[Imports] Fwd: City of Seattle imports

Wed Dec 5 17:01:51 UTC 2012

We're having the meeting at a pub, Fado's in Seattle, so I'm not sure a
hangout would work well.

That said, if anyone's interested, I'll bring my laptop and set it up.

I'll be sure your question about merges & feeds & updates is on the agenda.
It would be awesome to have some sort of feed into a review process and
then out to OSM after review.

Thanks!

On Wed, Dec 5, 2012 at 8:54 AM, the Old Topo Depot <oldtopos at novacell.com>wrote:

> Jeff et al,
>
> Glad to see this discussion about Seattle data.  I was going to ask you to
> set up a Google Hangout for the meeting but I unfortunately have other
> commitments this evening.
>
> I wanted to ask if consideration has been (or will be) given to techniques
> that enable future imports to be easily merged in the event that the City
> updates some or all of the source layers.
>
> Looking forward to a recap of the discussion this evening, including a
> detailed report and evaluation of the beers consumed.
>
> Best,
>
> On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 8:46 PM, Jeff Meyer <jeff at gwhat.org> wrote:
>
>> Whoops! Should have cc'd imports@
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>> From: Jeff Meyer <jeff at gwhat.org>
>> Date: Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 5:40 PM
>> Subject: Re: [Imports] City of Seattle imports
>> To: Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>> Serge - apologies for the confusing formatting. I use Gmail's web client.
>> It's not the problem. I human formatted the message to look nice in Google,
>> forgetting that the listserv software doesn't do well when people put in
>> their own (poorly-chosen) bullets. The general format was:
>> [your comment]
>> \>\> [my reply]
>> \>\>\>\> [subcomment of mine to my own reply]
>>
>> Many of your responses are based around assertions about what OSM and
>> what OSM is not, and what's important and what's not, but I'm not sure
>> those are relevant to the topic at hand. I'll focus on responses relevant
>> for the import of City of Seattle data. My goal is to help create better
>> documentation of best practices for imports. If there's a document like
>> this that I've missed, please let me know.
>>
>> SW: Those scripts and datafiles need to be part of any discussion, as early
>> as possible.
>> JM: We identified these files and developed preliminary scripts a couple
>> days ago.
>> Here are a couple - these may not be the only sources considered for
>> import:
>> https://data.seattle.gov/dataset/Master-Address-File/3vsa-a788
>> https://data.seattle.gov/dataset/Street-Network-Database/afip-2mzr
>> https://data.seattle.gov/dataset/2009-Building-Outlines/y7u8-vad7
>>
>> SW: Manually in that you will be adding all features by hand, you,
>> yourself?
>> JM: I'm not sure why you are asking if I'll be doing this myself. This
>> email thread contains several references to people who will be assisting.
>> Cliff Snow and others attending the meeting to discuss this import. We hope
>> to have a team of local mappers focus on imports where they have local
>> expertise.
>>
>> SW: What long time, trusted, local OSM community member do you have working
>> with you on this?
>> JM: I'm not sure who decides how long is long enough or who is trusted.
>> Right now, Steve Coast is planning to attend our planning meeting & will
>> hopefully be reviewing our plans. That said, a good import process should
>> be well documented, stand on its own, and not be dependent on this type of
>> participation.
>>
>> SW: Discussion is better than notice, and imports isn't the greater US community
>> forum, talk-us is.
>> JM: Perhaps I miscommunicated what I meant by "notice" - I was hoping to
>> start an email discussion by giving notice of our intent to commence our
>> import planning with the e-mail to imports@
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Jeff
>>
>> "Be nice." - Dalton, Road House
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 4:21 PM, Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Jeff,
>>>
>>> I've read this mail over several times, and simply find it hard to
>>> parse. I don't know what email program you use, but standard email
>>> in-line reply is > for a quote and >> for a quote of a quote. The
>>> style you've adopted makes it hard for me to identify whose quoted and
>>> in reponse to what
>>>
>>> For more information on in-line quoting, see
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Quoted_line_prefix
>>>
>>> On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 6:53 PM, Jeff Meyer <jeff at gwhat.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> > source tags are not really appropriate for indivdual elements,
