[OSM-talk] OSM Data Scope (was "wikiproject rail?")

Jon Stockill lists at stockill.net
Wed Oct 4 12:08:24 BST 2006


matthew-osm at newtoncomputing.co.uk wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 03, 2006 at 05:40:36PM +0100, Tom Chance wrote:
>> I think everyone would benefit at this point from an exercise in defining what 
>> counts as "core" OSM data, so we know what should probably go elsewhere.
> 
> <snip>
> 
>> Unless an agreed definition of core data is agreed on, and there is some way 
>> of stopping plonkers like me from adding more and more extraneous data 
>> (whether to the db or to the map features page), the database is just going 
>> to fill up with all sorts of crap :)
> 
> This is something I've been thinking about for a while. The same question (for
> me, anyway) seem to come up continuously behind lots of different masks. For
> example
> 
>   "What should go in to the database, and what not?"
>   "How should these roads be marked up / how should Map Features be designed?"
>   "Can I put county/town/village/constituency boundaries in, and where do I get
>     the data legally?"
>   "Should OSM contain bus routes?"
> 
>   etc etc...
> 
> Personally I think that OSM should primarily be a map of what is actually
> physically there. In other words, if I can go out and see that there is a road,
> I can map it and upload it. I can see on a road sign that it is the "A6", so I
> can tag it thus. It has a name, so that can be tagged, too.
> 
> However, I cannot go out and visibly see a bus route that runs along the road. I
> _could_ mark the bus stops, though (they are real things, like benches/post
> boxes/telephone boxes etc).

You *could* have made use of the bus to collect the track in the first 
place. It's something I'm considering - I have a pass that allows me 
unlimited travel, and if I selected suitable routes could cover a lot of 
roads. It just seems a shame to throw away data which effectively comes 
"free".

-- 
Jon Stockill
lists at stockill.net




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