[Talk-ca] Canadian imports: good or bad?

[Teresa Baldwin]

Hello all,

As a former resident of Saskatchewan, I vote for imports - done by a 
select few people who know how to do it well. I've been slowly bringing 
Moose Jaw on the map with help from Bing imagery, but I will never be 
able to accurately map all of the roads in Saskatchewan. There are over 
200,000 km of roads. Most are un-mapped in OSM and will likely remain 
that way - not to mention the thousands of lakes in Northern 
Saskatchewan that aren't there.

I would much rather update a map, then try to trace the entire country.


Cheers,
Teresa

(on a different note, I now live in Germany, where imports aren't even 
spoken of. Lots of stuff left to map here though, even with a really 
active community.)

On 04/15/2012 07:57 PM, Daniel Begin wrote:
> Bonjour,
>
> I know that I'm not totally unbiased !-) but as it is an important question,
> I'll add my two cents as OSM contributor...
>
> Bulk import - Canvec for instance - is helpful to fill white areas on OSM
> map. Not doing twice what is already available and focus on updating, or
> adding features, that are not available from other sources. Using it as a
> canvas to add upon.
>
> I have fun updating hydrography, vegetation, parks, roads and land uses in
> Sherbrooke, Sept-Îles and Rimouski. I would not have done the map from
> scratch.
>
> Best regards,
> Daniel
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Allison [mailto:andrew.allison at teksavvy.com]
> Sent: April-15-12 12:19
> To: talk-ca at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [Talk-ca] Canadian imports: good or bad?
>
> On Sun, 2012-04-15 at 11:09 -0400, Richard Weait wrote:
>> Dear All,
>>
>> Let's talk about it again.  How do we feel about the bulk copying of
>> information from a permitted source into OpenStreetMap in Canada?
>>
>> To be clear, I'm not suggesting that we discuss whether external data
>> sources are good or not.  External data sources are good.  I'm
>> suggesting that we review how we best make use of those external
>> sources.
>>
>> You go first.  :-)
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Richard
>>
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>  From what I see there are some conflicting arguments here.
>
> 1	Building a community of mappers to add features to the map. Ideally
> local.
>
> 2	Canada is a huge country. I doubt that there are that many people
> willing to commit to mapping every nook. I'm sure the amount of No
> Trespassing signs itself would prevent it.
>
> 3	OSM is promoting itself as a "competitor" to google.
>
> 4	I would suspect most mappers are not aware of the license change
> coming and the resulting impact.
>
> 	Given the size of Canada, and the few mappers we have. I my self
> could
> not and probably would not have never walked / driven on every road,
> trail, river, lake forest etc without some else doing an import first
> which I myself used a base to improve OSM.
>
> 	I don't see any possible way to have a map without an import to use
> as
> a base.
>
> 	To counter my own points, Yes, you will find some people who see a
> great white spot as a challenge. But looking at the changes made locally
> I would think most people would rather tweak an existing road or park.
>
> 	Andrew
>
>
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