[OSM-talk] [Fwd: Re: [CrisisMappers] Geo-Locate the Haiti Hospitals Challenge]

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

> AN URGENT NEED in addtion to the hospitals is to clean up the road type 
> tags to correspond with the humanitarian presets. 

Hold it right there!

I think there is a limit to just how much OSM will stretch and bend to 
match the needs of users. OSM is, first and foremost, a world-wide 
mapping project, and secondly, something that comes in handy in a 
crisis. OSM is not primarily a crisis mapping system.

Crisis or no crisis, we have an established system of mapping roads. 
Your presets file contains only the types "primary, secondary, tertiary, 
footway". OSM mappers are used to a more fine-grained approach and I do 
not think that just because our approach proves too complex for 
outsiders we should simply discard it.

It is ok for newbie mappers to stick to a small number of road types, 
but your request to "clean up" existing data to only use these four 
types does cross a border with me. We'll do a lot to make our data 
usable, but we will not throw half of it away just because you currently 
don't see use for it.

There is a tag transform plugin for OSM. If you want data that uses only 
four different road types, then we can translate OSM road types to your 
four types; but I am very much against ignoring established OSM practice 
  just because users cannot be bothered to distinguish a track from a path.

Bye
Frederik