[OSM-talk] GNIS quality improvement, was: USGS Topo maps

Martijn van Exel m at rtijn.org
Mon Nov 28 20:26:49 GMT 2011


On Mon, Nov 28, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Graham Jones <grahamjones139 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 28 November 2011 19:10, Greg Troxel <gdt at ir.bbn.com> wrote:
>>
>> That makes sense, but how do you deal with logging the modifier of the
>> data - is this a webapp, and do people log in with OAuth?
>>
> If you decide to develop this as a web application, it might be worth
> looking at the outcome of one of last year's Google Summer of Code projects,
> where Michael Daines was working on a simple map editor based on javascript
> (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Simple_Map_Editor - source code
> at https://github.com/mdaines/simple-map-editor).
> He got it working with OAuth so it could be a good basis for your
> application if you produce a custom user interface for it.

That does look interesting, although I'm not sure whether I would want
to have people edit the database directly. I agree with Josh that the
application should require no login at all. I don't like the route
wheelmap.org goes, for all the credit that project deserves, as it
opens the door for anonymous editing which we - for good reasons - got
rid of in the stone age. That means that there will be a layer of
improvements to imported point data that will have to be merged into
the OSM database somehow.

I like the way Frontdoor seems to approach the problem of anonymous
microtasking, Josh mentioned this as well. Each feature would have to
have at least N (3?) improvement tasks attached to it, and the new
points would have to be within a certain distance from each other.
What would happen on the back end though? Assign a higher trust level
to objects that have received more tasks?

I also like the idea of having registered OSM users edit directly.
This would mean OAuth integration. As I am not a rails person, I would
look at python for an implementation[1].

[1] example for a command line instance:
https://gitorious.org/osm-poi-tools/monetdb/blobs/master/osmfixer/osmfixer.py

-- 
martijn van exel
geospatial omnivore
1109 1st ave #2
salt lake city, ut 84103
801-550-5815
http://oegeo.wordpress.com



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