[OSM-talk] Suggestion more complete mapping verifactiion

[Andy Robinson]

John Baker wrote:
>Sent: 17 September 2007 6:53 PM
>To: Dave Stubbs
>Cc: talk at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Suggestion more complete mapping verifactiion
>
>Thanks Dave for the useful reply - so many are not. That explains a little
>more.
>
>I was a little presumptuous that his information was available. But also,
>to be honest, I am surprised that people involved in heavily mapping (like
>many here) do not have street info like this - even if they cannot/do not
>use it for this project.
>
>Yes I understand the potential problems with this data online and stated
>that before.
>
>Anyway here are a few scenarios for you:
>
>a) You can still lookup the street data though with the RM or OS etc
>programs that is what they are for. If I got an "official" street name
>source from RM, etc and made a list myself, looked those up in the AtoZ and
>and walked around myself. Would it be ok to put this data in OpenStreetMap?
>
>b) At a mapping party (or follow up mapping parties when it is nearly
>complete), etc. someone hands people a list of a few names of streets that
>they might want to check out that might have been missed so they can lookup
>in their AtoZ. Would the data collected be ok to be put in OSM?
>
>c) If someone posted a link to this newsgroup to a webpage with possible
>"Easter Eggs in RM street data in Cambridge", etc and people went out and
>checked this and realised that some of these streets were not in OSM
>database. Would it be ok to add them? Maybe with links to multmap,
>streetmap, etc (2 different data sources) of the roads.
>
>d) If someone posts to say Heddon Street in London W1 is not in the
>database here is a link:
>http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x=529233&y=180753&z=1&sv=heddon+stree
>t&st=1&tl=Heddon+Street,+W1&searchp=newsearch.srf&mapp=newmap.srf
>Is it then OK for someone to walk down Heddon Street with a GPS and map
>this road in OSM?
>
>I wonder what you think of these?
>
>I don't want to auto-correct the streets or copy from multimap or something
>that some here seem to think. Just to go out and manually check them.
>
>Obviously some can be paranoid with the legal stuff (and it is easy to do
>so) and on the same level of legal paranoia you probably shouldn't use
>paper based maps for planning mapping parties but I imagine you do.
>Obviously caution is needed I am not arguing otherwise.
>
>Legal areas are complex but there seems to be a load of leeway here IMHO.
>


That maybe but for the OSM project we don't go looking for that leeway. Its
so much simpler (and indeed safer) to ignore all "official" or even
"unofficial" sources and gather the data from scratch, that's the whole idea
behind OSM. That way we know it's not tainted in any way other than with our
own editing errors. When I map an area I do it systematically so that in
theory I don't miss any streets/streetnames. Now and again I know I have
missed some (failed camera image etc) and I have a list of places I need to
go back to sometime. But then again OSM is a wiki so someone with the local
knowledge can also fill in the missing information at some other later time
if I don't. I'm sure if for each area of the map we posted a list of planet
derived streetnames it wouldn't take very long for the general public to add
a comment via a web form to tell users of a missing street and its
approximate location related to other streets that already exist in the OSM
database.

Cheers

Andy

Andy Robinson
Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk