IsGreat writes: > It's apparent to me that consensus will never be reached on whether or not > abandoned railroads belong in OSM (at least the way it is currently > configured), given the strong feelings on both sides of the issue. That's > why I think moving them to OHM is a good compromise. In what way is giving the deletionists what they want a "compromise"?? -- --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-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
Mike N writes: > On 4/1/2015 10:51 PM, Russ Nelson wrote: > > I don't have an awful lot of use of OpenHistoricalMap because it's a > > faux-layer. > > What if OpenRailwayMap could pull from OpenHistoricalMap to do a > complete rendering, even though it's a faux-layer? Presumably they would do exactly that. The problem is that once you have two different representations of the same thing, in separate databases, they get out of synch with each other. Say that you're trying to use OSMAnd to find where a railroad went out in the field (which I do all the time). You get to a point where OSMAnd switches to OHM, and OHM has gotten out of sync (say, because the aerial photography got better). Now you're lost because the the railroad is no longer connected. It's off wherever. -- --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-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] Facts about the world
Simon Poole writes: Up to now OSM has drawn the line in such a way that stuff that is signposted and is observable on the ground is fair game (with some exceptions, I believe the GR issue is still unsolved). Yes, all of that is fair game. Though I don't know what "the GR issue" is, and ask you to please clarify. If you are using a collection of facts, be it a list, a map, a file on a computer or whatever, we have to now always taken the, fairly high ground, position that you either need explicit permission (by agreement, licence or similar) or that the use of the source is clearly not subject to copyright any longer. Forgetting about other rights, regulations etc that may exist for the purpose of this discussion. When a "collection of facts about the world" are data published by a government (around here, those are our employees), ESPECIALLY if/as one is in a jurisdiction where geo data published by us (via the government) are explicitly prohibited to be encumbered by copyright or onerous "Terms" -- as I do -- then use of those data flowing into OSM should be absolutely uncontroversial. As the explicit example I used in the instant case, road/rail crossing data published by our PUC that became reverse-engineered names of subdivisions sufficient to tag nastily-tagged TIGER data (just plain wrong, but better than nothing and an OK starting place) so they are more correct is a perfectly valid use of such data. I believe anybody in any of the 49 other states can do this, but I am not as familiar with their Public Records Acts (or stare decisis) as I am California's. Nor am I an attorney. But I can read and make these determinations. In fact, I believe any reasonably intelligent adult can do so. If we can't, it is incumbent upon OSM to help us do better. Erring on the side of "high ground" safety might be a good place to plant an initial flag, but if it's location is wrong and we need to move it to a more accurate place, we must do so. What you seem to be saying in your above statement, followed by stevea's battle call to actually do so, that wholesale extraction of facts from any source is unproblematic and is something that can be done without further consideration and the net result can be used in OSM globally with no expectation of problems This is putting it too strongly, indeed. "Facts about the world," where, for example, long snaking industrial things with names that go through my and millions of others' neighborhoods should also be named in OSM. I see no problem whatsoever with that. I do say to not get these facts from sources where copyright is an issue. But if, as is true in the instant case, it can be determined from "is, can be or should be known by the public as 'facts about the world,'" then yes, I stand by my "battle call." As "facts about the world," these data belong to us, and when true, we can put them into OSM. (Sometimes such data, like airline routes, are inappropriate to put into OSM -- but that's another topic). It sounds like it is getting a bit shrill. I'll say it again: I wish light, not heat. SteveA California___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] New North America coverage of Osmose QA
Thank you for the addition of this valuable quality tool! ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USA Rail: Calling all OSM railfans! (especially in California)
Hi everybody! Let's tone down this thread a bit and bring it back on topic. Thanks! Ian ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USA Rail: Calling all OSM railfans! (especially in California)
