[Imports] Buildings & Address in Washington, DC, USA.

[Serge Wroclawski]

Aaron,

Your memory on the NYC import differs from mine. I recall the  major
cause of stopping was not a technical issue- it was that MapBox
employees were importing recklessly (for a lack of a better word) ,
and it was also due to lack of transparency by MapBox on the import
being done by paid mappers who were not in NYC, but were in Brazil.

The NYC building import being done by remote mappers has had a number
of negative effects.

Firstly, it's had a negative impact on the OSM community in NYC by
basically taking the wind out of our sails. OSM NYC was gaining
community interested in doing the import, but as soon as the paid
mappers worked full force, we saw a drastic reduction in community
participation. In addition, it had a major blow to our enthusiasm, me
included.

Secondly, I'm still finding problems by the Brazilian digitizers, and
they do not respond to OSM messages, comments on their notes, or the
github that OSMers were instructed to use in leu of using standard OSM
communication methods. The only thing that I've found that they do
respond to consistently is being blocked by the DWG. That kind of lack
of communication hits me the wrong way.

While the data quality of the NYC import may be good (I can't know for
sure), the damage to the community in NYC has been quite strong.

In addition to the NYC comparison- I'm still awaiting the answers that
Katie and I asked earlier in the weekend, and I'd like to add that
this plan does not address any question of ongoing stuardship of the
data, ie future updates, which is something that, during that pause,
it came out that MapBox would not do.

- Serge