[OSM-talk] Bing maps is misplaced

[Joseph Reeves]

> By the way, I don't think the intention is to suggest that it is not ok to
> trace an area and then visit it to correct errors and add detail. It is when
> you are not going to do that, it is frowned upon. I can understand why. I
> have cancelled a trip to survey some lonely country lanes after someone else
> remotely traced them. Had I gone, the map would have gained POIs instead of
> just a line. But it scarcely seemed worth the trip for what might have been
> a couple of postboxes and pub, without having the satisfaction of mapping
> the roads, too, especially when there is so much else left to map. But maybe
> I'm being silly.

Sorry, but I find this to be a really negative attitude; there's loads
of people that want to draw a line on the map for the first time, but
less who want to tidy existing streets, or "just" add POIs. What would
be wrong, for example, with collecting the first GPS trace of a road?
Arguably this is much more important than the first tracing of the
same road from Bing.

An example from my recent past: We display OSM imagery on our website
to show people where our offices are. We have one office that was in a
town poorly covered by OSM. When the OS Open imagery became available
I traced chunks of the town into OSM to improve the map and our
website. It may not have been perfect, but it was better than nothing.
I then received a miserable email asking me to stop because a local
mapper "was planning" to get on his bike and map the town, but now
wasn't going to because he'd "only be fixing my mistakes". Whilst I'm
sorry I took away the thrill this user feels in being the first to
draw on a map, I don't really care what he "was planning" to do; I
wanted the map updating as soon as possible and there existed a way of
doing it from home. Likewise, his pompous attitude about fixing my
mistakes didn't endear me to him; what's wrong with fixing mistakes if
they've been entered by someone doing the best they could? What's
wrong with getting some GPS traces to enhance / support what's already
there? What's wrong with sourcing data from multiple locations?

Tracing imagery may not be perfect, but it should be a start, not a
reason to avoid going out.

Cheers, Joseph




On 8 December 2010 22:46, davespod <osmlists at dellams.fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>> On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 8:33 AM, davespod <osmlists at dellams.fastmail.fm>
>> wrote:
>> > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners_Guide_1.1
>> >
>> > See item 3.*
>>
>> Very interesting. That line was added by "Ben" in January 2009, and
>> that sentence hasn't been touched since.
>
> Bah! You're right! I'm sure I read this in one of the very first wiki pages
> I read, but obviously not this one. I have certainly been aware of the
> principle since the outset, and I got all my early information from the wiki
> (I did not read the mailing lists for several months, and good thing too - I
> would probably have been scared off!).
>
> By the way, I don't think the intention is to suggest that it is not ok to
> trace an area and then visit it to correct errors and add detail. It is when
> you are not going to do that, it is frowned upon. I can understand why. I
> have cancelled a trip to survey some lonely country lanes after someone else
> remotely traced them. Had I gone, the map would have gained POIs instead of
> just a line. But it scarcely seemed worth the trip for what might have been
> a couple of postboxes and pub, without having the satisfaction of mapping
> the roads, too, especially when there is so much else left to map. But maybe
> I'm being silly.
>
> Good luck with trying to reach a consensus. It's a while since I saw one of
> those on these lists :)
>
> Cheers
>
> David
> --
> View this message in context: http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/Bing-maps-is-misplaced-tp5811671p5817117.html
> Sent from the General Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
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