[Talk-ca] Users in Ottawa and Geobase

James Ewen ve6srv at gmail.com
Wed Oct 28 05:38:35 GMT 2009


On Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 10:47 PM, James A. Treacy <treacy at debian.org> wrote:

> In spite of the second case, anyone asking about poor quality roads is
> given the party line that the existing work should stay.
>
> This is ridiculous.

I think you're misinterpreting the statements being made... this is
kind of like the oft espoused mantra "Don't tag for the renderers!"


The issue that was up for discussion was whether there should be a
wholesale wipe and clean then GeoBase import via script. The script is
designed to import GeoBase unless there is existing OSM data. The
script has no way of knowing if the quality of the OSM data.

Because the script has no knowledge of whether the existing data is of
excellent versus dubious quality, the decision was made to defer to
the OSM data which has been input by an entity that used knowledge and
reasoning to place the way.

If however one were to manually look at each GeoBase way, and compare
it against the existing OSM data, and then using local knowledge/GPS
traces/Yahoo Imagery, decide that the GeoBase data is of better
quality than the OSM data, I am sure that everyone would agree that
the OSM data should be deleted, and GeoBase be used.

The stitching process really needs to be done through a similar
process, where the ways that have been excluded by the script should
be looked at by a human who can make intelligent decisions that just
can't be done by a script.

By all means, use your judgement, and choose to include on the OSM
database the best information available. If there's a human being
making the decision about each way being included, the community
should stand behind that decision. If however you simply wholesale
delete information because you feel that another dataset is better
without checking, then you would be going against the general
consensus of the vocal majority that discussed this topic before the
import happened.

Remember, the script made a very simple decision... if there's no
existing data in the OSM database for this way, the the GeoBase way is
indeed of better quality/accuracy that the OSM data.

Hopefully that clears up the confusion...

James
VE6SRV




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