[Talk-us] Anyone ever talked about adding more Land Ownership data to OSM?

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 12:40 AM, Jeff Meyer <jeff at gwhat.org> wrote:

> For example, requiring that any data imported into OSM have a lifetime
> maintenance plan seems like something that we don't require of *any* OSM
> data entry.

I don't think that we've discussed a "lifetime mainteince plan"
anywhere, but with most OSM data, it wouldn't be necessary. When I go
outside and add a restaurant POI, the "maintence plan" is that someone
else go out and do the same. But if the data is only sourceable from
the government, then one must come up with a plan for updating it
before doing an import.

(I can expand on this if necessary).

> All of the rules about observability and verifiability apply to country and
> state borders, as well, as Mike states, but we include them and somehow
> improve them.

We do include them, and as I've said, they've been a source of agita.

We simply can't improve state or municipal boundries.

> Neighborhoods are not a relevant comparison. There can be defined boundary
> neighborhoods and human perceptions of those boundaries, and the two can
> have different outlines - they are both "correct."

And we do a poor job with both, so let's fix that.

> The inclusion of this information - as a few others have mentioned, is
> extremely helpful when going across doubletrack and unimproved roads in the
> American west.

That sounds like a good argument to make it available on a map, but
that doesn't mean it belongs in OSM's croudsourced dataset.

> Last year, I road a mountain bike from Durango, CO to Moab,
> UT with a group of friends. Whether we were in private, BLM, FS, or stat
> land made quite a difference in what we could and could not do off the
> roads, which in turn could have helped us with route planning. And, we could
> have "improved" the data by tracking POIs at the boundaries of these lands -
> they're usually pretty well marked.

Sounds like you should have that data on your map then, as an available layer.

- Serge