[Imports] Imports without coordinates

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 01/04/11 08:29, Lulu-Ann at gmx.de wrote:
> One opportunity is to match address data including housenumbers and
> add the new information (restaurant etc) to the existing
> addr:housenumber node.

In theory if you find an object (which may also be a building=yes way!) 
that has the housenumber in question, you could add new tags to the 
object automatically.

However, the exact location of the wheelchair accessible toilet might 
not be the same as the object that carries the house number - the toilet 
might be a public toilet outside, or might be in the outbuilding of the 
restaurant, or whatever. Simply pasting the 
wheelchair-accessible-toilet-tag onto the address node might suggest a 
precision that is not there in practice.

 > The other way is to run a geocoder on the address list and put
 > fixme-nodes into the OSM database

Please don't do that.

 > or put fixme notes into
 > OpenStreetBugs.

In many cases (where we don't have any house numbers) this will lead to 
a bug mark halfway along the road, carrying the information "at house 
number 57 there is a restaurant called El Bandolero which has a 
wheelchair-accessible toilet". This is a very small bit of information - 
I fear the day when someone crawls the web for every restaurant or other 
business and stuffs everything into OpenStreetBugs ("somewhere in this 
street there is a house with the number 58 and there is a bakery 
there"). This is information that would likely be recorded if someone 
maps in the area, and if nobody maps there then the OpenStreetBug entry 
will not help.

Maybe it would be better to simply go with your first idea and attach 
information to objects where you find them, and where you don't find 
them, just leave it be - and keep those non-matching records on file and 
re-run the job half a year later. Ultimately you'll be able to finish it.

Interestingly, this has some significance for the upcoming license 
change. Imagine that user A creates a node with addr:street=SomeStreet, 
addr:housenumber=57, and user B later adds amenity=restaurant, name=El 
Bandolero. Then the license change comes and forces us to remove the 
node because user A has not agreed to the contributor terms. The 
information contributed by user B might however still be usable so we'd 
be in a similar situation as you describe.

Bye
Frederik