On 14/09/2015, EthnicFood IsGreat <ethnicfoodisgr...@gmail.com> wrote: > I guess we're asking that an exception to the "verifiable features only" rule > be made for these features.
IMHO the exception that you are asking for is not to the "verifyable only" rule but to the "presently existing" rule. All the abandoned/dismantled railroads I've seen in OSM were verifyably "previously existing" but also (where the conflict arrises as far as I'm concerned) verifyably "no longer present". This is not a rejection of your plea, just trying to make sure of what we are talking about. > Simply confining abandoned railroad > features to OHM is not a good solution, because without being able to > view them in the context of existing features, they lose a lot of > their value. Agreed, OHM is currently not very usable. I've suggested that early on, and again in my latest reply to Russ : I think that maping the past in OSM would be acceptable, if done properly. Some kind of "OHM done right". Doing things really right might require a modification of the data model, a cross-db synbchronisation tool, or some other cool technology... But that's just too far off, too hypothetical. The next best thing is a tagging system for the past. If it wasn't clear already, railway=dismantled, end_date, or any system that mixes past and present in the same namespace is IMHO not acceptable. Consumers, editors and tools should be able to filter out historical data with a simple rule. I've suggested using "past:" as a key prefix, with an optional " @ date - range" as a value suffix. Didn't see any reply, what do people think ? As for opening the floodgates of historical mapping, I do not like it from a very personal POV, but I can recognise that there is a need, that OSM might be the best tool to fill that need, and that it might ultimately strengthen the poject. I just hope (and believe and work to make it true) that it won't be too much of a nuisance to my usecase. And if we do open up to maping the past, I don't think that it should be reserved to railroads. I've argued against maping no-longer existing railroads in way too many emails at this stage, but I suggested this escape route early on. Nobody picked it up but I think that's the only thing that currently stands a chance of reaching consensus. EthnicFoodIsGreat, can you see the working compromise that Russ cannot ? That's it for me, bye bye railroad thread, I hope. Of course I'm only one contributor, not a highly prolific or influential one, not an authority, just a voice. Others have been less noisy but more dogmatic than me on the subject. The community as a whole must decide wether "we map the present" is still a hard OSM rule. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk