[OSM-talk] Giving everything a unique ID

[Simon Biber]

Gregory <nomoregrapes at googlemail.com> wrote:
> If I'm mapping I try and keep nodes intact and edit the tagging
> to preserve the ID and history, but there are cases where this
> can't happen.

Another example where ID and history are lost is when we change items from single nodes to areas, as we get higher resolution photo maps (like NearMap) or more accurate GPS / inertial positioning devices. Recently I have been deleting nodes and recreating them as areas for playgrounds, tennis courts, swimming pools, etc.

Apart from the loss of ID and history, this also affects clients such as Mapzen POI Collector. Once a point of interest is no longer a single node, Mapzen does not consider it as a point of interest or allow it to be edited. It even disappears from the map entirely for several weeks, until Mapzen's base layer is re-rendered to show the area.

Does anyone have a good solution for this?

Regards
Simon.