[Talk-ht] Please, please attribute your sources

[David Ellams]

Hi folks

Just a quick plea - please, please attribute your sources when
mapping in Haiti, as elsewhere.

I have recently been doing a little work on updating the
remaining missing street names in Port-au-Prince, and I have
discovered many apparent errors in the process, and corrected
these once I am confident they are errors. However, in so many
cases I have found neither the imagery source nor the source for
street names is acknowledged. This makes life really difficult -
sources can conflict and in these situations, I do not want to
alter anything to match older or less reliable sources. I am
therefore left with a choice of trying to contact the mapper
responsible to find out their source or just taking the bullish
approach of changing it anyway. I normally take the former route,
but I know some others take the latter, on the grounds that
unverifiable data is not much use. We cannot take the view that
"there is only one source for this data anyway", because new and
better sources are being opened up all the time, and will be in
the future.

(In addition, of course, many of these sources have granted
permission for use in OSM on the condition of attribution.)

I'm sure I too have forgotten the occasional source tag, but I
really do try, and I ask you to do the same. It really doesn't
take long - learn about the presets of your chosen editor. If you
use potlatch, - see Margie's excellent short video:

[1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAnt2RSaEEA&fmt=18

Cheers
David (davespod)

References

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAnt2RSaEEA&fmt=18
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