[Talk-GB] Balaam Street

[tonyosm9 at gmail.com]

A lovely exposition of data lifecycle and data integrity.
I like it.
TonyS999

On 05/01/2022 14:50, Mark Goodge <mark at good-stuff.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> 
> On 05/01/2022 11:49, Paul Berry wrote:
> > You should be able to get a definitive answer by contacting the body 
> > responsible for highways in the area, which is Newham London 
> > Borough Council, but I suspect their records are based on modern OS 
> > mapping so the error (if it is one and it looks like it is) will 
> > circulate forever.
> >
> > However, given there appears to be zero signage on the ground, The 
> > Olympic Route Network Designation Order 2009 legislation seems pretty 
> > weighty in terms of authoritativeness.
> 
> OS OpenRoads calls it the B116. So do OS Mastermap, Google Maps, Bing 
> Maps and the NSG. Obviously only OS OpenRoads is usable as a source for 
> OSM. But, given that the non-open sources concur with it, then there's 
> no justification for using any other number in OSM.
> 
> It is possible that the sequence of events which led to it being 
> recorded in the NSG as the B116 were faulty. That's not unknown - there 
> are other instances where data was wrongly transcribed when copying from 
> original paper records into digital records. In this case, it's easy to 
> see how B116 could be a typo for B166.
> 
> However, the NSG is considered definitive even if the process by which a 
> record was added to it was faulty. So there is no dispute that the 
> street *is*, now, the B116. The fact that it may, once, have been the 
> B166, and the change was the result of a fat-fingered data entry clerk, 
> does not mean that it is still the B166.
> 
> The only way it could become the B166 again is if the responsible 
> authority (in this case, Newham) goes through the formal process of 
> renumbering the street. There's no facility in the NSG to simply un-make 
> a change that has been made; all you can do is make a subsequent change 
> in the opposite direction. (In that respect, it's a bit like Wikipedia, 
> or even OSM; you can make a change to the data as it is now, but the 
> record of what it was before the change will still be there. So the NSG 
> will always say that, on the 5th January 2022, Balaam Street was 
> numbered as the B116).
> 
> Obviously, reverting to a historic name or number is one valid reason 
> for making a change to the NSG. If it can be shown that the current name 
> or number is a result of faulty record-keeping at some point in the 
> past, then that's usually a good justification for making such a change. 
> That's particularly the case if local residents want it changed back to 
> what it once was. But there's no obligation on the part of the 
> maintainer to make that change. They can just say, effectively, well sod 
> it, nobody really cares, so it is what it is.
> 
> What we have, therefore, at the moment, is a street which is numbered 
> the B116. How it got to be the B116 is a matter of speculation and, 
> possibly, some historical interest. But, however it got that way, it is 
> the B116.
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> 
> 
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