[Talk-us] North Central Texas Microsoft Building Import

[OSM Volunteer stevea]

Hi Andrew:

Your wiki for the import is quite sparse, to the point of being so incomplete it isn't even "skeletal."  If that is your "Import Plan," I don't believe it meets OSM's Import Guidelines (https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Import/Guidelines ).  You might have completed Step 1 (Prerequisites), though I don't know that, you might be attempting to get Step 2 (Community Buy-in) by posting here, and while you seem to have at least some local buy-in (besides yourself?), as your Google Sheet has some mildly populated cells in the table (but only with your name), simply posting on talk-us "we're doing an import" isn't really considered "enough" in this regard.  You're OK with Step 3 (License) as the data are ODbL-compatible.  Step 4 (Documentation) is sorely lacking, as I see no "North Central Texas Microsoft Building" entry in our /wiki/Import/Catalogue, and as I say, your wiki is so sparse as to be a mere whisper.  Step 5 (Import Review) is non-existent, except for this single post with a link to a sparse wiki.  Yet, you seem to have begun Step 6 (Uploading), without following our Guidelines.

Also, I would discourage you from using Google Sheets:  the sheet linked from the Tracking Sheet column that simply gives instructions beginning with "Welcome to the North Central Texas Microsoft Building Import Tracker!" doesn't need to be a "sheet," it could (should, in fact) become part of your Import wiki.  And while the 969-row "actual" sheet that tracks progress does benefit from the tabular nature of a "sheet," there are oddities about it:  columns M and N rather uselessly list loopback addresses (127.0.0.1).  Couldn't this be better done using our already-built-in https://wiki.osm.org/wiki/OSM_Tasking_Manager ?  As "Open" is our first name, we should strive to avoid proprietary and licensed tools like Google Sheet (or Google anything) in our endeavors to map or track Import projects.  For such a wide area Import, Tasking_Manager is much better suited, as it gives geographic-flavored visually-impactful status, rather than the need to scroll through (or sort) the droll rows of a nearly-thousand record spreadsheet.

May I ask you to please "go back to the beginning and follow our process?"  It doesn't seem like I'm asking you to "re-invent the wheel" or "throw away work" as you haven't followed our Import Guidelines and there are only 4 (out of 969) rows in the Sheet that appear completed, and even half of those say "Need TIGER fix-up" and/or need "alignment of major rds."  (And again, they all have your account name on them, which does have an "import" suffixed to the end of it, so thank you for completing that step correctly).

Let's strive to do Imports well by following our Import Guidelines.  They exist for many good reasons.

SteveA
California