Can I add my voice to those who would prefer that these are not imported?
There are several reasons:
1. Data quality is not assured.
2. Sourcing. For instance I have located some postboxes on Dracos site,
BUT have not placed them in OSM because I've used information which may not be
compatible with OSM's terms. I would not like these to be imported after I'd
made a decision not to add them directly. We have no knowledge of the person
who added the data, how they came by the information and whether it uses
sources such as the PO post office finder.
3. Spoiling the fun. Hunting down the odd poorly described postbox
often results in much more information and better mapping of the adjacent area.
Importing the references and locations removes this incentive for a fairly
trivial gain.
4. Distorting mapping priorities. Imports of postboxes will give an
erroneous impression that an area has been surveyed on the ground and lead to
further neglect. Furthermore an import of postboxes may cause mappers in an
area to re-survey them to ensure accuracy, thus diverting them from their own
goals (this is more-or-less the same affect as vandalism).I am not opposed to
imports provided that they add value to the mapping process, and are controlled
or requested by active mappers in an area (e.g., NaPTAN). All imports require
follow-up, both in tidying up the data, and checking its validity: only perform
the import if everyone is happy with the implied commitment.
Jerry Clough
SK53
________________________________
From: Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com>
To: talk-gb@openstreetmap.org
Sent: Mon, 9 November, 2009 14:23:51
Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Postboxes & Payphones
Mike <osm-talk...@...> writes:
>I've been looking at the Dracos postbox list
>http://www.dracos.co.uk/play/locating-postboxes/
I have recently started work on importing this,
see <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Dracos_import>.
So far I have just done the E10 and E17 postcodes near where I live.
After a bit of consultation I will start importing the rest of the country.
>and the UK payphone DB: http://payphonedb.bobsbasement.co.uk/.
I didn't know about that, I might look once post boxes are done ;-p.
>Looking through
>the OSM data, there's a lot of postboxes and payphoens but very few have
>the appropriate tags to tie them into the other databases. Would OSMers
>mind tagging any postboxes/phones that they come across to tie them in
>with these side projects?
Yes, many contributors do this for post boxes, in London at least.
My import job also tries to match up post boxes by location, and sets the
'ref' tag to record the match found.
--
Ed Avis <e...@waniasset.com>
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