[Imports] How good can an import be?

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Wed Apr 6 22:09:44 UTC 2011


Katie,

Katie Filbert wrote:
> This (another neighborhood) is what I've been working on, with very 
> extensive ground survey + import of buildings, school polygons, etc.
> 
> http://osm.org/go/ZZcc60T6
> 
> Is this crap??? Are my efforts crap? Is there any reason to stay 
> involved with OSM?

I'm several thousand miles away and not familiar with that area. It 
looks mapped well enough - it looks like something that has received at 
least a two-digit number of hours of traditional mapping work, supported 
perhaps by a little imported data.

However if *I*, from several thousand miles away, had imported what you 
have imported in that area, and not been able to give it the mapping 
love you gave it - now that would be crap. Crap unlikely to receive 
mapping love from anyone.

OSM thrives on local mappers feeling responsible for their area. If 
someone, while mapping their local area (or another area that is somehow 
close to their heart), uses an external data set to brush things up, to 
add in buildings (which are later locally verified and amended with 
house numbers) for example, that's great.

It's just that importing data as a substitute for local mappers doesn't 
work, and is more likely to deter than to attract people. Importing 
stuff in a place you have never seen with your own eyes is very likely 
to result in a crap map, no matter how technically refined your import 
is. Any map is a crap map without humans tending to it.

For the record - firstly, I have imported a lot of stuff myself, and 
even today I sometimes trace from aerial imagery in areas I've never 
visited so I'm not a saint either. Secondly, while I'm a staunch 
anti-import guy today, I wasn't at the time when TIGER was imported. 
Dave Hansen did most of the work, and I would like to make clear that 
just because I now say imports are crap, doesn't mean that Dave did 
anything wrong. It seemed like a good idea at the time, even to me.

Bye
Frederik

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



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