[OSM-talk] OSM issues: timestamps

[Tom Carden]

On 24/07/06, matthew-osm at newtoncomputing.co.uk
<matthew-osm at newtoncomputing.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Sorry if this has been covered before I started; I can't find anything in an FAQ
> apart from "my data doesn't work... that's because you didn't include the
> timestamp".
>

We did discuss it on the mailing list before, and I think most people
were agreed that we should start to accept files without a timestamp,
if only to stop people making stuff up.  That way if files have
timestamps they /could/ be useful later.

I submitted a ticket and Dan submitted a patch, here, quite a while ago...
http://trac.openstreetmap.org/ticket/220

I don't have the ability to apply and deploy it, so there it has stayed.

Best,

Tom.

PS whether the GPX spec says something is optional or not is no reason
for OSM to accept or reject it.  We're free to make our own decisions.
I personally think timestamps are really useful (for calculating speed
etc. which we might annotate roads with in the future), and the only
reason not to reject files without them is because we'd rather have
the simple data than no data at all.