<html><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:times new roman, new york, times, serif;font-size:10pt"><div>2012-09-18 <font face="Arial" size="2">Simon Poole <simon@poole.ch></font></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br>> The question of (for example of an operational problem) communication to
active mappers is a technical problem that we will have to address</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">> at
one point in time. Either by assuring that the e-mail address remains
valid or by other technical means. However that is not the issue in
question,</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">> simply the fact that we have a large number of imports that
are badly documented or not at all, should not have been imported in he
first place</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">> (incompatible with CC-bs-SA or/and ODbL) and so on.<br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">> The French cadastre imports are, as you know, a rather controversial
subject. In my opinion it is a dataset that doesn't actually increase
the</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">> usefulness of the OSM dataset for most users (building outlines
without addresses just don't really help with anything) and distracts
beginner</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">> mappers from actually mapping (1st time mappers are recommend
to immediately start importing insted of going outside). Further more,</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">> like essentially all imports, the external dataset is not about to go
away, so there is no reason to prioritize this import over adding useful
stuff.</div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">Simon, this discussion was started to discuss about governance. We only see examples of problematic imports. But the question we should look at is how we can better tune or multinational / multicultural organization to adress these problems. The respective roles of local communities and the DWG group have to be defined. We should also give tools to the local communities to monitor mapping, contact mappers, be able to exchange. And we should not only think of national groups. You sometime have groups at regional or municipal levels. <br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br></div><div
style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br>> BUT the import guidelines do not contain a provision that
the data imported actually has to be useful and if the French community
wants to spend (waste?) <br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">> immense amount of time on this, nobody is going
to stop it as long as it doesn't severely impact operations and/or use
of OSM data.<br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">Lets think more positively about bout national / local communities and give them the capacity to do a better job. Large organization have this tendancy of centralizing everything and adopt simple rules. But the experience has showed that this does not work. <br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;"><br></div><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: normal;">There are more then 500,000 contributors. How many do you think know about the DWG group and follow his guidelines?<br></div><div> </div><div><span
style="font-style:italic;color:rgb(0, 0, 191);font-weight:bold;">Pierre </span><br> <br></div> </div></body></html>