[Imports] Proposed import removal: nuclear explosion sites

[olvagor]

Hey there,

finally made it to this list...

I initially added the explosion sites to OSM and have some comments on 
the topic. The import was a lot of manual labor, and not a fully 
automated import. Of course, gathering the pure technical detail about 
yield etc. was automated. But correcting the positions based on aerial 
imagery, adding craters and so on was a lot of work. Therefore I don't 
like the idea to throw all of this away.

But I understand your arguments, that nuclear explosions are historic 
data, which maybe OSM isn't the right place for. I'd disagree, I don't 
see the negative aspects, and it feels like relevance discussions in 
Wikipedia to me, but I can accept this opinion.


If you decide to remove the explosion sites from OSM, please consider this:

1) There were some explosions (under water, space, atmospheric, ...?) 
which left no trace on earth. Just delete them. (But maybe some of these 
also left traces - take a look at Bikini atoll).

2) Also delete all that technical data. Things to keep for 4) and 5): 
names and dates

3) Most explosions happend on or beneath ground [1]. There is (and for 
the next 10.000 years will be) a crater/shaft/radioactive glas or simply 
radiation, which can be measured and therefore mapped. And if you have 
the right equipment, you can analyse the isotopes and stuff and find 
out, which device was detonated at that site. I agree, this is different 
from reading the name from a sign, but there IS something 
visible/traceable left.
Simply think about Tschernobyl: if all leftovers would've been covered 
by earth ("invisible"), would you really simply map the whole area as 
forest?

4) I added a lot of craters - take a look at Nevada Test Site [2] in 
JOSM - but surely not all of them. And I didn't add any visible tunnel 
entrances or shafts. Especially outsite the US aerial imagery was of bad 
quality back then. Simply removing all explosion sites automatically 
actively destroys geospatial data. Please check for each site, if there 
is a nicely tagged crater/shaft/other remains before removing it.

5) Craters/shafts/other visible remains should have the shot's name 
tagged and also the timestamp, when it was created. The bomb's name is 
the crater's name. Most impressive example for this is probably [3]. But 
please start no relevance discussion, that smaller craters aren't worth 
their names, or something like that.

Bye,
Markus



[1] http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/nuclear_explosion%3Atype#values
[2] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/37.1096/-116.0522
[3] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/37.17718/-116.04588