[Talk-GB] Postboxes & Payphones

Jerry Clough - OSM sk53_osm at yahoo.co.uk
Mon Nov 9 18:40:24 GMT 2009


Can I add my voice to those who would prefer that these are not imported? 

There are several reasons:

	1. Data quality is not assured.
	2. Sourcing. For instance I have located some postboxes on Dracos site, BUT have not placed them in OSM because I've used information which may not be compatible with OSM's terms. I would not like these to be imported after I'd made a decision not to add them directly. We have no knowledge of the person who added the data, how they came by the information and whether it uses sources such as the PO post office finder.
	3. Spoiling the fun. Hunting down the odd poorly described postbox often results in much more information and better mapping of the adjacent area. Importing the references and locations removes this incentive for a fairly trivial gain.
	4. Distorting mapping priorities. Imports of postboxes will give an erroneous impression that an area has been surveyed on the ground and lead to further neglect. Furthermore an import of postboxes may cause mappers in an area to re-survey them to ensure accuracy, thus diverting them from their own goals (this is more-or-less the same affect as vandalism).I am not opposed to imports provided that they add value to the mapping process, and are controlled or requested by active mappers in an area (e.g., NaPTAN). All imports require follow-up, both in tidying up the data, and checking its validity: only perform the import if everyone is happy with the implied commitment.

Jerry Clough
SK53




________________________________
From: Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>
To: talk-gb at openstreetmap.org
Sent: Mon, 9 November, 2009 14:23:51
Subject: Re: [Talk-GB] Postboxes & Payphones

Mike <osm-talk-uk at ...> writes:

>I've been looking at the Dracos postbox list
>http://www.dracos.co.uk/play/locating-postboxes/

I have recently started work on importing this,
see <http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Dracos_import>.
So far I have just done the E10 and E17 postcodes near where I live.
After a bit of consultation I will start importing the rest of the country.

>and the UK payphone DB: http://payphonedb.bobsbasement.co.uk/.

I didn't know about that, I might look once post boxes are done ;-p.

>Looking through
>the OSM data, there's a lot of postboxes and payphoens but very few have
>the appropriate tags to tie them into the other databases.  Would OSMers
>mind tagging any postboxes/phones that they come across to tie them in
>with these side projects?

Yes, many contributors do this for post boxes, in London at least.
My import job also tries to match up post boxes by location, and sets the
'ref' tag to record the match found.

-- 
Ed Avis <eda at waniasset.com>


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