[talk-au] Gatton, QLD

[Stephen Hope]

2009/9/23 John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com>:
>
> No, source=survey isn't ambiguous at all it's spelt out clearly on the
> map features page:
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Map_Features#Annotation
>

Actually, that is ambiguous - or rather incomplete.  It says "gpx
track or other physical survey"

There is no distinction between gps (accuracy +/- 5-10m) and a
theodolite (or whatever they use these days) survey - accuracy +/-
2-3cm).  The argument goes that we should leave the survey tag for
real surveys, and use gps for gps based ones.  This comes up in the
talk list from time to time - I haven't seen it lately, though.
Personally I think it's too late to salvage the survey tag now, if we
want to make the distinction we'd need to create two other tags and
start using them instead.  Or assume all survey tags are low quality,
but you wouldn't be sure.

This is the argument for using source=gps - at least we're splitting
it off from survey so that we know which type of survey it is, and
we're not losing the data if we decide we should differentiate later.

As a side note, I get the impression that the complaints about tagging
GPS tracks as survey often come from professionals in the geospace
fields. The idea of calling something as approximate as a gps track a
survey just freaks them right out. And they worry that people who
acquire the data might misunderstand the tag - it has a technical
meaning that we are not using.

Stephen