[Talk-ca] Welcome, everybody! Here's what I think...

Corey Burger corey.burger at gmail.com
Sun Dec 14 07:53:45 GMT 2008


On Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 12:13 PM,  <david at glenlake.ca> wrote:
> Hey there, I'm pretty new to OSM, but I've read through the wiki articles
> related to GeoBase (as well as this month's talk-ca archive). I figured since
> people are asking for opinions, I may as well share mine.
>
> I'll start off by saying how AMAZED I am at the current state of the map for
> Toronto (where I live). It's quite incredible what a bunch of people can
> produce given access a powerful collaborative toolset.
>
> And now there is the possibility of adding roads (and other) for the entire
> country, at 'one fell swoop', thanks to the existence and availability of a
> huge dataset, likely created by a huge number of people, over a long period of
> time, at great expense. That's pretty exciting! But how to proceed?
>
> There is talk about one option being direct replacement of portions of the OSM
> db (imported area by area, I guess), but I'm not certain what happens to OSM
> map objects that are not roads...
>
> I would be content to have a GeoBase-based road network replace roads that are
> (otherwise) user-contributed via GPS tracks, and yahoo tracing... provided that
> non-road elements (subway lines, bus routes, bike paths, foot paths, malls,
> recreational trails, buildings,  bus routes, etc.) remain.
>
> That said, I've contributed very little road data, and am not "attached" to that
> which I've added. I also understand that the data contributed to date may be
> more accurate, or more up-to-date than what's contained within GeoBase. I also
> have respect for the contributors of this data, and can understand that other
> people would be 'attached' to it; they contributed it with the understanding
> that it be freely shared; but not likely with the understanding that it might
> be just-as-freely deleted.
>
> So I would more happy with GeoBase roads uploaded, "on-top" of the existing
> data. If folks don't like the maps that are produced in this case of "double"
> data, they could modify their renderer to ignore one data set or the other; I
> presume it would also be possible to pre-filter the data to ignore one set or
> another.
>
> This presumes it has been appropriately tagged during import.
>
> I would think pre-tagging all existing roads as "user-contributed" (or
> something) might make sense in this case.
>
> I've no opinion on how to address the issue of GeoBase "updates", and how to
> incorporate these, other than to point out that keeping old data as well as new
> data could allow for maps to be produced that relate to a certain point in
> time. Obviously the most common rendering would be what is "current".
>
> I expect further versions of the OSM database published via openstreetmaps.org
> may support more complexity. Perhaps this "update" problem will be easily
> addressed by future technological tools. Version control is not a problem
> unique to mapping, and future technology may present a solution.
>
> In any case, I look forward to the continued improvement of the platform, as
> well as the data. I will continue to contribute, as I am able.

Having duplicated data is a giant mistake, imho. It ignores the
reality that we will need to integrate it at some point and that
working on the existing stuff pre-Geobase is just duplicating work.

Now, this is going to be a lot of work, especially for a large city
partially mapped like Victoria where I live.

Corey




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