[Talk-us] Fresno castradal imports

[Ian Dees]

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org> wrote:

> On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 12:22 PM, Ian Dees <ian.dees at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 1:48 PM, Paul Johnson <baloo at ursamundi.org>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 11:43 AM, Ian Dees <ian.dees at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> > On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 1:37 PM, Paul Norman <penorman at mac.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> > Do those individual polygons have any useful information on them
> >> > (addresses,
> >> > for example)? If so, we should generate addr points from their
> >> > centroids.
> >>
> >> Why?  We have these new things called computers that find centroids
> >> really well.  And the way it's mapped now, it makes it really easy to
> >> change a specific lot if the land use changes.
> >
> >
> > Right. So the computer can find the centroid and generate the addr: point
> > for us. Perfect. (I realize you're saying the data should stay in OSM,
> but
> > read on...)
>
> Why strip the information that creates that calculation?  Land use
> could change, as well, based on condemnation, natural disaster, etc.
> Having the plot outlines give nice, fine-grained control that will
> greatly simplify disaster mapping in the future, and the outlines will
> be of use if the boundaries of the use change (combined or subdivided
> or whatnot) in the future.
>

Because that information is useless in OSM. It was out of date the second
someone ran the upload script and unless the city of Fresno decides to
switch to OSM for their official tax plat information (which I'm pretty
sure would be illegal in most jurisdictions), no one in the community can
improve it. We should get rid of it.

I mentioned the address nodes because it would be the only useful data to
keep in OSM. As Toby mentioned, there's no such data.


> >
> > The problem with this import is that is the complete opposite of the "on
> the
> > ground" rule. There is absolutely no one but the external source of that
> > import that can improve the data. I have the same opinion of other
> > boundaries (I can't go to the coordinates of a particular node along that
> > way and see the boundary on the ground, verifying it with my GPS), but
> can
> > live with it when they're big and unobtrusive.
>
> So what's wrong with refining the data to fit what's on the ground?  I
> seem to recall I made your argument regarding the TIGER imports about
> 3 years ago when I was new.  This is certainly a more accurate and
> detailed data set than TIGER was; why step backwards?


That's what I suggested. We remove all the noisy parts that we can't
improve on (like the edges of individual property plats) and switch them to
landuse polygons per-block.
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