[OSM-newbies] layering

[Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason]

On Sun, Oct 25, 2009 at 7:42 PM, John Whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:
> No its specific to Canada, we have a very good source of data which would
> work well as a base layer.  So the protection would be to prevent it being
> modified.  I'm asking at a technical level only here.

Yes other people have asked similar questions before on the talk@ list.

There's no reason to block such modifications on the OpenStreetMap API
level, nor is that a good idea. Imagine for example if somebody wanted
to connect a footway to some super-accurate & official government
surveyed residential way. You wouldn't be able to do that without
modifying the accurate way.

The right way to do this is to feed of the API (& planet.osm.org) and
write an application that monitors whether any of this data is being
edited and have a human somewhere notified if it's being modified.

The upside doing it like that is that it works for everything, not
just something you want to lock in place. For instance you might
notify someone interested in internationalization if a local name tag
gets changed or removed. You also avoid complexity at the
OpenStreetMap API level and don't violate the "It's a wiki map"
principle.