[OSM-talk] Zero tolerance on imports

[Andrew Errington]

On Sun, 20 Feb 2011 09:40:03 Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Finally, all these warnings must sound hollow to someone who lives in a
> place where 90% of data around him is imported. You will have a hard
> time telling him that imports are bad.

I live in a place where 90% of the data is imported.  Imports are bad.  It's 
bad because I discover errors and start to think 'How many more errors must 
there be?'.  It's mainly bad for two reasons.  Firstly, the data is old, and 
there has been a significant road-building program going on here for a while.  
Secondly, things don't join up because the import processing didn't process 
road junctions properly, so routing doesn't work (until mappers go around and 
join them up).

IMHO imports should exist as 'ghost objects' or 'pencil lines'.  They should 
never render on Mapnik etc. and never be used for routing, but a mapper with 
local knowledge should be able to verify the objects and change them to a 
real object (i.e. 'ink them in').

Of course, if we had one million mappers here they could all take a quick look 
at their local area and fix the mistakes in a couple of days...

Best wishes,

Andrew