[OSM-dev] A new take on the "mutable" idea

SteveC steve at asklater.com
Tue Jun 30 09:39:46 BST 2009


We could have an 'authoritative' layer. All authoritative data could  
sit in planet-authoritative.osm - it can't be that big really on the  
scale of things.

Or we could lock a few things like wikipedia locks the Jesus and  
Scientology pages and only certain people can edit them.

Are there any other use cases apart from authoritative boundary data?

But then it becomes a question of 'what is authoritative' and we get  
arguments that the government calls this road a primary but we have it  
marked as secondary...

Best

Steve


On 22 Jun 2009, at 07:38, Jochen Topf wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 03:15:12PM +0100, Matt Amos wrote:
>> we went over this before: if it isn't editable, it shouldn't be in
>> OSM. there's nothing to stop people adding 3rd party datasets into
>> renderings based on OSM or using these boundaries to perform analysis
>> on OSM data. i can't see a good reason why OSM has to import
>> *everything* - we're not the ultimate data repository, we're the free
>> *wiki* world map.
>
> Maybe we should have everything in OSM, but we should have those  
> valuable data
> sources with the accurate data!
>
> Currently we have a special database for GPS tracks. This is part of  
> our source
> data. Everybody can use it to check his own tracks against other  
> peoples tracks
> and both against the main OSM data. Maybe we should extend this  
> model to other
> data sources. Say, you import all the roads in one country. The  
> first step
> could be to load this into a "source" database. Like with the GPS  
> tracks, it
> would contains the original data and that would never change. Then  
> the normal
> data conversion and import into the mail OSM database is done.
>
> Along with the data we can store information about its source,  
> accuracy, etc.
> The mapper then does what cartographers have been doing for  
> centuries: They
> collect all data about an area, compare it and distill the best view  
> out of the
> data that they can get. Everybody can still change everything, but  
> everybody
> can also always get back to the original data. If we want it to be  
> fancy, we
> can add ways of tracking where which data came from and introduce  
> alerting
> mechanisms.
>
> Basically this idea acknowledges what has been true for a while: GPS  
> tracks are
> only one of many sources. Imports are more important now and getting  
> more and
> more so. And with more and more areas where the basic data is  
> already complete,
> the job of the mappper moves from beeing somebody who enters new  
> data to
> somebody who edits existing data. Somebody who does the hard work of  
> integrating
> the data from different sources into a coherent hole. A job that  
> doesn't work
> without the human judgment.
>
> Of course, for the mapper this would bring new challenges. He might  
> be able to
> see 10 different layers of data in his editor with as many data  
> sources. And he
> might have to look at them all to decide who is right and whats  
> important. But
> humans are good at those things.
>
> Jochen
> -- 
> Jochen Topf  jochen at remote.org  http://www.remote.org/jochen/   
> +49-721-388298
>
>
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