On Sun, Mar 22, 2015 at 2:04 PM, Minh Nguyen <m...@nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us> wrote:
> tl;dr: I'm against a blanket rule when it comes to administrative > boundaries. They're really nuanced, and so should we. > > On 2015-03-22 04:32, Serge Wroclawski wrote: > >> Imagine if Bob and Alice conflict on where a neighborhood boundary is >> inside OSM. The issue escalates to an edit war and the DWG is called >> in to resolve the conflict. Let's say that Frank is our DWG member. >> How is Frank supposed to resolve the conflict between Alice and Bob? >> Often neighborhoods don't have administrative recognition, or >> administrative recognition is not in alignment with the people. I >> imagine this would be especially an issue with neighborhoods where >> lots of the under-represented populations live. >> > > This is an important consideration. As I mentioned in a footnote earlier, > even a city with strong neighborhood organization can have boundary > disputes. However, the problem exists for administrative boundaries in > general, all the way up to admin_level=2 boundaries that cut right across > ethnic fault lines. > > My point was that we should map neighborhood boundaries in cities where > doing so requires little editorial judgment, thanks to signage, distinctive > lamp posts, etc. And we are quite clear (via the tag value > "administrative") that this isn't the only way by which a community can be > delimited. As numerous threads have pointed out, the USPS has very > different ideas of location (ZIP codes), but that's OK. > > When it comes to all our discussions around *administrative* boundaries, I > like this two-point test as a rule of thumb: > > 1. Are people or property governed differently on one side versus the > other? > > 2. Is this distinction observable on the ground? > > Municipalities generally pass both points. Congressional districts pass #1 > but not #2. CDPs generally fail both. School districts can be observed, but > not with the granularity required for mapping a boundary. City > neighborhoods may pass one, both, or neither. Maybe all the locals you > interview can agree on the name of a neighborhood but not its shape -- in > which case it should be nothing more than a POI. > > Which brings me to Serge's other point: > > First, there are a growing number of people who believe that >> administrative data is very useful, but breaks OSM's "ground >> observable" rule. That is, someone who is present on the ground should >> be able to observe the data in OSM. It's usually not possible to do >> that with administrative boundaries. >> > > SteveA has responded more forcefully on this point, and so have I in the > past. [1] Fortunately, Alice and Bob's disagreement sounds pretty > clear-cut. If the city didn't go through the trouble of demarcating any > part of the boundary in some way, perhaps the general public shouldn't > expect OSM to reproduce their two neighborhoods' boundaries at all. But I > see no reason why such a decision would impact boundaries with very > different characteristics. > > > tl;dr: I'm against blanket rules especially when they don't reflect the realities of the world or how far we have come in ten years. These rules prevent progress and new ways of thinking about solutions. Imagine the changes OSM, OpenLayers, Leafet, MapBox have made. The ESRI rule said that we shouldn't do it that way. You should spend large amounts of money to do GIS things. Based on my ESRI analogy, the "ground observable rule" feels like using ArcGIS Desktop to do mapping. Is that a reality anymore? In actuality, the OSM and ESRI way complement each other and can be used together. 1. Every time this boundary debate or accuracy debate comes up, I image that I am supposed to have $20,000 of GPS equipment[1]; post process the data so that it is accurate; before I dare put the data in OSM. 2. To quote Richard Fairhurst, "Seriously, OSM in the [England] s still way beyond broken. You can open it at any random location and the map is just __fictional__. Here are two random examples "bing;OS StreetView" [2] "shape is approximate. Needs proper survey as mostly built after current BING imagery date" [3] I thought Bing was so bad that it is broken. What is happening with this "growing number of people" is they say or imply that England, the birth place of OSM, is the bee's knees for accuracy because it was surveyed the old fashioned way. I find no difference in these two examples in England than adding an approximate area in the US based on a subdivision or some other locally named area. 3. It is my belief and experience that the "ground observable rule" is something that only applies to Europe or older metropolitan areas. There's a number of times that I have read on the US list that either the signs are missing, stolen, or never posted. One of the reasons I map what I do is because the signs are missing. I am curios what river or wash I just drove over. It is not posted. I had to go to the US government sites to find the information because it is useful in OSM. So what do you want me to do? Should I go to the AZ legislator and say, I don't care about your education or social budgets. I want you scrap these budgets so that there is money to post signs on every feature out there so that I can map it in OSM! 4. The "ground observable rule" is something for Europe or large cities. It is fiction for where I live. It is my growing belief that this "growing number of people" live in these areas where they have had years to post signs on every feature. The group is setting rules that do not scale to where I live. That's not to say that I don't try to survey but it is not a requirement to find "ground observable" feature to add useful and accurate information in OSM. 5. The "ground observable rule" fails to remember how useful that OSM has become because of the number of passionate people adding data to the map. I spent many hours poring over Rand McNally maps on family vacations. I just showed my sister the links on how Rand McNally[4] switched to OSM. I pointed out that OSM is just as disruptive as Craigslist was to newspaper advertisement revenue. OSM would not have had these successes without the "close enough for private sector work" data that OSM contains. A blank map is not a useful map. Finding a general location of an area is more useful than a blank map that has a few surveyed areas. 