Russ, Instead of replying to every individual point, I'm going to address your email as a whole, which is around the idea that deletion is different from addition.
These discussions are nuanced. Are there going to be things one person can identify that another can't- yes. But at the same time, I still think that as a project, we've collectively made a decision here that we don't require any special external knowledge or equipment to modify data. Let me give you an example that's not about roads, but about power lines. We have mappers that map a ton of detail about not only the locations but the details of the power lines. But they also explain their process online. They show how to read the signs, what each symbol means, etc. If I came across a power line, I should be able to use the knowledge from the wiki page to build an understanding of the ground truth and compare that to OSM. Then I can correct OSM as necessary. If it's possible to document these abandoned railways in the same way, then we can discuss an on the ground feature and compare what we see on the ground with what's on the map. But what we can't (or at least shouldn't) do is have only certain community members be the source for certain features. I shouldn't have to email Alice or Bob just because I want to edit a feature that Alice entered, or that Bob modified. The minute we do that, we are telling certain people that there's no way to update or improve upon their updates, and at that point, why have the data in OSM at all? Improving the map can and sometimes does include the idea of removing a feature that's no longer present, and I'm not comfortable with the idea that we have certain special features or special members where the data can't be modified. And Russ, I don't think that's what you want either, ultimately. So why not just update the wiki page to be more complete and focus on educating people on what to look for? - Serge
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