On 31 May 2010 19:57, Frederik Ramm <frede...@remote.org> wrote: > Anthony wrote: >> By these definitions, something that is able to be confirmed as true or >> false in an official online source is actually *more* verifiable than >> something written on a street sign in a place where Google Street View >> has not yet visited. It certainly is verifiable, and it is not >> necessarily "on the ground". > > Something that is available from an official online source but not > verifiable on the ground should not - in my personal opinion - be > included in OSM. > > For the simple reason that we cannot improve the data - how should we if > there is not reference on the ground? So the data will just sit there > and be left to rot, or left to wait for another update by those who keep > it. But OSM is not a "mirror" for official data. I don't want data that > OSMers cannot work with; such data would only be in OSM for ease of > retrieval, and I don't view OSM as some data dumpster for the world's > geodata.
I don't view it as a "dumpster" either, even though such a thing would definitely be useful. There's no place where all license-compatible data can be accessed in a unified format and without looking up URLs of individial databases or phoning individual owners of the data such as the county administration in the US to get access to each piece. But.. the source of the data and the usefulness are two orthogonal things. I don't think you should discriminate useful information because the source is not kosher. Otherwise you'll never have a complete map with all the information you might need. Also there's no 100% verifiability, all data is verifiable for some groups of users and others will have to trust them. I'm thinking of the military bases where different percentages of the population can enter (some of them let school children in as part of day excursions, others are accessible by fewer than 100 people on Earth). And all of our data is constantly rotting except for the discrete moments when a mapper has a chance to check a given record and update it. I really see no difference there. Cheers _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
