[OSM-talk] Zero tolerance on imports

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Mon, Feb 21, 2011 at 3:58 PM, Peter Budny <peterb at gatech.edu> wrote:

> The thing is, whether the work is done by humans or robots, how are you
> going to know if it's right?

By going to it and checking.

> But anyway... how do you know if the data is right?  OSM doesn't have
> many tools for assisting humans in much of anything, whether it's
> creating new data, or augmenting data with new data sources or with
> information gleaned from examining metadata, or verifying data to make
> sure it's actually accurate.

That's because the assumption of OSM is that data is entered by ground
surveying and therefore things like "This road has N lanes" is assumed
to be true.

> If automated edits are problematic, it's not because the robot
> apocalypse is coming.  It's because automated edits are hacked together
> due to a lack of tools and support in OSM for doing anything other than
> manual editing.  This isn't a problem with automated edits; it's a
> problem with OSM.

Peter, you've done an excellent job of identifying problems with OSM.
Do you have any suggestions on how to resolve these issues?

- Serge