[Talk-ca] Importing CanVec – Worth it?

[john whelan]

We don't have lots of mappers in these regions.

The CANVEC data comes from a variety of sources but the surveyors were
definitely professionals.

The some parts of the highway data is probably out of data these days but
river data etc are areas where we don't have boots on the ground is to my
mind better than a blank area on the map.

I also think that there are different errors detected by JOSM and I'm not
certain there is complete agreement about what each and every error is.

Near built up areas where we have mappers I would agree with you importing
CANVEC data is not such a good idea.  These areas already have been
imported and corrected.

In more remote areas then we get into the concept of the local community.
What would they prefer?  An empty map or one with fairly accurate data but
with some errors in the tagging?

First define your local community.  Is it someone who maps in the area or
resides in the area?  Or even someone who lives in Canada?

I never was much good at black and white.

Cheerio John

On Wed, Aug 31, 2022, 12:36 Nate Wessel <bike756 at gmail.com> wrote:

> John, that's bad advice. An import that introduces new errors is not a
> good import. I do hope we can all agree on that. It's an importer's job to
> resolve errors, not to leave a mess for others to clean up.
>
> ...
>
> I was meaning to reply to this anyway. I would tend to be on the side of
> not importing CanVec data; the gaps are ugly, yes, but maybe those imports
> never should have been done in the first place; I don't have a strong
> position on that. Regardless, as these areas aren't really getting filled
> in by many actual editors, it seems quite likely that the imported data
> will just continue to grow stale over the years. Better to know what we
> don't know than to think we know what we don't.
>
> Also, if anyone wants to make a map with a bunch of natural landcover
> data, they're probably better off using raster sources than vector data,
> especially outside of urban areas. IMO, OSM was never going to be well
> suited to Canada's north. That's raster data territory and OSM has a vector
> data model.
>
> That said, I have actually been editing a bit up north lately, and making
> some actual progress adding rivers and lakes and whatnot - I'd definitely
> welcome some manual help!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Nate Wessel
> Cartographer, Planner, Transport Nerd
> NateWessel.com <https://www.natewessel.com>
> On 2022-08-31 12:14, John Whelan wrote:
>
> I'd tend to just import and ignore the errors.  An area can be both
> wetland and wood.  Errors do get sorted out over time.
>
> Cheerio John
>
> William Davis via Talk-ca wrote on 8/31/2022 11:56 AM:
>
> On 2022-08-31 03:02, William Davis via Talk-ca wrote:
>
> I've been looking at the osm homepage a lot recently and the big blocks of
> white space next to the green CanVec imports look really ugly, especially
> when compared to New Brunswick. I've tried importing CanVec data in the
> past (about 2 years ago), which did not end well since I had barely used
> JOSM before then. People also seemed to always be complaining about how
> hard and annoying it was to import CanVec data, even in completely blank
> areas, such as up north.
>
> So I guess my question is whether it is worth trying to import CanVec data
> over improving my local area, especially since it seems the OSM Canada
> community as a whole has given up on that idea.
>
> --
> William Davis
>
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> I've tried importing some data, but I'm just not experienced enough to
> know what to do with all the different errors that the CanVec data
> contains, especially when I try and do something outside of the north.
> Does anyone here have experience importing canvec? The error I get most
> often that I don't know how to solve is when there are duplicate ways with
> different tags (e.g. natural=wood and natural=wetland).
>
>
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