[talk-au] Talk-au Digest, Vol 36, Issue 9

[Ben Last]

On 9 June 2010 11:14, Voon-Li Chung <chungvl at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have a idea - it's not that different in concept to my "Survey
> Helper" system that I emailed out about a few months ago. But the way
> I see it, the issues are:
> 1. It's too hard to get Nearmap users to go through the signup process for OSM
For a given value of "hard" :)  Yes, right now we think it's too
complex and there's also no easy way for us to tell if they're already
signed up/logged into OSM.

> 2. OSM shouldn't necessarily trust the information coming back from
> Nearmap users, and would ideally like to vet the information coming
> back
Interesting point... is a given Nearmap user any less trustworthy than
a given OSM user? :)
Or are you thinking that this would be a result of us making it easier
to make changes?

> 3. It would be good there was some way to combine the enthusiasm of
> the Nearmap users with the skills of long-term OSM editors
> So how about creating an independent database that allows OSM editors
> to view what is effectively a "suggestion box database", which can
> then be used / accessed by registered OSM users to influence their map
> editing? That way, Nearmap users are still making contributions, and
> they can be vetted / influenced by a more experienced OSM editor.
That's a good idea, but it doesn't help us address one key
requirement, which is that we want to allow users to make corrections
on the map and see the results of those changes in very short order
(preferably immediately).  The OSM data structure is not well suited
to us storing edits locally and using them to correct the data used
for rendering, so our preference if to resubmit the edits back to OSM
as soon as possible so that we can regenerate the maps from the OSM
updates.

> That way, one of the activities OSM editors can do, in addition to
> tracing streets, is also check "the Nearmap change suggestions
> database" to see what good stuff the Nearmap user community has
> provided.
We are planning to tag all changes (and changed entities) from our
edits appropriately, so that changes made via NearMap are easy to
find.

Cheers
b
-- 
Ben Last
Development Manager (HyperWeb)
NearMap Pty Ltd