[Talk-us] Import of EPA data

[Christopher Covington]

On Sun, 2009-12-13 at 11:08 +0100, jamesmikedupont at googlemail.com wrote:
> Dear Team,
> I am willing to put some work into this but I need a clear directive :
> 
> Do you want to just revert my EPA import or should I put the work into
> fixing it?
Whichever is the easiest path to getting the data into OSM in a correct
enough form.

> please give me a direction. I get  abuse for importing "junk", but on
> the other side people have been happy to get this data. So there is
> some conflict here.
In my opinion, the people who do the work should get to write the rules.
The emergence of the Karlsruhe Schema for addressing is an example of
this principle at work in OSM.

> 5. Check the map if there are any other overlapping nodes in a certain
> radius (needs to have the world file)
>   /- Ideally OSM would have an export routine to include nearby nodes.
> 6. Check the map if there are any additional nodes with the same
> name... now this will be very hard. But there should be a way to find
> possible fuzzy matches in an area.

This will probably be the trickiest to pull off. One of the nodes I
stumbled across yesterday was on the road rather than the company
property. Manual inspection may be necessary.

There seems to be a divide as to whether bulk imports are helpful or
harmful to the activities of the ideal contributer. What I see as
missing is good documentation explaining to the average user where to
start with fixing up imported data.

I would like to suggest that where some manual inspection is
anticipated, for EPA data, new TIGER imports, whatever, write up what
fixes are anticipated and explain how to make them in an introductory
manner. Then, link to them from the getting started wiki pages, so that
they're not just buried under the Data Imports link. When I first
started out, I would have loved to have an article tell me that dragging
a misplaced POI to its correct location on the aerial photo was the
right thing to do. Instead, I felt unsure if whether what I was doing
was right.

In the end, I really don't think there has to be such a large disconnect
between large imports and average user contributions. Roaming your
neighborhood with a GPS is not the only valid mapping technique out
there, and if fixing up imported data with the aid of aerial maps and
personal knowledge were better documented and linked to, I believe the
disconnect would quickly vanish.

Regards,
Chris C.

P.S. Setting the reply-to address of messages send out on the list to
the list would be nice.
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