Hi there. Just thought I'd mention to everyone - I'm user "Charrois", and I signed up to this mailing list a month or two ago. I just added a bit of information to my profile so people wondering who this "charrois" is in the future can connect it to me.
In any case, I've certainly not gone intentionally removing existing roads from the OSM data set, though I'll not claim to be immune to accidents :-) In any case, I use JOSM, and my general methodology is as follows. If anyone has suggestions on how to streamline things, or more significantly, see anything I'm doing wrong, or have suggestions to decrease the likelihood of mistakes cropping up, please let me know. - I'll load a Canvec file. - I'll create a new layer, and then download the region from OSM into it, which becomes my working copy - I then use JOSM filters to show individual keys (like waterway=stream, etc.), and then flip between the different layers, making them active one by one. If the existing OSM data doesn't contain anything of that key, the job is easy - I copy and paste the information from Canvec into my working copy. If the existing OSM data does contain items with that specific key in the region, I check to make sure that Canvec information wouldn't overlap the features (ie: we shouldn't import a building from Canvec if there already is one nearby in OSM - I presume OSM's information is more up to date, since someone went through the trouble of putting in the building in the first place). In most cases, I delete overlapping Canvec data before the copy/paste, preferring the existing OSM. In a few cases (like Landsat-derived lakeshores), I tend to favour Canvec, so as long as there is Canvec data to replace OSM, I'll delete the OSM first. When in doubt, I pull in a layer of Bing imagery - though it's unfortunate that higher resolution Bing images aren't available for lots of the places I've been working. - Roads, I tend to try and be particularly careful with. I only tend to copy and paste individual roads from Canvec if they don't already exist in OSM. Situations where I'll replace OSM roads with Canvec ones are pretty few - for example, if a road is listed as "unclassified", and Canvec has a category for it and the Canvec seems to roughly follow the same route, I've been replacing it with the Canvec road. Sometimes the more major highways have quite coarse-grained information (particularly around the curves), so sometimes I'll replace sections with Canvec information - though more often than note, I'll just add some nodes manually to the OSM data to smooth out the curves or line things up a bit better. I don't delete OSM roads (intentionally) unless it looks like I'm replacing them with better data from Canvec. - I go through this process for a fair number of keys, one by one, until all the useful Canvec data has been brought into my working copy. - I then do things like go through urban areas to remove silly things I notice that were added from Canvec. For example, often Canvec has lakes, or intermittent lakes, or small patches of wooded areas, smack in the middle of new subdivisions. I presume Canvec is just reminiscing how things were before development came on to the scene, so I typically delete those features out. - I usually run a "simplify way" on streams to reduce the node count a bit, but otherwise leaves things largely untouched. - When things look good, I do a validation run. It tends to find lots of things like duplicate nodes, etc. I tell it to automatically fix what it can, then go through some of the things manually (nudge buildings that are touching a road, etc.). There do tend to be a fair number of warnings I ignore though - figuring I'll get to them some other day (like ways crossing where a road crosses a stream without a bridge. Sometimes, there are bridges there in reality, and sometimes the streams are small enough that only culverts are used. They should be flagged differently, but without a site visit, there is no way to tell, so I just leave them as is). - Finally, then I'll upload the data. Inevitably, there will be 2 or 3 conflicts along the lines of my deleting a node that the server still needed for something else. In those cases, I tell it to undelete my node (ie: keep the one on the server). I wish there was a way to have that as some kind of "default" action instead of going through them one by one... - I go back to look at the area at OpenStreetMap after a bit once things have had the chance to render, to make sure that it looks generally right. As far as "things going wrong", I do have a spotty Internet connection, and on more than one occasion, have had some sort of network error midway through an upload (I have my uploads set to upload data in chunks of 500 objects). Sometimes, when the Internet comes up again to allow me to continue, I find that my changeset was automatically closed. It's looked to me like JOSM just "sorted things out" when I went to upload again (at least, the number of objects to upload is usually less the second time around than initially). But maybe interrupted uploads like this can cause data to be lost? Any ideas? - I'm just speculating.... In particular, last week I did some changes just north of Red Deer (not the area that James is referring t0 though), and after several failed upload attempts, started getting an error message I never saw before (I should have written it down, and of course, can't remember it now, but it was related to some sort of unresolvable conflict). So I tried working with the "reverter" plugin, and think I've gotten the area back to the way it was before my edits. I'll have to go through that area again. However, if somehow, a significant amount of road data is being removed as a result of my workflow, then something in the process isn't working the way it should. And so I'm putting on the brakes until I can figure out what might have caused those roads to go missing that James is referring to. Along those lines, does someone know of a way to pull up a snapshot of OSM data into JOSM as it existed at a prior time? If I could compare the original OSM data to my copy of what I intended to change it to, I'd be able to see if I just accidentally deleted roads in the area, or if the upload process went screwy or something. If anyone has any comments on my methodology, or suggestions on how to do things differently, I *am* here :-) Dan On 2011-Mar-05, at 9:31 PM, Adam Dunn wrote: > user_5365 responded through OSM message system. Basically, they were > using an automated system to upload small amounts of Canvec data (one > or two roads at a time), then they would manually verify and correct, > then move on to the next bit of data. They have stopped doing the > import due to the site being "unstable" (the last edit was December). > They also say that the site is inaccessible, making it impossible to > reply to the post. So now you know the background if you see user_5365 > pop up. > > Adam > > On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 4:37 PM, James Ewen <ve6...@gmail.com> wrote: >> On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 10:52 AM, Adam Dunn <dunna...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> Anybody got a claim on user "user_5365"? >>> [http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/user_5365/] >>> >>> This user is doing lots of Canvec importing, and is actually >>> self-identifying as a bot (with the tag "bot=yes"). Rather >>> disconcerting, considering the fierce debate that happened just a >>> couple weeks ago over on talk@. >>> >>> This user seems to be working mostly in Alberta. Have they made many >>> errors? It would be nice if JOSM had a plugin to assist in >>> spot-checking a user's work (by automatically downloading the areas >>> they worked on, so that they can be looked over). >> >> Nope, but charrois is doing a bunch of canvec importing around >> Edmonton, but also seems to be removing quite a bit of existing road >> data. >> >> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/charrois >> >> I've sent a message on OSM inviting him/her over here as well. >> >> James >> VE7SRV >> > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-ca mailing list > Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca -- Syzygy Research & Technology Box 83, Legal, AB T0G 1L0 Canada Phone: 780-961-2213 _______________________________________________ Talk-ca mailing list Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
