My thoughts exactly. I think part of the problem is that some map editors spend so much time as a map editor, they forget to both think as a map user, and to think broadly that there are a lot of types of map user that are interested in fundamentally different but compatible things from their map. In terms of the maker/user confusion, in that respect I mean they get so used to looking at a map from a point of view of verifying its accuracy, they forget a map user looks at a map to find out the information they *don't* know standing there in the street.
I always feel like the hardcore deletion argument seems to come from people who can't understand why you'd want to know where a railway went in the first place, and probably wouldn't know what an abandoned railway on the ground looked like even if they were standing in the middle of one. The "making the map better" argument doesn't really work for me, because even an abandoned rail route (with signs still visible on the ground) that's properly tagged doesn't render in the default OpenStreetMap view anyway; only in the specialist renderings for users that are actually interested in it, like OpenRailwayMap - so you can't say you're cluttering the map. I've seen a few people argue it's to keep the map uncluttered for editors, but that's a problem with a technical solution, just like "don't tag for the editor." I work in JOSM, and if I find that abandoned railways clutter my work environment, it's trivial to just set a filter so they don't show anymore. If someone's editor of choice doesn't have a filter like that, that's the fault of the editor, not of the person who put in an element representing something that's still detectable on the map but which another editor doesn't want to see. I can see the argument where the route is genuinely razed (the open pit mine argument), because in that respect all traces on the ground and in aerial views have been completely eliminated, unlike an abandoned line where you can still follow its route on the ground in cuttings, embankments, hedges, building shapes, etc. It makes total sense in most mappable features that aren't railways, like someone's example of a castle where only a corner is standing and detectable. There, mapping the rest of the "imaginary" part of a building does clutter the map and make it worse, and it doesn't give the map user any information they couldn't better obtain by going to a document that's actually meant to be dedicated to that structure. However, even here I feel like shorter razed sections of railway make a sensible exception, because the many visible portions make better sense when the railway on a specialist map like OpenRailwayMap is shown in its entirety, including the brief razed sections, and the "making the map better by deletion" argument falls flat to me again because neither the razed nor abandoned portions will render on a map for a user who isn't specifically interested in it. Chuck On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 9:29 AM Russell Nelson <nel...@crynwr.com> wrote: > On 6/14/20 6:34 PM, Chuck Sanders wrote: > > after watching the re-discussion of the abandoned railroad line "where > > do we draw the line" topic, from a somewhat-outside perspective, > > I've given up arguing. I treat deletion of abandoned railways as > vandalism and just fix it. Not seeing something is no reason to delete > it -- because someone else might be able to see it. This is my classic > example: > > https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=20/42.721785518232124/-73.69278208233906 > > How do you explain why this building is a triangle without mapping the > abandoned railroad which ran along its hypotenuse? Once you do that, it > becomes obvious. > > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us >
_______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
