Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
On Fri, 2009-11-20 at 06:07 +, talk-us-requ...@openstreetmap.org wrote: Heh, I didn't even know we had Oregon data available. We didn't at the time. I checked. Metro had (still has) restrictive licensing, and the state did not have any clearing house at the time. - Alan ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
I hate to step into this flamefest, but: Having traveled around the US, I've been really glad the tiger data is there. Often it seems like there have not been a lot of edits, and it's way better than nothing. I heard about OSM long ago, and I think noticed the map was blank in mass, and found it too daunting. I had gathered trail tracks and was going to make my own maps starting around 1999 (with differential even), but never got around to it. I re-found-out about OSM last winter, and have been editing when I have time - my town is now in pretty good shape, including trails in conservations lands. So all in all I'm very appreciative of the imports having happened (thanks Dave, Chris, and I'm sure others.) Regardless, TIGER data has been imported, and the only question is the way forwward. The thing that seems missing is an organized approach for replacing mass imported data with better mass imported data. I view this as similar to a revision control system. Logically, the tiger/massgis/canvec/whatever data lives on a 'vendor branch', like in CVS. (I realize the osm db has no such concept.) When there is new tiger data, one can say: For every way in the old import, if it hasn't been touched, then replace it with the way in the new import. The hard part is defining hasn't been touched usefully - someone adding a side road could perhaps still be merged automatically, with the side road contacting the replacement way at about the same place. This is the equivalent of when cvs can automerge changes to a file in different lines and decide that this is ok. We need this for vector data... (I know, ENOCODE...) It might also be possible to get local consensus. People are naturally and rightly highly reluctant to damage human-done work. But if you can gather the people, look at what might be, and say yes, on balance that's way better, let's do it and then pick up the pieces, it's reasonable to go ahead - even if it would be rude without talking to people. Of course, that assumes that people who mapped will answer messages and discuss briefly, but that seems only fair. pgp6N73SyJ2E9.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
On Thu, 2009-11-19 at 13:29 -0800, Paul Johnson wrote: Used state data instead, if I were to do a mass import. Oregon GEO knows what they're doing, the US Census (along with the rest of the federal government) barely acknowledges we exist. Which would you rather trust? 1) Known good data from a regional government agency that's receiving it's information directly from the Department of Transportation... or 2) A bunch of minimum wage lackeys who don't want to be out in the rain and aren't motivated to do it right? Heh, I didn't even know we had Oregon data available. If someone wants to work to get this data into OSM format, I'd be happy to help. We could probably replace bad TIGER spots or use it to fix up existing data. -- Dave ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
Christopher Covington wrote: On Sun, 2009-11-15 at 10:59 -0800, Paul Johnson wrote: Dave Hansen wrote: 2) The TIGER import violates one of the most basic principals of OSM: Abbreviations: DO NOT DO IT. I really don't understand this. If the United States Postal Service and the Census Bureau have been abbreviating names for centuries, why can't we? It obviously works well enough. Abbreviate it in the renderer. OSM's audience is more international than the Postal Service and Maybe abbreviations are an issue on the Continent but I have never seen any confusion caused by using USPS-recommended abbreviations in the United States. If you live in Portland, Oregon or Portland, Arkansas, on a numbered avenue with a four-digit house number, expect some of your mail to go to the wrong Portland and to receive mail that was supposed to go to the other one. Apparently a lot of people write AR and OR too similarly, and the postal service apparently ignores zip codes if all nine digits aren't there. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
On Mon, 2009-11-16 at 16:24 -0500, Matthias Julius wrote: IMHO it is unfortunate this was not done during the TIGER import. It would have been easy enough. Sure. But, there were 50 other things that were easy enough to do. Joining county borders, eliminating motorway overpass intersections, etc... I'm pretty sure I didn't refuse the help of anyone offering to do this. :) -- Dave ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
On Sun, 2009-11-15 at 10:59 -0800, Paul Johnson wrote: Dave Hansen wrote: 2) The TIGER import violates one of the most basic principals of OSM: Abbreviations: DO NOT DO IT. I really don't understand this. If the United States Postal Service and the Census Bureau have been abbreviating names for centuries, why can't we? It obviously works well enough. Maybe abbreviations are an issue on the Continent but I have never seen any confusion caused by using USPS-recommended abbreviations in the United States. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
David Lynch djly...@gmail.com writes: Agreed. I can understand not wanting to abbreviate words that don't have a standard abbreviation, but the USPS is the de-facto arbiter of how addresses (and therefore street names) are written in the United States, and they have a well-defined list of which words are abbreviated and the abbreviations for those words. Any decent namefinder/geocoder should be able to handle the idea that 100 W 6th St and 100 West 6th Street both refer to the same address, and a really good one should also know that 100 West Sixth St and 100 W 6 would also be at the same location. While this is true I think there is benefit for sticking with one version or the other within OSM. And since Street names usually are not abbreviated outside the US and the abbreviations might not be as intuitive for a non-english speaker I believe it would be better if they were spelled out completely. IMHO it is unfortunate this was not done during the TIGER import. It would have been easy enough. If some renderer considers the long names as waste of space it can abbreviate them. Matthias ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
[Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
Dave Hansen wrote: If we can come up with a scheme for getting the addressing imported in a sane fashion and the consensus is that people want it done that way, it'll get imported. There are still quite a few squeaky wheels that like to grumble about TIGER, but I haven't heard a single person say that it did more harm than good. I firmly believe this. TIGER contains so many errors in Oregon, Washington and Idaho that it would likely be easier to start fresh than fix. 1) TIGER data is so out of date for urban parts of Cascadia as to be rendered entirely useless. 2) The TIGER import violates one of the most basic principals of OSM: Abbreviations: DO NOT DO IT. 3) Gotta love how TIGER randomly decides some routes aren't freeways when they actually are (and have been for decades). Washington State has literally thousands of miles of expressway and freeway TIGER got wrong. The TIGER import should never have been done. I wonder how easy it would be to undo this until an actually suitable data source can be found, since the Fed is doing it on wet bar napkins with cartographers who wear hockey helmets and ride the short bus to work. Might as well photograph a turd and call it aerial photography of central Idaho for the accuracy of TIGER...heck, that photo might actually agree with the TIGER data better! ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
Paul Johnson wrote: Dave Hansen wrote: If we can come up with a scheme for getting the addressing imported in a sane fashion and the consensus is that people want it done that way, it'll get imported. There are still quite a few squeaky wheels that like to grumble about TIGER, but I haven't heard a single person say that it did more harm than good. I firmly believe this. TIGER contains so many errors in Oregon, Washington and Idaho that it would likely be easier to start fresh than fix. 1) TIGER data is so out of date for urban parts of Cascadia as to be rendered entirely useless. 2) The TIGER import violates one of the most basic principals of OSM: Abbreviations: DO NOT DO IT. 3) Gotta love how TIGER randomly decides some routes aren't freeways when they actually are (and have been for decades). Washington State has literally thousands of miles of expressway and freeway TIGER got wrong. The TIGER import should never have been done. I wonder how easy it would be to undo this until an actually suitable data source can be found, since the Fed is doing it on wet bar napkins with cartographers who wear hockey helmets and ride the short bus to work. Might as well photograph a turd and call it aerial photography of central Idaho for the accuracy of TIGER...heck, that photo might actually agree with the TIGER data better! Your mileage may vary. -- Randy ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
On Sun, 2009-11-15 at 10:59 -0800, Paul Johnson wrote: Dave Hansen wrote: If we can come up with a scheme for getting the addressing imported in a sane fashion and the consensus is that people want it done that way, it'll get imported. There are still quite a few squeaky wheels that like to grumble about TIGER, but I haven't heard a single person say that it did more harm than good. I firmly believe this. TIGER contains so many errors in Oregon, Washington and Idaho that it would likely be easier to start fresh than fix. Just curious, but why weren't you mapping when Oregon and Washington were blank? I'm also curious how you've made so many changes. Have you surveyed it, or are you using TIGER plus Yahoo! imagery? What would you have done without TIGER in these cases? 1) TIGER data is so out of date for urban parts of Cascadia as to be rendered entirely useless. Hmm. I live in urban Cascadia. My subdivision was off by ~100m and had a major street routed wrong. I still don't consider it quite entirely useless. Personally, I find it a lot easier to map with GPS traces, my memory and hints from TIGER than to go out and take detailed notes. It looks to me like you do the same thing, so I'm really surprised that you don't like TIGER. 2) The TIGER import violates one of the most basic principals of OSM: Abbreviations: DO NOT DO IT. I thought the basic principles were to have fun and not copy from other maps. :) 3) Gotta love how TIGER randomly decides some routes aren't freeways when they actually are (and have been for decades). Washington State has literally thousands of miles of expressway and freeway TIGER got wrong. This one might be my fault. There are a bunch of TIGER-OSM feature code mappings, and it's quite possible that I just plain got them wrong in some cases, or that we disagree on how the mappings should have been done. If this is still widespread, I'd be happy to look into it to see what can be done to fix it up. BTW, did you go and survey these thousands of miles of roads to ensure that they really are what you think they are? Are you also saying that you'd rather have a blank space in the map than a wrongly-tagged expressway? The TIGER import should never have been done. I wonder how easy it would be to undo this until an actually suitable data source can be found, since the Fed is doing it on wet bar napkins with cartographers who wear hockey helmets and ride the short bus to work. Might as well photograph a turd and call it aerial photography of central Idaho for the accuracy of TIGER...heck, that photo might actually agree with the TIGER data better! So, what I did initially was go and contact all of the mappers in the US that I could find. I asked them all individually what should be done in their local areas and I believe I was able to follow their wishes without failure. If you want to do the same with TIGER removal, I'd welcome it, especially if you have something superior to contribute. On a small or large scale, we should *NEVER* keep any data in the map just because it is what was already there. TIGER doesn't provide the best possible map, but it did (and does) provide the best map that we have access to. If anyone has better suggestions, I'm open to them. Perhaps I have low standard, but I'd prefer a map of turds to whitespace. :) -- Dave ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
On Sun, 2009-11-15 at 14:25 -0800, Sam Vekemans wrote: 1 - A few people (we can call the data conversion team) are in charge of taking the data in it's source form (in this case SHP) We use the tools availble (shp-to-osm.jar and/or shp2osm.py) and are the ones who create a set of 'rules' listed showing the source tags, and how we identify them in OSM. 2 - This team then works and converts this data to OSM format, and makes the files available on a server somewhere. 2a - IF there is alot of conflect then a postProcess is needed. So geobase2osm was created so that we can take an area and use AutoMATCH and see what data needs to be added to osm. 3 - When these .osm files become available on a server, it's up to the local area mappers to decide on what they want todo with the data. 3a - if the data is too complicated, local area mappers tell the conversion team, and this team works out the bugs and learns from everyone else on how to handle it. Yeah, and that does sound like a really nice way to do it, especially when there is existing data. -- Dave ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] TIGER considered harmful
On Sun, 2009-11-15 at 14:33 -0800, Dave Hansen wrote: Yeah, and that does sound like a really nice way to do it, especially when there is existing data. Anybody want to be on the USA conversion team? :) -- Dave ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
