[Talk-us] mapRe: (Second attempt) Potential data source: Adirondack Park Freshwater Wetlands

[Kevin Kenny]

Since I received only a total of three comments about this idea, one 
strongly negative (from Frederik Ramm) and two only lukewarm in support, 
I'm forced to conclude that this proposal has no chance of gaining a 
broad community support. Consider it withdrawn.

I find myself somewhat frustrated about the question of how to recruit 
mappers when it appears that the map has such a paucity of data that it 
will never become useful solely through the effort of volunteer mappers. 
I can demonstrate the map at 
http://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html, and state that OSM is one 
of many data sources that go into it, but when people go to 
openstreetmap.org and look at it, my experience is that they lose the 
connection entirely between the data that OSM has and the map that OSM 
enables. The huge blank area is too intimidating for my friends, it appears!

The fact that we apparently cannot use data that are not our own in 
presenting our public face, together with the fact that we do not wish 
to import data for which OSM will not become the authoritative source, 
leaves us with an impoverished public appearance outside the cities 
where streets are sparse. Perhaps this is outside OSM's ambit. It is, 
after all, Open STREET Map. It seems to leave, however, very limited 
pathways for citizen mappers to build on what the government has done. 
Few mappers can manage to produce such a map under their own steam, and 
I certainly don't have the bandwidth - either personal or network - to 
support that map as a public resource out of a solo project.

I'm really at a loss where to go from here.

Kevin Kenny

On 02/28/2016 11:42 PM, Kevin Kenny wrote:
> Oops: Just realized I originally sent this reply privately: meant to 
> send to the list.
>
> On 02/27/2016 05:18 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>> An import is great if it enables a community to go further, or forms the
>> basis of solid work in the future. An import is great if it is one
>> ingredient that makes OSM the best map of the region. But it sounds to
>> me as if your proposed import is hardly more than a small time saver for
>> people who want to make maps of the Adirondack - they *could* go to the
>> original source at any time, and the likelihood of OSM hydrography being
>> *better* than the official data is very low.
>>
>> In my view, a good import is a catalyst for future OSM data improvement.
>> But you seem to say quite clearly that such is unlikely to happen with
>> the data you are planning to import. Your main point is that it'll look
>> better on the map, which for me isn't good enough.
>>
>> Can you point to areas where your import would encourage mappers,
>> including yourself, to add more knowledge and surveyed data to OSM?
> My personal interest is mostly from the standpoint of improving OSM as 
> a resource for hikers - and recruiting citizen mappers to the task. 
> Available databases of hiking trail alignments are pretty poor. The 
> USGS maps, once stellar, have not been updated since the first Bush 
> administration, and keeping them up to date is no longer in the USGS's 
> charter. They have neither the mission nor the funding to map hiking 
> trails, shelters, campsites, privies, viewpoints, and similar 
> amenities. Mapping them falls on the shoulders of private companies 
> such as National Geographic, and they are happy to sell us maps - even 
> ones in electronic format if we are extremely fortunate - of obsolete 
> data of the most popular areas. The less popular areas are entirely 
> neglected. If trail data are to be collected, it will have to be 
> citizen mappers that do it, and OSM is an obvious repository for it. 
> And none of that data is what I propose to import.
>
> Why, then, should I import what I don't plan to improve substantially? 
> When I've tried to recruit my contacts in the hiking community to 
> mapping for OSM, when they see the state of the tiles at 
> openstreetmap.org, they are put off immediately. "Why should I 
> bother?" they say, "there's nothing there!" Particularly before the 
> import of lakes and ponds was done - an import to which your argument 
> equally applies - this entire area simply appeared entirely 
> featureless, with no hope of using OSM to produce a map that could be 
> helpful for anyone.
>
> When, on the other hand, I show them 
> https://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html?la=44.1232&lo=-73.9804&z=15 
> , they see a map that's already useful for navigating the region, 
> although deeply flawed in many ways. I can point out that trails shown 
> in magenta with their names in UPPER CASE are from a State data set 
> that is digitized at an inappropriately large scale (and for that 
> reason alone, even before license concerns, I wouldn't propose 
> importing it). I can point out that a good many of the trail shelters, 
> privies, parking areas, register kiosks, viewpoints and similar 
> amenities are missing. I can tell hikers that they can improve OSM by 
> capturing that information. I can point out that if enough of us do it 
> as a community, we'll have up-to-date maps that we can maintain as a 
> community.
>
> The approach has worked for me. For instance, I was able to persuade a 
> contact who was hiking the route shown with the overlay in 
> https://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html?la=44.1232&lo=-73.9804&z=15 
> to capture GPS data and contribute it. (The uploads show my ID because 
> I handled conflating it, simplifying the tracks, vetting alignment 
> against orthophotos, and similar administrative tasks.)
>
> OSM is really the only place where the data about trails and 
> associated amenities can be assembled properly, as far as I can tell. 
> The government agencies in the US have not had the funding or 
> authority to collate those data in over twenty years. Web sites like 
> alltrails.com are great for sharing your experience with a single 
> route, but don't really make any effort at all to assemble a map. And 
> the companies like National Geographic and DeLorme are more than happy 
> to sell our own data back to us at a premium price, burden it with 
> usage restrictions, and make it available in formats that we cannot 
> annotate and improve.
>
> I don't have a good way to address your argument that data whose 
> authoritiative source is not OSM should not be imported
> into OSM - and frankly, I mostly agree with it. I tend to believe that 
> the underlying problem is not what we choose to import or not to 
> import, but what we show to newcomers. I believe that the maps we 
> present to the public would be improved if they included (at least 
> optionally) layers derived from government data sources that we 
> taxpayers have the right to use. You can see in the maps that I've 
> presented that I'm also using (and do NOT propose to import) National 
> Land Cover Database, National Elevation Dataset, USFWS National 
> Wetlands Inventory, and layers from the GIS departments of several 
> states. I'm also using National Hydrographic Dataset - which has been 
> imported with some degree of success in regions other than mine. All 
> of these data sources fall in your hated category of "stuff that OSM 
> mappers can't readily maintain, for which some other source will 
> likely be more authoritiative."
>
> Without these external layers, what we present in the tiles is so 
> sparse in some areas that I, at least, find it nearly impossible to 
> explain the value of OSM.
>
> I chose the idea of pursuing an import because I haven't very much 
> hope of convincing anyone that our public face might include non-OSM 
> data sources. At least there is precedent for importing government 
> data into OSM; there is none for non-OSM-derived layers on our tiles.
>
> About the best argument that I can make about the specific data is 
> that the import should be "mostly harmless", because physiography in a 
> wilderness area is so slow to change. With the exception that 
> settlements, roads, railroads, farms and mines have been reclaimed by 
> nature, bridges have fallen, and trails have been built and abandoned, 
> a topographic map of the region from 1916 would be nearly as useful as 
> one from 2016. This is an area where "Man is a visitor who does not 
> remain."
>


-- 
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin