[Talk-GB] National Trust Paths organised edit page

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 02.09.19 15:30, Jez Nicholson wrote:
> Following on from their talk at the OSMUK AGM, the National Trust have
> now created an official 'organised edit' page for their footpath
> project https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Organised_Editing/Activities/National_Trust_Paths

It sounds like a well thought out plan.

>From a DWG perspective there's one small warning light that I have in my
head, triggered by terms like "standard" and "validated": It must be
clear to everyone involved that ultimate authority over what gets mapped
and how does not lie with the National Trust, and neither does OSMUK
have a mandate to enter into agreements on behalf of the OSM community
that would determine exactly which ways may be mapped, and what tags to use.

As long as everyone in this project is clear that it is ultimately local
mappers who get to say what goes in, and that they don't need agreement
from the National Trust or from OSMUK, then I guess all is well.

At DWG, we frequently have issues where organisations like the NT (or
smaller, local woodland trusts and the like) would like OSM to delete
outright a track that clearly exists in reality, because they say it
"leads to misunderstandings" or "is not official" or "is dangerous" or
something. To which of course the usual reply is "let us tag the correct
situation in OSM, but a track that clearly exists cannot be deleted".
Sometimes they want us to add a "vehicle=no" to a track that has
absolutely no signposts whatsoever locally, meaning that nobody can
verify that vehicles are forbidden and no local motorist would be turned
away - this is also a case where we'd usually say "put up a sign, or put
up with cars".

Sometimes the goals of these conservation organisations are opposed to
those we have in OSM - they often want to direct human activity in a
certain desired way, whereas we want to depict reality as good as we can
and let humans make their choice based on that.

A cooperation like the one described here can be beneficial to all sides
if one is aware of exactly where the parties have the same goals, and
where the goals might differ, and establish clear rules for these cases.

Bye
Frederik

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