I haven't seen any substantial discussion about the Ottawa buildings &
addresses import anywhere. I did see the thread a number of weeks back,
"Crowdsourcing buildings with Statistics Canada," but I didn't see
anything discussed that sounds like the planning of a mass import. The
wiki page linked from the discussion [0] is completely empty. From a
changeset discussion I was pointed to another section of the wiki [2]
which again has few details and does not sound like an import
("...inviting contributors to crowdsource information on buildings").[1]: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Ottawa_Gatineau_Buildings [2]: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/WikiProject_Canada#Crowdsourcing_buildings_with_Statistics_Canada What has actually happened is most (or all?) of the existing buildings in Ottawa were deleted, and then replaced by imported data. For example changeset 42699159 [3] deleted hundreds of buildings and addresses I had mapped in my former home of Stittsville. Changeset 42699460 [4] replaced everything with City of Ottawa data. [3]: https://osmcha.mapbox.com/42699159/ [4]: https://osmcha.mapbox.com/42699460/ The quality of the imported shapes seems fine and I have nothing against building imports in principle. I just wish existing data could have been updated or left alone - I don't see a substantial difference between what I had traced from Bing and the import except for an offset of perhaps a few meters. Although I saw someone noted on IRC that in several cases existing properties such as building:levels tags were lost; this is more concerning. In addition to building footprints, addresses are also being imported. This data is a little more problematic and the importers seem to be taking a "import now, fix later" approach. Example: changeset 42633517 [5] added over 20 thousand address nodes that were clearly not quality-checked. Addresses are being imported as points when they could be attached to buildings, and sometimes address points are doubled, tripled, or even quadrupled [6]. [5]: https://osmcha.mapbox.com/42633517/ [6]: Eg this area: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/45.26652/-75.93753 Could the organizers of this import point me to any further mailing list discussions or wiki pages I might have missed? Can we talk about why the clearcut approach to existing data was taken, and why the address data was not cleaned up *before* import? (The changesets I linked to may make it look like I am specifically calling out user LogicalViolinist, but the import was a group effort by a number of users. LogicalViolinist just happens to have covered the part of Ottawa I am most familiar with.) -- AJ Ashton a...@ajashton.ca _______________________________________________ Talk-ca mailing list Talk-ca@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-ca
