[Imports] Importing Arkansas data

[Ian Dees]

On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 12:41 PM, Michael Leibowitz <
michael.leibowitz at intel.com> wrote:

> If one were to make a one-time import, not only would they probably stomp
> on a lot of entries already existing, the data would become wrong
> eventually.  However, a continual import has value.  Although survey is
> good, the GIS department's opinion of address is the canonical source.
>  Likewise for other data sources.
>
>
Ah, this last sentence here is where our problems come from.

What is the purpose of a (Street)map that is Open if all we do is import the
"correct" data? The Europeans (who are oddly silent in this debate *nudge
Fredrick* :) ) will tell you that they don't want the project to be reduced
to a bunch of human conflict resolvers. They've generated oodles of data
that in many cases is *much* better than the "correct" data provided by
municipalities -- all without major imports.

Because of this, they will tell you that continual import has no value. In
fact, they'll say that continual import has *negative* value because it
actually pushes mappers away. Why would anyone sign up to a project where,
after they nudge the previously-imported address point for their house over
a few meters, it is accidentally blasted away by an import?

Yes, in the US there are *tons* of existing datasets that are maintained by
municipalities, but we still need to figure out the best way to use that
data. For now we need to take it on a case by case basis because of imports
that don't quite get the process right (like the one that started this
thread) and because of imports that don't add valuable data to the OSM
dataset.
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