[Imports] [Talk-us] MassGIS building conversion

[Paul Norman]

> From: Alex Barth [mailto:alex at mapbox.com]
> Subject: Re: [Talk-us] MassGIS building conversion
> 
> On Dec 9, 2012, at 3:51 PM, Jason Remillard <remillard.jason at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > But, in general, I don't think the MassGIS ID's should be included
> since they are just the center of mass of the buildings, and there is no
> indication that they will be preserving them as they update the data
> set.
> 
> This is interesting that the id (STRUCT_ID?) is to be dropped. If
> MassGIS does not track an ID on buildings, how do they properly use this
> data? Do they use an id that is not in the current data set? Generally
> speaking preserving such an id would be useful IMO for enabling clear
> references to outside datasets. E. g.

Any future work with the data after it's imported will have to handle
buildings without IDs. I included IDs in two of my imports and have found
them useless. I think that without a clear plan to use them (i.e. one with
code) you shouldn't be including government department specific metadata
like this.