[OSM-talk] Enabling communities to use OSM as a planning tool

[Richard Fairhurst]

Stephen Gower wrote:

>   You can, of course, do what you like, but I'd urge you not to do
>   this without an improvement in the editors.  If I come to edit near
>   a junction and find 15 people have sketched out how they see the
>   junction could be improved, that's a lot of ways that don't render
>   that I'm going to have to pick through to find the actual ways and
>   nodes for whatever it is I'm editing.  We'd need a way to quickly
>   remove all the virtual ways in order to get through to the valid
>   OSM data.

I wonder if what we're actually talking about here is building a  
Google-like "My Maps" feature, rather than OSM itself. We do of course  
have a head start because we already have a codebase much of which  
could be reused in some way - Mapnik, the editors.

In particular we had that crackpot a few weeks ago who sketched an  
entire fantasy hamlet, railway system and so on in Northumbria. Now  
I'm not suggesting that the really very splendid Connect2 scheme is  
remotely comparable, but they do have a common thread: things that  
_aren't_ "on the ground". The fantasy roads that the (invariably) guys  
over at www.sabre-roads.org.uk like sketching are the same sort of  
thing.

Custom local layers, ready Mapnik availability... hrm. A canny  
business type could probably even make that a chargeable subscription  
service, on the basis that custom Mapnik maps are a whole host better  
looking than YAGoogleMashup.

cheers
Richard