[talk-au] Missing streets in Sydney

Ian Sergeant inas66+osm at gmail.com
Mon Sep 5 10:18:40 BST 2011


On 5 September 2011 14:31, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

You need to be explicit about the comparison you're
> making. This is volunteer labour, and you can't meaningfully compare
> the contribution that people are willing to make against the
> contribution you'd prefer they make. And if you want to, you have to
> factor in time and other costs. I can trace 10 streets in the time you
> can survey one. We could argue about which is the more valuable
> contribution - or we could recognise that both are valuable, and get
> back to it.
>

Hi,

As I said, it is an issue as old as OSM that isn't likely to be resolved
here and now.  You may recall in the early days of segments, there was a
capability to add a path from tracing, which didn't appear on the map, and
then when it was surveyed, confirmed and named, it would have a rendered way
that was part of the map.

Personally, I think people shouldn't  map areas when they don't have any
knowledge of the topology and layout because I think fixing errors takes
several orders of magnitude longer than the tracing.   Any perceived time
saving is illusory, when someone has to visit the area sooner or later
anyway.  I think having a complete map is very long term goal, and having an
accurate map is a higher priority.  I'd much rather a street be missing than
wrong, and accuracy comes cheaper when accurate work is done the first
time.  OSM remains a successful project, and when we have people who are
mapping underground pipes and antennas on top of buildings, volunteer time
doesn't seem to be the first consideration.

However, I understand that the community has a divergence of views.  I
understand that everyone makes mistakes, even from the most detailed survey,
and accordingly I'm sure you will find as many supporters of your position
as detractors.

If everyone makes sure that the source tags are updated accurately, and
continue to discuss errors we find in a cooperative manner, hopefully we'll
all manage to map happily every after.

Ian.
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