[Talk-GB] Toys R Us

[Chris Hill]

On 5 May 2018 10:02:01 BST, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>On 05/04/2018 09:10 PM, Brian Prangle wrote:
>> When will it be  appropriate to do a mechanical edit and remove the
>47
>> instances of this store that can be seen in Overpass? Have they all
>> closed now?  My local one is now closed and leaving a large gap on
>its
>> retail  park
>
><usual litany>
>
>Obviously-outdated POIs are the standard user interface for maps to
>signal their age and quality. If you take a paper map today, and it
>features a chain restaurant that you know went out of business five
>years ago, you immediately have an idea of how old/trustworthy the rest
>of the map is.
>
>OSM can benefit from this same mechanism. Leave the Toys R Us-es in
>place until a local mapper re-surveys the area which might include
>mapping any number of other nearby POIs, updating opening times, and
>whatnot.
>
>It is easy to run a script that removes all the Toys R Us-es, but that
>script would also destroy the valuable information that this general
>area of the map hasn't been updated since Toys R Us went bankrupt.
>
>If you could run a script that truly updates the map in the area that
>would be another thing, but you cannot; you can only run a script that
>removes the obvious "this map is outdated" marker. That might make the
>map *look* more current but actually it isn't - the script would just
>be
>window dressing.
>
></usual litany>
>

I agree with Frederik wholeheartedly.

-- 
Chris Hill
( OSM: chillly)