[OSM-dev] Am I alone here?

[Frederik Ramm]

Sandor,

On 03/05/2014 04:11 PM, Sandor Seres wrote:
> I am afraid I am irritating you folks with my focus on errors in the OSM
> source data.

I think the reason for there being little echo to your message(s) is not
so much the content but the style of the message(s).

They are

1. too long
2. contain links to Google Documents
3. which are even longer
4. AND SOMETIMES THE SUBJECTS ARE IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

Generally, your messages sound a bit like: "Hey! People! Stop! Don't you
see you're DOING IT WRONG! I have found that you are making SYSTEMATIC
ERRORS!!!!"

But we all know that already. The reason why we're not overly concerned is:

* for every new error introduced, we get a couple hundred features
without errors, so the ratio is still good.

* we have much worse problems than islands in lakes or so.

* you are also, I believe, misusing the term "systematic". In my
mapping, I haven't introduced any of the errors that you mention. If the
error were systematic then surely it would affect everyone's mapping, no?

>From this, in my opinion, ill-analyzed and over-exaggerated problem you
jump to the conclusion that repairing these issues in editors does not
work here (which seems to be your reason for not starting). But in fact
we have a couple of mechanisms to cope with such issues - e.g. KeepRight
or the OSM Inspector will highlight a number of common problems and make
it easier for people to fix them, or newer-generation tools like
MapRoulette or Kort which lend a gaming aspect to these tasks. But it
seems that you don't even know about any of these which makes your
analysis look relatively weak.

At the end of your document you recommend to move the focus from fixing
these to preventing them, which is not a bad idea; surely you have
studied the JOSM editor's validator, and a comparable component present
in the online iD editor, and had a look at which types of problems it
already highlights when uploading?

I am sure there is a lot that could be done to reduce the amount of
errors that people make, or the detect these and make them visible so
they can be fixed. It is, however, not enough to write: "I think
something should be done about this."; it is better to write: "I would
like to help coding X, where should I start, whom should I talk to?"

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"