Am 02.04.2015 um 05:20 schrieb Russ Nelson: > ... > April Fools! Yes, you can. There are many kinds of public domain maps > whose republication needs no license. For example, in the US all maps > published before the magic date, whatever year it is we're up to > now. Maps copyrighted but not renewed. Maps published without a > copyright before 1988. Very true. > Maps with insufficient creative content to be > copyrightable. They may exist, but are you seriously saying that we (as in individual mappers and the OSM community as a whole) should make that determination? > > There are maps which are canonical sources of facts about the world, > such as a BNSF map naming subdivisions. No one can own a fact about > the world, because it's a fact. Just like you can't patent math. Same > idea. You can copyright a collection of facts. You can copyright the > arrangement of facts. You can copy the presentation of facts. But you > can't copyright the individual facts. > While is true that you can't own a fact in isolation, the problem is they are rarely presented in that form. Up to now OSM has drawn the line in such a way that stuff that is signposted and is observable on the ground is fair game (with some exceptions, I believe the GR issue is still unsolved). If you are using a collection of facts, be it a list, a map, a file on a computer or whatever, we have to now always taken the, fairly high ground, position that you either need explicit permission (by agreement, licence or similar) or that the use of the source is clearly not subject to copyright any longer. Forgetting about other rights, regulations etc that may exist for the purpose of this discussion. What you seem to be saying in your above statement, followed by stevea's battle call to actually do so, that wholesale extraction of facts from any source is unproblematic and is something that can be done without further consideration and the net result can be used in OSM globally with no expectation of problems. BTW you live in the country of software patents which -is- essentially patenting math. Alas I suspect you are kidding yourself in a big way. Simon signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] USA Rail: Calling all OSM railfans! (especially in California)
Russ Nelson writes: There are maps which are canonical sources of facts about the world, such as a BNSF map naming subdivisions. No one can own a fact about the world, because it's a fact. Just like you can't patent math. Same idea. You can copyright a collection of facts. You can copyright the arrangement of facts. You can copy the presentation of facts. But you can't copyright the individual facts. I take this brief opportunity to encourage OSM volunteers who wish to "better" named rail subdivisions in the USA that "these data are out there." These are indeed "facts about the world" and just because it seems as though they are "locked up" in private hands (a rail company or protected by copyright on a particular map) does NOT mean that such "facts about the world" cannot be put into OSM. THEY CAN! Of course, I adhere to "don't copy from other maps" but I explicitly agree with OSM's maxim to "be bold" entering data when they are clearly "facts about the world." We have the ability to discern this, and we should. Railways are big, long, industrial things that snake hundreds and thousands of kilometers through our landscapes. Chunks of them have names, just as you would expect anything else hundreds of kilometers long to have names. They are regulated by many levels of governmental agencies, whose job it is (partly) is to keep track of these names. Go get 'em, and go put 'em in OSM. Thanks to all who do. SteveA California ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] New North America coverage of Osmose QA
Thank you Frédéric and Osmose team! On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 1:51 PM, Frédéric Rodrigo wrote: > Hi, > > Osmose QA is a Quality Assurance tool. It detects and reports errors based > on more than 200 rulesets. > > http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmose > > We are glad to announce the new North American coverage of Osmose QA. > After Africa and Antarctica, America is the last fully covered continent. > This is possible because of interest of MapBox on data quality and their > sponsorship of Osmose QA project through OpenStreetMap-France with € 2.000 > donation. This allowed us to rent a new server for a couple of years to run > the North America analysis. > > After the new active areas are in place, we checked the results and > adjusted the analysers according to local mapping usages. Nevertheless we > are still open to comments (and code) to improve the quality of errors > detection. > > Setting up quality analyser in a new area always come up with lot of > errors detected - and some errors coming from noisy imports. Do not > discourage yourself by the quantity of errors. In Osmose QA you can filter > errors by severity, categories, topics and so on. You can look up at errors > on objects where your are the last editor. You can also show errors list, > exports and graph over time. > > We plan to rent a second server and try to finish Europe coverage. Then it > will miss large part of Asia and Oceania to cover the world. > Donations are welcome to extend Osmose QA coverage on the last missing > continents. > > The Osmose QA team. > > > ___ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] New North America coverage of Osmose QA
Absolutely fantastic, awesome tool. What a triumph! Thank you Frédéric: I salute your efforts and am now exploring Osmose's depths and interface. Yay! SteveA California (a software and quality assurance professional for over thirty years, including stints at Apple and Adobe) ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
