[OSM-talk] Zero tolerance on imports

[SomeoneElse]

Frank Steggink wrote:
> I believe the average community opinion is more like: imports _are_ 
> welcome, but _only_ if there are no better alternatives, and _only_ if 
> a strict set of guidelines is followed (for example _not_ deleting 
> better quality user contributed data).

I think that historical messages here show that there IS a majority 
anti-import stance in the community, but that's mainly because your two 
important provisos aren't often followed.

However, surely we're missing the important point here - that someone 
had "hours of work obliterated" by another person?  There's a lesson 
that we can all take from this - to better respect other mappers' work 
and to try and understand what they're trying to do and how they're 
trying to do it.  That might be by respecting "no import" or "no 
tracing" zones or it might be by working together in other ways - but we 
have to try and work with and not against each other on this.

Cheers,
Andy