[Talk-GB] Recent edits to estate agents / companies adding their own branches to OSM

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 07/31/2014 07:59 PM, Will Phillips wrote:
> 2. Deleting building tags or changing building=shop/retail/office to
> building=yes. A minor matter, but still problematic when done
> systematically.

I have occasinally seen people do this because they liked the rendering
of building=yes more than that of some other building type. Don't know
if this is still an issue.

> 1. Is there an official policy regarding systematic edits of this sort?
> - i.e. companies who wish to add all their own shops/offices/etc.

Such a policy has been discussed on osmf-talk and talk ("organised
mapping policy" etc.) but it is still quite far from being established.

> 2. Could these edits be considered an import? In this case hundreds of
> branches have been added over several months in separate changesets.

Sounds unlikely.

> My view is that such data should be welcome and encouraged if things are
> done in the right way, but there should be as much transparency as
> possible. I think OSM accounts operated by commercial bodies should make
> this clear. Also, they should not be absolved from treating existing
> ground surveyed data with care.

I think for now you should treat them like you would treat any other
mapper. If they add a shop where there is none, and you remove it (with
a proper changeset comment I suppose) and they add it back in, it is
certainly time to send them a message and explain to them how on the
ground survey always beats whatever they may have in their recordings,
and that they should travel to the place and check for themselves before
adding wrong data again.

Bye
Frederik

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