[OSM-talk] Adding vmap0 road data to OSM

[Igor Brejc]

Christopher Schmidt wrote:
> I think that the important thing in this case is not "Do we import it or
> do we not import it" -- there's no reason that having low resolution
> data hurts OSM so long as it is properly labelled. 
That sounds fine, but the problem is that the moment vmap0 data is added 
to the OSM database, it becomes equal with the existing data. Just 
tagging vmap0 data is not enough: anyone could delete these tags 
afterwards and the thing will slowly turn into chaos. Currently when you 
look at some area of the OSM map and you see roads, you can be pretty 
sure that someone has used GPS or satellite images to trace it (okey, 
with TIGER data in US this is not true). But after a whole lot of new 
data is imported from some other source, how will anyone be able to 
distinguish between traced (presumably high-quality) and imported (in 
this case low-quality) data?
> Instead the question
> that I see is "How do we make sure that people understand the data is
> low resolution, and how do we make sure that we don't interfere with any
> existing data?"
>
>   
Well since the OSM community is pretty diverse, I'm not sure this will 
be entirely possible.
There is one way that I think this could be done safely, but it would 
require certain changes in the OSM API: import vmap0 data, tag it as 
"vmap0" and make it unmodifiable. The only thing users could do would be 
to delete whole nodes/ways (for example once a more precise data is 
entered and thus vmap0 becomes obsolete).

Regards,
Igor