[Imports] [Talk-ca] Modifying GeoBase Ways.

[Andy Allan]

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 4:52 AM, Sam Vekemans
<acrosscanadatrails at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Steve,
>
> The reason i didnt include attribution as part of the changeset is
> because .... I didnt know how. :)
>
> i chose to put the 'attribution' tag on each point, line, area map
> feature, so that way, anyone editing will immediatly see where it came
> from.

Hi Imports List,

I want to take what Sam has said out of context here, so this isn't a
question of Geobase/Canvec, let's consider the wider issue of
attribution on imported data. Should the attribution be on the
geo-features (nodes,ways,relations), or on the changeset, on the wiki,
all three, or a combination?

My take on it is that is should not be on the geo-features, but it
should be on the changeset (and the wiki if you like). My reasoning is
that we don't store attribution for normal contributors on the
geo-features, so we should be consistent with imports. When a
contributor creates a new way we don't add tags to the way to say who
contributed it, so I don't think we should add attribution tags to
ways etc for imports. I think it's fine to say that such meta-data
should, if used at all, go into the changeset information instead.
(Actually, to keep the parallel the same, it should go into the user
account, if a dedicated account is used, but that's something I'm less
bothered about).

Let's take the case of the software used: Nowadays we put the
created_by tag on the changeset, for example, whereas in the past all
imports (e.g. TIGER) have put the details of the software used in tags
on the features. I think (hope?) we all agree that there shouldn't be
a created_by:bulkupload.py on the geo-features any more. So I think we
can change our recommendations for where the attribution should go
too.

What do you all think?

Cheers,
Andy