[Imports] Import of forests, farmland and other types of land cover for Sweden generated from Naturvårdsverkets Nationella Marktäckedata 2018

[Jarek Piórkowski]

On Mon, 29 Apr 2019 at 13:03, Andy Townsend wrote via Imports:
> > A full world map would never have been drawn with using just local
> > knowledge.
> >
> I'm not sure that I buy that argument at all.  A lot of quite remote
> places are actually very well mapped in OSM based on input from people
> who either live there or have visited there.

Hi Andy,

Note that Grigory's argument was that the whole world would never have
been mapped. Stating that there exist parts of the world that have in
fact been mapped is a bit of a misdirection. Are we to conclude that
since a part has been mapped, all parts would have been eventually
mapped? Apart from logical objections, my counter-example would be
that there are also a lot of quite un-remote places which remain very
poorly mapped in OSM, and many of these are not only not catching up,
but are falling behind on changes in the real world.

I'll give an example: Toronto, a metro region of about 5 million
people, did not have the vast majority of its buildings mapped until
an import started in late 2018. To counter Christoph's earlier
supposition, there was not an earlier import getting in the way of
craft mappers - most was a blank slate and few areas had some of the
building mapped manually. Buildings were getting added, but too slowly
to keep up with new construction - and every hour sketching buildings
from imagery where they could be imported is an hour editors aren't
out in the real world surveying or recruiting new mappers.

But okay, so we just don't map every single-family building in OSM.
Then another example: I have just now sketched in the first forest
polygons in a part of a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. Somehow no
craft mapper had done it yet, but maybe they would have in another
decade?

For that matter, there are parts of London Zone 2 which are missing
shops and multi-unit buildings. But I suppose we have a process to
cooperatively assemble local knowledge of human mappers that will
allow them to be mapped, someday, maybe. Meanwhile let's discuss
whether wetlands should be forests and how changesets should be
uploaded.

Regards,
--Jarek