[Imports] How good can an import be?

[Anthony]

On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 8:15 AM, Hillsman, Edward <hillsman at cutr.usf.edu> wrote:
> There are many good-sized cities in the US with very few edits. I'm tempted to propose an experiment. What if "we" (figuratively: I mean the OSM Foundation or an authorized group) simply removed all of the original-and-unedited imported TIGER data from a few of these. Leave everything else in place. Then do some outreach/publicity in these cities and a few others of comparable size, situation, and mapping activity, and then observe the subsequent mapping rates. Of course, this would not be perfectly controlled--there would be nothing to stop people from outside the area going in and tracing imagery. Or to stop locals from importing local data. But some things such as shops, pubs, bicycle parking, businesses really do have to be mapped from on the ground, and they could be used as indicators, even if nonlocals still could visit and map (here in Florida, I've encountered data entered during a week or two, and only that, by people who edit frequently in Europe before and after--consistent with mapping while on a vacation here).
>

I strongly suspect that unless you banned imports in that area, you'd
quickly find that people would just make new (probably much better)
imports.