[Talk-us] historic schools (amenity=school; name= * (historical)

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 9:19 AM, Theodin <theodin at posteo.de> wrote:
> OK. It says the same on the GNIS-Wiki-page so Im going to do that in the future. Although it might
> be a valid information for history-buffs to get an image of how things were.

We don't store historical information in OSM. There are other projects
which do, but OSM looks at what's currently in the ground. Also, gnis
tags are notiously wrong by large distances, sometimes up to 1km.

They're a classic example of the kind of data that, once imported,
people are afraif to touch. I had to explain to a mapper recently who
knew that a school wasn't present where the map said it was, that it
was allright to delete it.

He'd been to the location himself and found out that it wasn't a
school at all, but it was a drug rehab center! Despite having been
there and knowing this, he was afraid of "messing up the import".
This was an OSMer who'se been an active contributor for years.

This is why imports can have "dangerous side effects".

- Serge