[OSM-newbies] New contributor and a big question

[Paul Johnson]

Stephen L Johnson wrote:
> It looks like I'm about to become involved big time with OpenStreet Map.
> I'll be contributing to the Arkanass, US area. I'm main interested in
> cleaning up the data so accurate routing can be done with the OSM data.
> 
> The major issues I see in the Tiger Data is is just being wrong. Street
> Junctions where they don't exist. Wrong ways connections at the bogus
> junctions. Section of ways tagged with very old names. Etc, etc. The
> main question I have at the moment is how sacrosanct are the Tiger Data
> tags on the data? Do they need to be preserved or can they be
> removed/edited? Would is be proper to just remove Tiger data and re-add
> the information into the data if it would be easier?

I wouldn't treat the tiger:* tags as canon, and I generally consider
them safe to remove once a way is properly in place and in play.  If the
tags generated from the comparable tiger: tags are accurate, and there's
plenty of evidence to suggest the way is thoroughly reviewed and tagged,
it's probably safe to sack the tiger: tags on that object.

The TIGER import didn't seem to have a whole lot of consideration for
OSM standards, particularly in terms of abbreviations.  I'm not sure if
that was a problem with the original source dataset which would have
required expanding abbreviations in the original dataset or what, but it
seems like it would have been closer to "right" to make an automated
guess at what the expansion would be and let the humans sort out the few
that it got wrong, rather than making them all wrong by default...


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