[OSM-talk] Suggestion more complete mapping verifactiion

[John Baker]

>
>
> Well, the T&C for London Online don't exactly give me confidence that I
> can
> copy and use their street name listing so therefore I won't.


Pretty standard T&Cs for a site like this. Obviously they want to cover all
there data i just depends how valuable the listing of street names is to
them. You here some to think they are like gold dust for a list of street
names.

Well I'll email them and see.

Maybe if we use their basic data (I cannot imagine it is too valueble to
them compared there other data on the site) and have a complete map of
London they would want to put it on their website and not have to pay
multi-map, etc for the honour. Are they going to want an incomplete map on
there?

I thought that would be part of the goal of this project. Or maybe you do
not want people to use the map?


> I'm still a little confused as to why you think a "complete" list of
> streetnames is so imperative. I'm sure the OSM database will have as
> complete a list of street names as any other database with time. It's a
> wiki
> so it's pretty easy to fill in gaps, even if it takes a few iterations to
> get it perfect. If someone finds a street is missing it gets added. Why
> does
> it need verification?


I am confused why you think having a complete list street names is *not*
imperative for a basic map.

What would a layman want from a map. Do you not think it containing the all
the street in a given town is useful? How useful is a map with an unknown
number of missing streets?

I would use OSM for looking up address and finding my way around London if I
was confident in it. But as I know from the small amount of streets I
checked there are missing roads then I will continue to use multimap,
streetmap, etc instead.

I imagine many people/business/etc will not use it as a resource if this is
the case.

But if people think it is complete for certain areas then they will use it
more and word will spread more and more data will be inputted and OSM gets
better?

Are you suggesting that it will get worse? I just see it as a natural
progression.

All I want to do is help improve this.

Do you know what streets are missing? When will all the streets be mapped so
it becomes a useful resource? You do not know.

Would it be nice to say you have mapped (fairly completely) a whole area?

Obviously over time it will get better but when will it be complete will all
the streets say in central London? There are always things to add say
someone wants to add a pub on the corner of a road and the road does not
exist they might think it is too complex to add a whole road and they just
want want to add a more simple marker. I know I would be put off and they
would loss confidence in the whole thing.

Once you are confident that you have all the streets in a given area
then updating it pro-actively is easier. Once you have a "completed" map
then when new streets are created (or removed) it *can* become easier with
the right info.

I suppose you will not think it useful if the project gets lists of all new
streets in a given area. I see this as very useful.

Your solution seems to be it will get filled in when someone gets around to
it but if they do not know it is a problem who will fix it?

Or maybe they should check the same area day after day in Yahoo imagery or
walk every road in an area just in case a new road shows up....




> I accept that it's perhaps not useful always to suggest a location has
> been
> fully mapped and is hence "complete", especially if it's not had some sort
> of quality control check, but marking places as complete is a useful
> measure
> of progress and permits energy to be focused elsewhere. At some point, as
> areas get mapped out, the OSM userbase will fall back to checking and
> infilling and generally improving the data they have already uploaded, and
> that will include fixing errors and missing data.
>
> OSM is still in its infancy with a lot of data to add even for the most
> heavily mapped areas such as the UK. Give places like London another year
> and I think the situation will look a lot different and the number of
> streetnames in the database for a given city will probably more closely
> reflect the actual number of streetnames to be found when you visit them.
>
> The best way for us all to help this process along is to find a blank
> area,
> map it and get those streetnames into the database. If you don't have a
> GPS
> then stick to somewhere with Yahoo imagery. That's all there is to it.
>
> Cheers
>
> Andy
>
> Andy Robinson
> Andy_J_Robinson at blueyonder.co.uk
>
>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20070918/7aa3a3f3/attachment.html>