[Talk-it-southtyrol] [Mappers] Import of the missing buildings

[Martin Raifer]

Please don't.

First of all, we haven't barely completed the addresses import yet.
There is still a lot of work to be done before that is finished.

Also, I don't think that the import of buildings is of any help to the
OSM community at all. On the contrary: I think it would be
disbeneficial in the long term.
Buildings are not a hard thing to map by hand¹ - it simply just takes
some time. But mapping them is fun and one gets a nice map as reward.
This brings new mappers to OSM and binds them to the project and
"their" data, especially in regions which desperately need them.
Importing buildings would certainly look nice, but it wouldn't bring
any new mappers. It's just not a sustainable thing.

Take a look at Meran(o): It was one of the first municipalities
worldwide which donated data for OSM: It's buildings have been
imported into OSM in 2007 [2]. Did this import help to create a proper
OSM cummunity in Meran(o)? No! I'd say that it is now one of the least
well mapped municipalities in South Tyrol (with respect to
population). There are lots of similarly negative examples in OSM:
France [3], Veneto [4], Emiglia Romagna [5], ...

Here are some more of my thoughts about this topic: (only in German, sorry)
http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/tyr_asd/diary/21628

@OpenGisData.eu:
Please do continue to try getting South Tyrol's government (geo) data
really open. :)
And, if you really want to invest into OSM in a sustainable manner,
put your (financial) resources away from short-term imports and put it
into more long-term projects. For example: OSM in South Tyrol could
certainly need some help when it comes to quality assurance of
multilingual place and street names.

Happy mapping.
Martin

[1] (or import by oneself if one has access to proper open data)
[2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Meran_-_Merano
    http://bestofosm.org/?zoom=15&lat=46.66821&lon=11.16102&layers=B0000000FFFFTTTTT
[3] http://worstofosm.tumblr.com/post/22005611430/dear-openstreetmap-i-thought-that-negative
[4] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/45.97534/12.40829
[5] http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=17/44.24962/11.13390


On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 9:39 AM, Pietro d'Orio <pietro.dorio at r3-gis.com> wrote:
> Dear community,
> the OpenGISData project have proposed the import of the buildings from the
> database of the Province of Bolzano.
>
> My idea is to perform a spatial analysis to identify the buildings that
> already exists in OpenStreetMap, and import only the missing buildings.
> To complete the import, my idea is to make available a file for each
> community, containing the buildings to upgrade, as was done with the house
> numbers.
>
> The tags for the buildings will be:
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/IT:Map_Features#Building_.28edifici.29
>
> buliding = yes
>
> we have the information of the use of the buildings
> building =
> residential, commercial, industrial, public (amenityschool, university,
> church, hospital,train_station, cathedral, police)ecc.
>
> We need to have your confirm, the project should start as soon as possible,
> the OpenGISData want to close this project within a maximum of one month.
>
> A bit of digits:
> Actual OpenStreetMap buildings: 93.792
> Actual Province od Bolzano buildings: 218.077
>