Frederik Ramm wrote: > The problem of OSM editors being confused by a strange line that > cuts through houses in the editor perhaps. Which is perhaps 0.1% of the (largely rural) abandoned railroads mapped in OSM, so largely immaterial to the discussion. And if you're confused by that 0.1%, heaven knows what you'll do when faced with the superfluity of admin boundaries in many parts of the world. (And let's not start on proposed highways.) I'm fully with Russ and Greg on this one. For the few vocal deletionists who seem to have ants in their pants about this, may I suggest that you just learn to read 'railway=abandoned' as 'manmade=former_railway_grade', which is entirely verifiable and consistent with OSM's approach of meaningful broad-brush duck tagging. Thanks. Richard -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Moving-historic-railroad-ways-from-OSM-to-OpenHistoricalMap-tp5839116p5839518.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
On 4/2/15 4:27 PM, Paul Norman wrote: > On 3/29/2015 5:00 AM, Mark Bradley wrote: >> Can I export these ways from OSM and then import them into OHM? > The main technical problem with moving data from one OSM API to > another (e.g. OSM to OHM, OSM to dev server, OSM to OpenGeoFiction) is > making sure to get rid of the OSM IDs, as the other APIs will need to > generate their own. > > There are clever ways to do this, but one simple way is to put what > you want to move on its own layer in JOSM, convert the layer to GPX, > and convert it from GPX back to OSM. This leaves you with a completely > new way with an identical geometry. You can then copy the tags over. > > This works best with a small number of long complex ways. > note that when you bring data into OHM, it is good form to provide start_date and end_date tags to along with it. railways are not marked abandoned in OHM, rather they have temporal data about when they existed. richard -- rwe...@averillpark.net Averill Park Networking - GIS & IT Consulting OpenStreetMap - PostgreSQL - Linux Java - Web Applications - Search signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
On 3/29/2015 5:00 AM, Mark Bradley wrote: Can I export these ways from OSM and then import them into OHM? The main technical problem with moving data from one OSM API to another (e.g. OSM to OHM, OSM to dev server, OSM to OpenGeoFiction) is making sure to get rid of the OSM IDs, as the other APIs will need to generate their own. There are clever ways to do this, but one simple way is to put what you want to move on its own layer in JOSM, convert the layer to GPX, and convert it from GPX back to OSM. This leaves you with a completely new way with an identical geometry. You can then copy the tags over. This works best with a small number of long complex ways. The correct way to do this would be to extract the ways into a file, invert all the IDs and ID references in the file, and upload it to the other API. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] New North America coverage of Osmose QA
Thanks Frederic! On Apr 2, 2015 11:57 AM, "Martijn van Exel" wrote: > This is amazing news. Osmose is a really valuable tool. > > Also there is a good integration with MapRoulette that Frédéric built, and > has already resulted in some interesting challenges. As you explore Osmose, > let me know if you want any other QA themes from Osmose to appear in > MapRoulette. > > Martijn > > Martijn van Exel > skype: mvexel > > On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 10:51 AM, Frédéric Rodrigo > wrote: > >> Hi, >> >> Osmose QA is a Quality Assurance tool. It detects and reports errors >> based on more than 200 rulesets. >> >> http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr >> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmose >> >> We are glad to announce the new North American coverage of Osmose QA. >> After Africa and Antarctica, America is the last fully covered continent. >> This is possible because of interest of MapBox on data quality and their >> sponsorship of Osmose QA project through OpenStreetMap-France with € 2.000 >> donation. This allowed us to rent a new server for a couple of years to run >> the North America analysis. >> >> After the new active areas are in place, we checked the results and >> adjusted the analysers according to local mapping usages. Nevertheless we >> are still open to comments (and code) to improve the quality of errors >> detection. >> >> Setting up quality analyser in a new area always come up with lot of >> errors detected - and some errors coming from noisy imports. Do not >> discourage yourself by the quantity of errors. In Osmose QA you can filter >> errors by severity, categories, topics and so on. You can look up at errors >> on objects where your are the last editor. You can also show errors list, >> exports and graph over time. >> >> We plan to rent a second server and try to finish Europe coverage. Then >> it will miss large part of Asia and Oceania to cover the world. >> Donations are welcome to extend Osmose QA coverage on the last missing >> continents. >> >> The Osmose QA team. >> >> >> ___ >> Talk-us mailing list >> Talk-us@openstreetmap.org >> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us >> > > > ___ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > > ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] New North America coverage of Osmose QA
