[Imports] [OSM-talk] Mechanically Cleaning Up FIXME Tags

[Christoph Hormann]

On Friday 27 February 2015, Bryce Nesbitt wrote:
> To make this simpler, for now I propose to mechanically delete the
> tags:
>
> fixme=stream␣attibutes␣missing
> stream=fixme
>
> >From several stream imports in the USA.   Does anyone have comment
> > or
>
> considerations for that proposal (beyond the usual mechanical edit
> policy)?

I don't think you are going to find a majority for that but since you 
ask for comments you can have mine:

Those tags as well as the similar ones:

fixme=stream␣attributes␣missing
fixme=stream␣attribute␣data␣missing

have not been added by an import but in an attempt to fix a broken 
import.  As far as i can see they indicate the waterway in question 
lacks a tag indicating if it is permanent or intermittent while the 
source data (NHD) generally contains such attributes and in the area in 
question a large fraction of waterways are non-permanent.

Sensible ways to fix this particular problem would be

(1) on the ground survey/check via aerial images (obviously)
(2) deriving the corresponding tag from existing 'nhd:fcode' tag (like 
for example here: http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/45949047)
(3) newly getting the corresponding tag from the NHD source data (by 
matching with geometry or id)
(4) remove the whole data where it has not been been modified by manual 
edits

If you go through the trouble of performing a mechanical edit here it 
would be IMO be insane not to do at least (2) or (3).  Given the 
generally sorry state of the NHD/Canvec waterway data in America option 
(4) might be the better thing to do (we are talking about stuff here 
that has not been touched for five years).

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