[OSM-newbies] Church, or not?

Isaac Wingfield isw at witzend.com
Sun Nov 8 23:57:35 GMT 2009


On Nov 8, 2009, at 4:00 AM, newbies-request at openstreetmap.org wrote:

> On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 5:24 PM, Isaac Wingfield <isw at witzend.com>  
> wrote:
>> It's becoming clear to me that some of the entries on my local part  
>> of
>> OSM are based on old, out of date information, and I've been fixing
>> these as I become aware of them. Some of the entries are easy -- a
>> "Golf Club" marker on what is now clearly an industrial site -- but
>> one I'm unsure about is when a location has a "place_of_worship"
>> designation, but on-site inspection reveals that there is no obvious
>> church there, or even a sign designating one.
>>
>> I've tried web searching on the names (wondering if the icons somehow
>> got displaced), but that's been very frustrating. It would appear  
>> that
>> a lot of "information sites", such as lists of churches offered by
>> religious organizations, take their data from the same obsolete
>> information sources that OSM used; they all point precisely to the
>> place where the OSM "church" icon is, where there is nothing
>> resembling a church (I even found the same thing regarding the "golf
>> club" I mentioned above, on a site offering information to traveling
>> golfers).
>>
>> So here's the question: It's easy enough to tell a golf club from an
>> industrial site just by walking past it, but a "place_of_worship" is
>> perhaps not so clear; could one by located in a private home, with no
>> external markers? If I find nothing but a house at a location where
>> OSM has a place_of_worship icon, can I just delete it?
>
> I've recently seen some non-traditional places of worship; regular
> meetings in hotel conference rooms and what would otherwise be retail
> shops.
>
> I'd fall back to the OSM "observable / verifiable" guidelines.  If you
> can't point to the sign that proves it on the ground, perhaps it
> doesn't belong in OSM.
>
> Have you contacted the user that added the items to get their  
> perspective?

I don't know how to find out who that was, but if I highlight the  
icons the data seems to have gotten there as part of an original  
"bulk" import from TIGER or something similar; the gnis:create date is  
1999.

Isaac

--

The more secure you make something, the less secure it becomes — Bruce  
Schneier





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