This is amazing news. Osmose is a really valuable tool. Also there is a good integration with MapRoulette that Frédéric built, and has already resulted in some interesting challenges. As you explore Osmose, let me know if you want any other QA themes from Osmose to appear in MapRoulette. Martijn Martijn van Exel skype: mvexel On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 10:51 AM, Frédéric Rodrigo wrote: > Hi, > > Osmose QA is a Quality Assurance tool. It detects and reports errors based > on more than 200 rulesets. > > http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmose > > We are glad to announce the new North American coverage of Osmose QA. > After Africa and Antarctica, America is the last fully covered continent. > This is possible because of interest of MapBox on data quality and their > sponsorship of Osmose QA project through OpenStreetMap-France with € 2.000 > donation. This allowed us to rent a new server for a couple of years to run > the North America analysis. > > After the new active areas are in place, we checked the results and > adjusted the analysers according to local mapping usages. Nevertheless we > are still open to comments (and code) to improve the quality of errors > detection. > > Setting up quality analyser in a new area always come up with lot of > errors detected - and some errors coming from noisy imports. Do not > discourage yourself by the quantity of errors. In Osmose QA you can filter > errors by severity, categories, topics and so on. You can look up at errors > on objects where your are the last editor. You can also show errors list, > exports and graph over time. > > We plan to rent a second server and try to finish Europe coverage. Then it > will miss large part of Asia and Oceania to cover the world. > Donations are welcome to extend Osmose QA coverage on the last missing > continents. > > The Osmose QA team. > > > ___ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] New North America coverage of Osmose QA
Hi, Osmose QA is a Quality Assurance tool. It detects and reports errors based on more than 200 rulesets. http://osmose.openstreetmap.fr http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmose We are glad to announce the new North American coverage of Osmose QA. After Africa and Antarctica, America is the last fully covered continent. This is possible because of interest of MapBox on data quality and their sponsorship of Osmose QA project through OpenStreetMap-France with € 2.000 donation. This allowed us to rent a new server for a couple of years to run the North America analysis. After the new active areas are in place, we checked the results and adjusted the analysers according to local mapping usages. Nevertheless we are still open to comments (and code) to improve the quality of errors detection. Setting up quality analyser in a new area always come up with lot of errors detected - and some errors coming from noisy imports. Do not discourage yourself by the quantity of errors. In Osmose QA you can filter errors by severity, categories, topics and so on. You can look up at errors on objects where your are the last editor. You can also show errors list, exports and graph over time. We plan to rent a second server and try to finish Europe coverage. Then it will miss large part of Asia and Oceania to cover the world. Donations are welcome to extend Osmose QA coverage on the last missing continents. The Osmose QA team. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
I don't have time to wade into the controversy, but +1 to Russ's comments. Old railroad grades really are features. The USGS shows them on topos, and they're often really obvious. More seriously, a wave of deletionism is really bad for the project in terms of morale. Doing more than a one-off removal of something confused should receive the same scrutiny as mechanical edits. pgpdtca5VhlOx.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
On , EthnicFood IsGreat wrote: It's apparent to me that consensus will never be reached on whether or not abandoned railroads belong in OSM (at least the way it is currently configured), given the strong feelings on both sides of the issue. That's why I think moving them to OHM is a good compromise. I don't like it, but I would rather do that than see this data lost forever. At least in OHM, the data still lives, and can always be moved back to OSM later if a solution to the problem of historic features can be found. +1 --Eric ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
It's apparent to me that consensus will never be reached on whether or not abandoned railroads belong in OSM (at least the way it is currently configured), given the strong feelings on both sides of the issue. That's why I think moving them to OHM is a good compromise. I don't like it, but I would rather do that than see this data lost forever. At least in OHM, the data still lives, and can always be moved back to OSM later if a solution to the problem of historic features can be found. Mark ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
On 04/01/2015 10:42 PM, Russ Nelson wrote: Oh, I'd be HAPPY to argue with him. I can point to all sorts of ways to tell that a railroad used to go through, that most people don't know about. Certain types of fenceposts, property lines that line up with nothing but the railbed, back yards that are "too deep", roads that are S-shaped for no obvious reason, houses that line up with nothing but the railbed. I could go on and on. Unlike Russ, I'm neither a railfan or a history buff. (Well, I am a bit of a history buff, but for the purpose of this message you can assume I am not.) Instead, I'm writing this message as a hiker. I got drawn into this controversy because at one point I added one abandoned rail line in the Catskills. It had been a single-track two-foot-gage line with horses hauling cars bearing logs. It was built by a lumber company, and torn up once they'd harvested the tract. (The rails have been gone since 1911.) I tagged it as 'railway=abandoned' (or 'railway=dismantled', I no longer recall which) and