6. The "ground observable rule" is trying to take over the more important rule: "Mappers with local knowledge of their area add valuable data that commercial mapping companies cannot always afford to add to the map." 7. The "ground observable rule" is a barrier to new mappers. I helped a new mapper at a Editathon add taco stands. She did everything wrong. I did say no you cannot add that node. We have not gone and surveyed that node exists. I let her add the node with abbreviated street names and all. She was so exited to add here research data to OSM. 8. The "ground observable rule" is a barrier to new mappers. Most of the new mappers I know started mapping by signing up and adding data. 9. Taking Serge's example of neighborhood boundaries to the logical conclusion, nothing should be put in OSM because an edit war __could__ ensue. Five years ago I thought it was fascinating that anything could be mapped. As I recall the Potlach 1.0 interface had a POI button for mapping a strip club. How would an edit war over demeaning strip clubs be any different than a neighborhood boundary? 10. Long before OSM, Easterners baffled me. They would talk about driving through three states in 45 minutes. How could that be? The last I knew it takes five hours to drive from Billing Montana to Great falls during the day at 75 miles an hour. There's no daytime speed limit because it would be an even more boring drive at 55 miles an hour. This was not five hours of bumper to bumper rush-hour driving. Where an Easterner can get through three states, I was still in the middle of Montana with hours of driving to go. The requirement that I survey every inch of a western state to make sure that I find every detail before I put data in OSM does not scale. I am thinking back to when SteveA was given grief for his UBRS project. Oh sure, if you have a Swiss Alp consuming most of your country, what do you have to survey: a couple of ski chalets, a couple of Ski runs, and a few roads in the valley? I am sure you could knock that out in a day. Adding a nation wide US bicycle route cannot be surveyed like Switzerland. As an example comparison measurement, Hadrian's Wall in England is 79 miles wide [5]. I10 exits Arizona around mile maker 296 [7]. 296/79 = Arizona's width is 3.75 times the width of England. The Arizona Trail is 800 miles high [6] 800/79 = 10.13 the width of England. I15 exit's Utah going into Idaho at around mile marker 411... Phoenix AZ USA is 510 sq miles which is 0.41 the size of Rhode Island USA at 1,212 sq miles. Maricopa County Arizona USA is 9,200.14 sq miles which is 7.59 times the size of Rhode Island USA. Maricopa County is 0.58 the size of Switzerland at 15,940 square miles and and we don't have a large Alp in the middle of the county. And we could go on and on Kentucky USA 40,409 sq miles England 50,346 sq miles Arizona USA 113,998 sq miles Germany 137,846 sq miles Montana USA 147,164 sq miles 11. The "ground observable rule" fails to acknowledge that not every feature is observable but still is useful to OSM. I had to talk the rent-a-cops out of arresting me for taking pictures around Chase Field [8]. I could not see around the building or under the 7th street bridge via satellite imagery. In this post 911 world, the "ground observable rule" is an unrealistic requirement. 12.I am passionate about what I do with OSM and the out reach that I do. I am game to survey and map my city, county, and state. It feels like this "growing number of people" believes that every mapper has to map just like Steve Coast did ten years ago. Congratulations Serge! It is my growing belief that your "growing number of people" has stymied growth in new and different valuable ways of mapping data. I failed to map for months because it sounded like I had to have a GPS five years ago before I could map. If iD has been created to lower the bar even more for new mappers, then why are we still trying to hold onto this requirement? Mapping is a series of mistakes. I point to OSM Inspector, Keepright, and any other quality improvement tools when I introduce people to OSM. I tell these potential mappers to start mapping and don't worry about mistakes. The "ground observable rule" creates a barrier of perfection. The Open Source way is to release early and to release often. The Open Source is to be tolerant of contributor mistakes. The Open Source way is to stand on each other's shoulders and build on what is there good or bad [9]. Regards, Greg [1] http://www.meetup.com/PHXGeo/photos/21943882/#364216142 [2] Siden Hill Wood https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/161975565 [3] West Midlands Golf Club https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/156619277 [4] https://www.mapbox.com/blog/rand-mcnally-uses-mapbox/ [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arizona_Trail [7] https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/339595574#map=19/31.96281/-110.43928 [8] https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/112550211 [9] Google I/O 2009 - The Myth of the Genius Programmer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SARbwvhupQ
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