[Imports] "readonly" tag for imported data (ask "simple" editors to not modify)?

[Alan Mintz]

At 2011-04-24 15:36, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>Jan Iven wrote:
>>As such, is there some agreed way for a large-scale import to pass
>>the message to editors such as Potlatch that they need not bother
>>editing these features? (this would allow me to go off and pester
>>these editors to actually honour such an attribute). Of course, the
>>editor could chose not to honour this (i.e. JOSM when
>>importing/improving some CORINE areas), but at least this would then
>>be intentional.
>Potlatch is not a "simple" editor. You can, and many people do, use it as 
>your sole OSM editor. I will categorily not permit any function to be 
>added to it that prevents certain items from being edited.

How about not "prevent", but at least warn the user and ask them to confirm 
when editing such features? The admin borders are a perfect example where 
it would take some real research to manually edit/correct them. If someone 
wants to do that work, great, but they should be able to then ask others 
not to edit unless they know what they are doing. It doesn't have to be 
enforced, but we can certainly ask people to comply, right?

Another good example is benchmarks/survey points, some of which I've been 
adding. The benchmark itself is at a specific, highly accurate position 
(lat/lon), and should not be moved unless the benchmark itself is 
re-surveyed. A control point nearby (used to identify imagery offset), 
based on a certain imagery set, should not be moved either.

How about confirm_edit=yes | "Some message to be displayed to editing 
user"? A value of "yes" displays a default message, while other values let 
the user explain the reason why it might not be correct to edit it.

--
Alan Mintz <Alan_Mintz+OSM at Earthlink.net>