immediately fell into this controversy. The last time I checked, the line is still in OSM, but is tagged 'highway=path'. I can say, with boots literally on the ground, that an abandoned rail grade is exactly what it is, in the field. It is not a maintained path. It is grown to trees. In some seasons, it is a thicket of blackberry, nettle and viburnum. It does take a trained eye to see where the rails ran. That said, it offers by far the easiest route up the mountain where it rests. The grade is still there, except for a few washouts and rock slides, and that means that the hiker who follows it will not need to scramble any rock ledges nor face any difficult stream crossings. But it does require off-trail navigation skills. In a wet summer, you _will_ lose the grade from time to time. There is no question that following it is a bushwhack hike. Showing it as a hiking trail is a mistake. When I observed this once before, I was accused of tagging for the renderer. It is not tagging for the renderer to observe that two objects that are tagged alike will render alike! If there is no distinction in the tagging, even an improved renderer will have no basis on which to make a choice. Since my hiking style often involves using century-abandoned infrastructure (rail grades, haul roads, cableways) on lands that have been returned to the wilderness, it is important to me that those objects remain on the map - and that they not be confused with active maintained trails! -- 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
On 4/1/2015 10:51 PM, Russ Nelson wrote: I don't have an awful lot of use of OpenHistoricalMap because it's a faux-layer. What if OpenRailwayMap could pull from OpenHistoricalMap to do a complete rendering, even though it's a faux-layer? I'm personally not touching railway=dismantled in my areas, but I can see why new mappers would be confused by them and/or delete them. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 12:15 AM, Russ Nelson wrote: > But "the map" *already* doesn't render abandoned railways, > much less razed railways. C'mon, let's not conflate the renderings with OSM. > I can understand if someone deletes a railway by hitting the wrong > key. I can understand if someone deletes a railway that is tagged > incorrectly as disused or abandoned when it should be tagged as > dismantled. > I can understand if somone goes to the location of an > abandoned railway, and doesn't see the evidence that an expert > sees. You're saying that these railways could be used for farming or build over, right? To me, having something else over where a railroad was indicates that the railroad is gone. There might be a legal right of way, but if someone else is using the land for some other purpose, then that's the current usage. This is similar to the NYC community gardens. Many community gardens in what the NYC government calls "abandoned lots". The government sees abandoned lots, but the community sees gardens. The gardens are visible from the ground, so I say they're gardens. But if someone builds over the previous community garden and puts up a building, the community garden is gone. In another mail, someone else (or maybe you) make the point that there's still a legal right, and therefore the railroad should stay. But then what does one do about someoen making fake abandoned railroad tags? How, with the only evidence being legal right, can I judge what's a real abandoned railroad and what's not a real abandoned railroad? It's enormously difficult to disprove the existence of something. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
On 2015-04-02 10:08, Frederik Ramm wrote: Hi, On 04/02/2015 06:15 AM, Russ Nelson wrote: > I understand keeping a feature in OSM if there is a remnant of the > railroad, but there are areas where everything has been replatted, regraded > and redeveloped, yet there is still a "razed" feature in OSM (for one small > example, see https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit?#map=16/38.8663/-94.7943). > This seems like a good candidate for moving out of OSM to OHM. What problem would be solved by this action? The problem of OSM editors being confused by a strange line that cuts through houses in the editor perhaps. I can see how abandonend railroads where the bed is still visible in some way could be an issue of contention (even though I'd be in favour of not having them in OSM). But former railroads that have been built over by settlements are *clearly* not something that should be in OSM. Bye Frederik +1 /Stellan ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Moving historic railroad ways from OSM to OpenHistoricalMap
Hi, On 04/02/2015 06:15 AM, Russ Nelson wrote: > > I understand keeping a feature in OSM if there is a remnant of the > > railroad, but there are areas where everything has been replatted, regraded > > and redeveloped, yet there is still a "razed" feature in OSM (for one small > > example, see https://www.openstreetmap.org/edit?#map=16/38.8663/-94.7943). > > This seems like a good candidate for moving out of OSM to OHM. > > What problem would be solved by this action? The problem of OSM editors being confused by a strange line that cuts through houses in the editor perhaps. I can see how abandonend railroads where the bed is still visible in some way could be an issue of contention (even though I'd be in favour of not having them in OSM). But former railroads that have been built over by settlements are *clearly* not something that should be in OSM. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
