[Talk-us] Deletion of unnecessary TIGER node tags will commence this week-end

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Thu Aug 6 20:34:04 BST 2009


Dear all,

    Andy Allan has made a convincing case about superfluous node tags in 
this posting on dev:

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2009-June/016009.html

I have meanwhile prepared the process for the deletion of these tags, 
and have laid out an estimate of the volumes and timespans here:

http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/dev/2009-July/016401.html

The "executive summary" of both these postings is that it'll be about 
100 days of intense automatic editing activity and then we'll hopefully 
be through, and have a leaner data set (by 50% or better) which will 
benefit everyone, but especially the US users:

* faster editing due to smaller data volume
* faster and easier data processing for US data
* as a consequence, some useful tools and services which are currently 
"Europe only" might be more readily available for the US

The process will drop "source", "tiger:tlid", "tiger:upload_uuid" and 
"tiger:county" from all nodes which have at least one of the three 
"tiger" tags. It will not drop "source" from other nodes. If a node is 
found to be tagless after removing these, and the node is not used by 
any way, it will be removed entirely.

Apollinaris has voiced concerns that such an intense edit activity might 
lead to more conflicts when trying to upload changes. Yes, this is true, 
but the increase is very small indeed and will be further reduced by a 
tight regional grouping of edits. (Nevertheless, while the automated 
edit is ongoing, it is even more advisable than at other times to not 
stretch JOSM edit sessions over hours on end.)

If I don't hear strong objection then I will let the automated process 
commence this weekend. It will work in small chunks, so can always be 
paused, and I will post instructions that allow you to monitor progress 
(and see which area is currently processed). Like every edit, it can 
also be reverted should the need arise, but of course reverting 100 days 
worth of edits is something I'd rather not contemplate.

Bye
Frederik

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




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