[Talk-us] Seeing things you don't care about in the database

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 06/12/12 01:17, Mark Gray wrote:
> I think that one of the strengths of OSM is that people can map
> what they are interested in

I wholeheartedly agree, and I would never get in the way of someone 
mapping all building footprints in a city - if it is worth that much 
effort to him then this means that he'll very likely be someone whom OSM 
can count on to continue to do good work in the area!

Someone *importing* data, e.g. building footprints for a whole city, is 
a wholly different matter though, because the amount of data produced 
per unit of human involvement (UHI - my invention; whether you call that 
"sweat" or "lifeblood" or what) is considerably higher.

Data with high UHI is valuable because with it comes a promise or at 
least a high likelihood of someone caring. Data with low UHI is less 
valuable.

A house or landuse area that someone has mapped by hand will usually 
have high UHI and I'll happily wait a bit longer for my editor to load 
such data which is obviously important enough for my fellow mappers to 
spend lots of time on! The same house or landuse area imported (among 
thousands of others, likely) has low UHI and I might be less happy to 
have to wait for data that someone has soullessly dumped onto OSM.

Bye
Frederik

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