[Imports] [tl; dr] Re: cleanup broken import "fix"

Bryce Nesbitt bryce2 at obviously.com
Wed Jun 11 19:46:38 UTC 2014


> do you have a complete list of the tags that you propose to "drop"?
> gnis:id=*               6577
> gnis:state_id=*         26
> gnis:fcode=*
> nhd:com_id=*            56793
> nhd:fdate=*             56793
> Reasoning: there is no use in these tags.

There is a strong an compelling use for the GNIS id number and the NHD id
number, even though those have been imported in a number of different ways
over time. There are good reasons to retain fcode also.  Although it's not
quite as compelling, it's also harmless.

The nhd:fdate is particularly useful, as it eases manual tracking of NHD
development over time, compared to OSM development.  It also provides a bit
of history to the future manual mapper, at negligible cost in terms of
storage space or confusion.  It's useful to know a particular feature
(a) came from NHD, (b) can be looked up readily in NHD, and (3) is from a
particular era.   In questionable cases when manually editing
I will often look up the matching GNIS or NHD feature, research the
history, and then make my edit.

---------------------------------------------
The most recent case I did this personally was a *place name out in the
middle of nowhere*.  It looked like junk and I might have just deleted it.
 Fortunately the last few human editors had preserved the gnis:id, and I
was able to look up the feature, and then link to a newspaper article about
the place.  I learned the place was a true hamlet named after the exit of a
particular railroad tunnel.  Armed with that information I was able to move
the feature to it's correct location (now a ruin), and tag it
appropriately.  Because gnis:id was preserved, the map got better and more
interesting.  Without gnis:id the detective work would have been harder and
may never have happened.

Removing the ID's removes an important thread to the history of the OSM
node, and important clues to the OSM object itself.  Putting "imported=yes"
is like painting over a mural but writing in the corner of the wall "there
was a mural here".


> In case after the cleanup the data looks too much "not-imported" could
add "imported=yes". ;)

Making imported data look "not imported" is a questionable goal.
The data *is imported*.
Pretending the data is the work of a hand mapper is a disservice to future
mappers, and disrespectful to the project that
created the data in the first place (here GNS and NHD).
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