[OSM-talk] Half-mapping

[Richard Fairhurst]

Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote:

> No one would ever trace the huge areas of data we have from ASTL etc. if
> that were the case. I've done lots of this around Sunderland, Durham and
> Middlesborough, so that something will show up in those areas when local
> people see the map, and they can then go and fix them. I presume all the
> areas I traced came from ATSL, but if part of it came from you I would
> have know way of knowing.

No. There's a big difference between "don't trace anyone else's GPX  
tracks at all", which I'd never advocate, and "don't trace others' GPX  
tracks, to a very low quality, without making them into ways, when you  
don't know the area".

I know a load of roads around the Cotswolds, Rutland, Burton-on-Trent,  
Leicester, Cambridge, Ely, Kilburn, etc. etc. etc. which I could  
happily map (and sometimes have done) though I don't have traces for  
them. That's why I hope that others will, like me, continue to upload  
their traces for these and other places. But that's not the issue.  
Half-mapping an area doesn't really help anyone; if, as Andy says, the  
person who actually knows the area ends up deleting the incorrect,  
inaccurate, incomplete segments, what's been achieved?

> If I don't own a GPS, what would you suggest?

Er, buy a GPS?

But seriously: concentrate on areas you know and on the Yahoo!  
imagery. Drawing streets you don't know in OSM is about as useful as  
writing about topics you don't understand in Wikipedia.

> [unwayed segments]
> The only problems are that potlatch doesn't
> show them and let you fix them, and the much lesser problem that mapnik
> doesn't display them on the default maps.

Potlatch _can_ show them, see mailing list passim. My development  
version currently lets you 'way' them but doesn't yet cope with badly  
ordered segments, which is what I'm working on atm.

cheers
Richard