[Talk-us] parcel data in OSM

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 2:40 PM, Randal Hale
<rjhale at northrivergeographic.com> wrote:
> Apparently my last reply was rejected from the Moderation police - and it
> was probably a good thing...
>
> Low wage? Low Skilled? Do as little as possible? That's not a good
> description of public domain data or how that data came into existence.

I'll concede the point that there's a lot of data collected by skilled
GIS professionals, but many of the larger data collections are not.
State and municipal governments pay folks to collect the data. The
result is that the data quality varries *a lot* and no one should take
it (or any data source) as gospel, just as OSM data is not gospel.

> There's a lot of good data collected by skilled people in the mapping
> industry that is public domain.

Yes, there is. There's also a lot of crap. There's a lot of both.

> You really need to re-think that description
> or provide some citation proving that assertion.

Speaking with GIS professionals in city government, I have gotten the
impression that they don't think very highly of surveyors. It may be a
sample issue, and I appologize if I've offended anyone.

My point was that no data source, no matter how "official" should be
taken as truth.

- Serge