Through editor errors or other mistakes there are a number of relations in OSM which have no members. I propose a mechanical edit to delete these where they are not members of some other way. My proposed procedure, documented at http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mechanical_Edits/pnorman_imports is to identify these with my pgsnapshot database and delete them if they aren't referenced by any other relation.
If they are referenced by another relation I will investigate them and deal with them manually. I've investigated a few of them and they appear to be caused by people deleting ways from multipolygons but not deleting the relation. I don't want to investigate all 5200 by hand so I'm proposing the mechanical edit. I will filter out ones touched in the last 24 hours to avoid conflicting with anyone. If this goes ahead and anyone wishes to opt out for some unknown reason let me know. It would not be possible to opt out by area as an empty relation has no geodata associated with it. I was tempted to do this without posting, but it does fall under http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mechanical_Edit_Policy and therefore requires consultation. A quick sampling of the ones most recently created indicates that they are mainly made with JOSM, including recent versions. JOSM devs may want to make it harder to accidentally create a relation with no members. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
