[Talk-ca] Nova Scotia imports, and boundary=land_area

[Andrew Lester]

Hi Frederik, 

What this mapper is doing is not usual or desired. As you've seen by the changeset discussions and edit wars, the general OSM community does not agree with the way they're doing things. I sent them a message a few days ago pointing out a number of the issues you listed and suggesting that they take a break from adding new data to go back and fix these issues, but I see that they've continued to import with the same issues, and they haven't replied to my message. Based on what I've seen and read, I suspect: 
1. They only have a basic understanding of OSM, and certainly not enough knowledge or experience to be making the type of mass-edits they are. 
2. They may be mapping for the specific purpose of Garmin GPS map use, and as a result are misusing tags to fit that usage rather than changing their Garmin map generation process. 
3. They may not even be living in Nova Scotia (some of what I've read implies that they're mapping remotely and English may not be their primary language). 

At this point, I think it might be a good idea to have the DWG step in. Clearly this mapper isn't going to stop what they're doing based solely on communication from other mappers. It's already going to take a while to clean up the mess they've made, so we need to stop the creation of even more mess. 

Andrew Lester 
Victoria, BC, Canada 


From: "Frederik Ramm" <frederik at remote.org> 
To: "talk-ca" <talk-ca at openstreetmap.org> 
Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2018 6:18:24 AM 
Subject: [Talk-ca] Nova Scotia imports, and boundary=land_area 

Hi, 

there's a mapper in Canada - Darthmouthmapper - who seems to: 

1. import data from a source he calls "Nova Scotia Open Data" - I am not 
aware of any imports discussion, and the source specification is not 
precise enough to determine the legal status of that. Judging from past 
changeset comments, whatever imports procedure is used must have a 
number of flaws. 

2. import administrative boundaries 

2a. as a mesh of closed ways (where most people would prefer relations), 

2b. with, among other things, the tags "_Shape_Area_=yes", 
"addrcountry=Canada" (no colon!), "addr:postcode" (which is not 
generally used for objects that do not represent an address), and 
"type=land_area" (which is not generally used on closed ways). 

2c. The combination of a level-8 admin boundary and place=village is 
also unusual (eg https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/616463020) but I 
cannot judge if this is normal in Canada. This is also used in 
residential areas https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/636390857 - is this 
area really a "village"? 

3. use a ton of is_in tags which are highly unusual nowadays 

4. occasionally change existing relations (not ways) from type=boundary 
to type=land_area (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/8417484/history) 

5. add addr:postcode and addr:province to place=village nodes 

6. revert corrections applied to this by other users, claiming that "The 
video and instructions state these can be part of the ways" 

A number of people have complained in the past 
http://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussion-comments?uid=698649&commented 
but many of the issues seem to be present still. 

Before I ask him to fix this -- are any of the behaviours / mapping 
techniques outlined above somehow usual in Canada? 

Bye 
Frederik 

-- 
Frederik Ramm ## eMail frederik at remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33" 

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