[Talk-ca] Aylmer/Hull QC: CanVec import overwriting existing edits

[Richard Weait]

On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Jonathan Crowe
<jonathan.crowe at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been in contact with the user who did the import, and referred
> him to the list. He's posted here before. My impression is that this
> was a well-meaning import with unintended consequences; I'm not at all
> comfortable with the talk of "vandalism" on osm-talk that was spurred
> on by tweets I made yesterday.

Sure.  Deliberate vandalism is very, very rare.  It's gets some
attention though.  ;-)

Much more frequent is mistaking tools that are easy to use vs. tools
that are easy to use-well, vs. tools that are easy to use well in a
way that is ideal for everyone in the project.  That third part is
still elusive.  ;-)

We've avoided here,  much of the evocative language from the talk@
thread and I hope that all Canadian contributors feel free to
participate in the discussion.  We all make honest mistakes.

I'm a advocate of "not importing."  I like to think that I have
tempered my default no-imports stance with a realistic compromise of
the "well-considered, carefully executed, limited scope import, that
might be a net benefit if everything goes perfectly".  That message
seems to get diluted when an enthusiastic contributor discovers an
interesting dataset, and an import script; all they seem to hear is
"Hey!  Imports!  Cool!  Watch me go!!!!1!"  I find that frustrating.

Jonathan, I'd like to hear from the mapper who did the work, and if
they agree, and the area is unchanged-enough since the edits under
consideration then we can revert it.  If there have been partial
reverts or manual repairs that preclude a simple revert, then why
don't we take shifts patching it manually?

We've had recent similar issues appear in other parts of Quebec.  We
don't want this sort of complaint to become even more common.