[OSM-talk] strange roads.....

[Simon Hewison]

Emil Vaughan wrote:
> I've started tidying up Islington (London, UK) and making ways and
> stuff, and I've noticed lots of strange roads that don't exist, and
> don't even fit with the GPS data in osm. I was wondering whether these
> were automatically created some time in the past...perhaps because
> they looked like fitting the then-available data?
> 
> If people notice changes around Islington, please don't revert
> them....... (if you can revert with osm)

I was tidying up traces around Green Lanes / Finsbury Park (not too far from 
the area of which you speak), and noted quite a few automatically generated 
ways / segments/ nodes that were generated by someone not appreciating how 
powerful JOSM is when it converts tracklogs to ways.

It had created lots of duplicate stuff.

An easy way to find such stuff is to search for "Active Way" in the web site 
search tool. If someone hasn't taken the time to actually properly label the 
way, then it's likely to be (at least partially) some sort of duplicate.

If anyone does use the "Convert to data layer" tool in JOSM, please be 
careful to download the actual data from the server first, so you at least 
have an idea of whether parts of your path have already been mapped, and you 
can then de-duplicate it yourself before uploading to the server.

-- 
Simon Hewison