[Imports] Adding pcodes to villages in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea

[Christoph Hormann]

On Tuesday 25 November 2014, Pierre Béland wrote:
> [...] I uploaded successfully the import for
> Guinea (8,222 places).See
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/27012655
>
> Files are also ready to be uploaded for Liberia                16,725
> places Sierra Leone        9,137 places
>
> If you dont see any problems, I will continue the import for the two
> other countries.


Neither the already performed edit nor your new plans comply with the 
mechanical edit rules in terms of documentation.  The unocha:pcode key 
has no documentation on the wiki and there is no hint on the meaning in 
either the changeset comment or the import account description.  In 
short - there is no way for either mappers or data users to conclude 
the meaning of this tag - if i came across it during mapping i would 
probably delete it.

Note adding proprietary IDs to OSM data is generally not seen 
favorably - the following factors could help (but would need to be 
documented of course):

- it is an ID established/endorsed by local authorities.
- it is frequently used by locals
- it is allocated in an open and transparent process

If a mapper has no way to verify the validity of the ID it definitely 
has no place in the OSM database.

I would suggest you improve the documentation and then restart the 
discussion.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/