>>> >>> How do you identify when individual elements of the same way or node
>>> are
>>> >>> derived from different sources?
>>>
>>> One of the key important elements to understand about OSM is that OSM
>>> is not a collection of sources, but is in fact a single unified
>>> dataset.
>>>
>>> Except in a few exceptional cases (which I'll address later) we do not
>>> care that a features comes from one person or one source and not
>>> another.
>>>
>>> In fact, what's been shown is that "official" sources are a problem,
>>> as people are hesitant to edit them, where we want people to be not
>>> just be practically, but encouraged to edit. But when something is
>>> stamped with "official" or from an external dataset, they're less
>>> likely to.
>>>
>>> Now, there are times when you want to know what source something came
>>> from, and this is where changeset tags are far more useful.
>>>
>>> For example, let's say there's a road, and someone adds it from some
>>> local datasource. Someone else may look at the feature in imagery and
>>> change its geometry. In that case, we'd like to know what imagery they
>>> looked at.
>>>
>>> But in OSM all of these techniques are considered secondary. Our
>>> primary and always preferred method for data are people surveying. We
>>> would always prefer, and should always favor a person on the ground
>>> against other sources, and surveying doesn't have a "source".
>>>
>>>
>>> >>>>> I didn't see any discussion or dispute of this approach on the wiki
>>> >>>>> page, so I'm assuming it's ok.
>>>
>>> This is a bad assumption. It's heavily debated, and largely deprecated
>>> in favor of changeset tags.
>>>
>>> I realize I addressed this above, but please, stop adding >>>>> to
>>> your mails, this is odd and confusing.
>>>
>>> > more importantly, the specific
>>> > datasets should be referenced, as data.seattle.gov doesn't talk about
>>> > the version of the data, or even what dataset it is.
>>> >>> Good points. We will add these clarifications.
>>>
>>> > Where is the source of your transformation scripts?
>>> >>> From the email above: "some translation instructions Cliff has put
>>> >>> together." We will include the specific translation code either at a
>>> github
>>> >>> page or on the http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Seattle page.
>>>
>>> > Where are the specific data files you're transforming?
>>> >>> They are at data.seattle.gov & we will provide links to the
>>> sources. We
>>> >>> will also consider posting separate snapshots of these source
>>> datafiles if
>>> >>> we can figure out where to host them.
>>>
>>> Those scripts and datafiles need to be part of any discussion, as
>>> early as possible.
>>>
>>> > How will you handle object conflation?
>>> >>> Manually and methodically.
>>>
>>> Manually in that you will be adding all features by hand, you, yourself?
>>>
>>> >>> Please identify any un-discussed concerns. I'd like to make sure
>>> we've
>>> >>> accounted for them all.
>>>
>>> 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?
>>>
>>> > but more generally, you seem to not have discussed this with the
>>> greater OSM
>>> > community, including the talk-us list.
>>>
>>> >>> I thought that imports@ was the "Greater OSM community."
>>>
>>> See above.
>>>
>>> >>> From the email above: "A group of Seattle OSM'ers (led by Cliff
>>> Snow) are
>>> >>> getting together to discuss the methods for importing and
>>> double-checking
>>> >>> the information.
>>> > http://www.meetup.com/OpenStreetMap-Seattle/events/93524692/
>>>
>>> >>> I will forward the prior notice to talk-us@
>>>
>>> Discussion is better than notice, and imports isn't the greater US
>>> community forum, talk-us is.
>>>
>>> >>> advise as to the checklist steps we are not following, or which
>>> steps should
>>> >>> be added to this checklist?
>>>
>>> See above.
>>>
>>> - Serge
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Jeff Meyer
>> Global World History Atlas
>> www.gwhat.org
>> jeff at gwhat.org
>> 206-676-2347
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Jeff Meyer
>> Global World History Atlas
>> www.gwhat.org
>> jeff at gwhat.org
>> 206-676-2347
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Imports mailing list
>> Imports at openstreetmap.org
>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/imports
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> John Novak
> 585-OLD-TOPOS (585-653-8676)
>
>

-- 
Jeff Meyer
Global World History Atlas
www.gwhat.org
jeff at gwhat.org
206-676-2347
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