[Imports] City of Seattle imports

[Glen Barnes]

On 5/12/2012, at 1:21 PM, Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com> wrote:

> 

>> How will you handle object conflation?
>>>> Manually and methodically.
> 
> Manually in that you will be adding all features by hand, you, yourself?

I think there is a disconnect here between bulk imports and merging of bulk open data. The process as explained seems to be that they bulk open data will be used to populate OSM not by a script but by uploading sections at a time _after_ checking for duplicates, errors, etc. and hand merging this. This is only going to become more common as more governments open data for reuse. If this process is not managed properly then we are going to have problems. Already in NZ we've had a bunch of data imported outside of our managed process so it is a case of picking the best way to get this in there without compromising the quality. 

We've started to build the tools (https://github.com/opennewzealand/linz2osm) to make this an easy, open, documented process which we hope will strike the right balance between imports and existing data.

> Imports should generally not be done by those who do not have a long,
> long history with OSM. Bad imports are not simply the same as bad
> edits, but have long, multi-year consequences that communities
> sometimes never dig out of.
> 
> What long time, trusted, local OSM community member do you have
> working with you on this?

Can we please be a bit more welcoming of people wanting to do imports especially if they have clearly stated that they are taking a measured approach to the project. I found the first email in the thread to be a decent introduction. It may seem like you have to say the same stuff over and over again to new people but based on my previous experience being generally negative turns people off. It has the effect of people just going off and doing your own thing. OSM imports are not just for "long time, trusted, local OSM community members" they are for anyone who wants to take on the challenge in a measured way. 

Thanks,
Glen