[Imports-us] NJ Landuse import (NJ2002LULC)

[Serge Wroclawski]

Hi all,

I've been struggling for several months with the NJ2002LULC import .

This import has a number of very deep problems (which I'll go into)
but the bottom line is at this point, I'd like to propose to remove
the import entirely.

Since this is such a drastic action, I've CCed the author of the
import, but here are my reasons:

1. The import has a number of technical errors

There are many places where the import is broken, with ways/relations
that are unclosed, all (or at least a vast majority) of the closed
ways inside relations are duplicated, etc.

2. The import has a large number of "mega-relations"

This import has many very large, very complex relations. These complex
relations make the data virtually impossible to work with. I've had so
many problems trying to fix data that I've ended up just needing to
take the entire relation away, and I don't think I'm the only one.

3. The import is wrong in a number of places

I don't know if it's because the import is old, but the data is simply
wrong in many areas.

4. I disagree with many areas' subjective data

One of my bigger frustrations with this import is that I simply
disagree with some of the classifications, especially "scrub", and
this is very typical of landuse classifications- they're highly
subjective.

5. The import is not really fixable manually or automatically

I think that unlike the TIGER work that's being proposed, this import
is not really fixable. In order to fix it, the relations and their
component ways would basically need to be reconstructed. The work
would be huge and so complex I don't think that it would be doable
without some serious software engineering.

And to fix the import manually would actually involve more work than
recreating the data by hand.

So my proposal is to remove this import entirely.

Thoughts?

- Serge