Richard,
On 11-02-20 01:03 AM, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
This is getting crazy.
Exhibit 1:
http://twitter.com/#!/maproomblog/status/39053538692698112
"Whoever imported CanVec in Aylmer, Quebec obliterated hours of work
and introduced hundreds of errors. #osm #openstreetmap #whybother"
Of course this should never have happened. I absolutely agree with
Jonathan and you about that.
Once again, some keyboard jockey has decided that his l337 import
skills are better than the knowledge and hours of work by a local
mapper. The offender appears to be user 'sammuell' by the look of it -
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/sammuell - though he hasn't posted
anything about his activities on the user page, the wiki, or indeed
anywhere.
I don't know where you have looked, but apparently you didn't do a very
good job. The user you're pointing out is importing Canvec and making a
lot of contributions in Manitoba, which is a long way from Aylmer /
Ottawa. Some excuses would be appropriate.
This is killing OSM. We are not here to provide a free API to
government geodata that can be obtained trivially elsewhere. OSM is
all about "added value"; by deleting genuine surveyed data in favour
of mindless duplication of other, poorer quality datasets, we are
_destroying_ value.
How about the reverse case? I've seen that many times. Sometimes it's
really obvious that data is not "genuinely surveyed", but just pulled
out of thin air.
I'll confess, I'm an importer. I have imported and am still importing
data in the Netherlands and Québec. Not in Aylmer though, but mostly
Central Québec. I've spent countless hours in surveying the city of
Québec itself and the (major) highways in Central Québec myself. Because
the scale of the province and the entire country, it is simply
impossible to depend on local users for contributing to OSM. During my
time I only had contact with a handful of other locals, of which I only
one met (she happened to be a colleague). The other users I met came
mostly from the Sherbrooke area, which is over 2 hours away by car.
Anyways, because there are only a few active users, I decided to join
the Geobase NRN (roads) efforts at one point, and Canvec at the
beginning of this month. With Geobase I did my proper duty, by joining
up the roads to the existing ones. With Canvec I omitted all roads.
There are names on them which are not on Geobase, but I'll look at that
later. Regarding the age of the data (which can be 30 years old): it is
still better than nothing for an area which is too vast to survey by
individuals like you and me. Also keep in mind that there is only
Landsat coverage, except for the larger urban areas. So, I think that it
is appropriate to use as a template on which other users can elaborate.
The import in the Netherlands is landuse only (the infamous 3dShapes
import, for the statisticians among you). We're trying to engage other
users too, although this isn't always going smoothly. In the end we
always came to some kind of agreement, so that's a big win for OSM. (No,
3dShapes doesn't always draw the long straw.) After an import of a sheet
we always do a post-import cleanup. That means evaluating
inconsistencies, conflicts, etc. Since the import is landuse only, I
restrict the cleanup mostly to this, although I do some minor cleanup of
obvious errors, like self-intersecting ways, untagged nodes, etc., as
well. Many of the pre-existing data which gets cleaned up comes from the
AND import. In other cases I'm using Bing imagery as the judge.
Sometimes I keep the imported feature, sometimes the user feature,
sometimes both.
In case anyone is completely up in arms about this: this is why I can
tell that user contributed data is not always better than imported data.
(And imported data is also better than no data, unless the imported data
is plainly wrong and misleading). It is not as black-and-white as you
paint. So, please lower your pitchforks, and accept that imported data
CAN BE better than user-contributed data. OSM has over 360k registered
accounts, and it is impossible to keep everyone happy. Nearly everyone
is genuinely doing his best, and I'm pretty sure the user who messed up
in Aylmer did this by accident. He should have been contacted first,
before the entire anti-import brigade is stumbling over him. Anyways,
now I will have that coming, by writing this mail :)
Importers are humans too, and all humans do make mistake. However, I do
realize that the work (and especially the mistakes) of importers are
much more scrutinized. This is OK, because of the impact of their work
in certain areas is much larger.
From what I can tell (talk-ca postings etc.) 'sammuell' is a fairly
inexperienced OSMer who presumably thinks "this is how things are
done". It isn't. How do we stop this impression taking hold? How do we
explain that imports are _not_ welcome except as a last resort, and if
you do them, you _must_ follow a very, very rigorous set of guidelines?
Richard, you're just one of the 360k contributors, and one of the
millions of users. I do acknowledge that you've made a major difference
into making OSM what it is today. However, that doesn't mean that your
opinion can be hold as the absolute truth. I believe the average
community opinion is more like: imports _are_ welcome, but _only_ if
there are no better alternatives, and _only_ if a strict set of
guidelines is followed (for example _not_ deleting better quality user
contributed data). It's most beneficial for OSM when the best of both
worlds are combined.
cheers
Richard
_______________________________________________
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Regards,
Frank
_______________________________________________
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
