[Talk-us] Proposed mechanical edit - remove objects that are not existing according to source of GNIS import that added them

[Kevin Kenny]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2019 at 11:03 AM Mateusz Konieczny
<matkoniecz at tutanota.com> wrote:
>
> There are thousands of objects mistakenly imported to OSM from GNIS.
> Objects proposed to be deleted were documented in GNIS database as not
> existing at time of the import, but were imported anyway.

I think it would be a good idea if we can recover from this botch. The
set of restrictions on what to remove will, I think, save all the work
I've done on these nodes. (Near me, there are a lot of '(historical)'
schools and churches where I've kept the nodes and tagged the current
use of the buildings, but your checks will avoid undoing that.)

I started typing a knee-jerk response that the GNIS nodes would be
useful, since a great many of the (historical) things represent
buildings that are still standing but have been repurposed. Then I had
a flash of sanity, and realized that the current use needs to be
field-verified anyway, and the historical use isn't really an OSM
function, so the "might be useful" is a chimera.

I know I've reused at least one (historical) place_of_worship, because
a community of a different faith rehabbed the building. But there
again, I could have mapped it just as easily without GNIS.

(I presume that it's right to keep GNIS tags when remapping?
https://geonames.usgs.gov/apex/f?p=138:3:0::NO:3:P3_FID,P3_TITLE:2425965,First%20Baptist%20Church
for instance shows the defunct "First Baptist Church". The building is
now https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/491209761 "Guru Nanak Darbar
Sikh Temple", but it's the same building.)

So my summary is: "I myself wouldn't dare attempt a mechanical edit on
this scale, but if you think you can pull it off, and convince enough
people that nobody will revert, go for it!"