[Talk-us] tiff, dwg and nad83

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 04/17/12 01:05, James Umbanhowar wrote:
> Being a reformed importer, I generally agree with the don't import rule.
> However, I have often heard this nugget and in my experience it is based on
> either anecdote or one set of simulations that assumed that individuals stop
> joining because they view the map as complete.
>
> Is there any good evidence that this is the case?

We haven't done a questionnaire for turned-off-mappers really, and I 
wouldn't know how to even reach out to those who have looked at OSM and 
decided not to contribute.

But personally, I think it's a total no-brainer. Take two equally sized 
cities which are mapped to an acceptable but not great standard. Assume 
that in one city there's a group of 20 active mappers who have, in 
between them, mapped that city, are busy improving it, and where a few 
of those meet one a month in a pub. Assume that in the other city there 
are no mappers, and the data is only there because someone from 500 
miles away has imported government data.

In both cities, some data will be missing, some wrong, some stale. So. 
Which city would you prefer to be a mapper in - and which city would 
rather have you despair and give up? And now assume there's a third city 
of equal size where *nothing* has been mapped at all... maybe I 
shouldn't speak for everyone but for me (and virtually every mapper I 
know) surely the city with data-but-no-mappers would be least appealing, 
far below that with no data.

Imports may work if there is a community already large enough to 
assimilate the imported data, to make it their own. But data imported to 
places where there is no community, or the community that is there is 
totally overwhelmed by the data, that's not OpenStreetMap. That's some 
other project. OpenImportMap, or EditYourGovernmentData or so.

Bye
Frederik

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