[OSM-talk] Fixme: A proposal

John Harvey john at JohnHarveyPhoto.com
Mon Oct 3 01:29:04 BST 2011


Hey!

I have an experimental renderer and from time to time I find "bugs" with 
planet.osm that I would like to see fixed.  From what I can tell, I'm 
not alone - GeoFabrik (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OSM_Inspector) 
Skobbler (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Mapdust) and 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Keep_Right are years ahead of me in 
reporting bugs, but I suspect I detect some novels bugs that aren't 
frequently reported.

I like to contribute content in my area, and I am willing to take time 
to fix bugs in my area.  Trying to find local issues isn't obvious - 
there are places to find issues, but they certainly aren't obvious from 
Potlatch.

I would like to propose three changes:

  * We currently have roughly 700,000 nodes/ways/relations marked with
    FixMe.  There isn't a lot of structure here, and I suspect a lot of
    these issues aren't moving.  I propose we add a layer of structure. 
    Would could categorize bugs into categories.  For instance:
      o FixMe:Legal - Content with potentially legal issues
      o FixMe:Topology - Content that violates the semantics of how it
        is tagged.  (Multigons with inners outside of all outers for
        instance).
      o FixMe:Redundant - overlapping geometry, or tags which are redundant.
      o FixMe: Nice to have and so on

    I think the goal should be for the 700K existing items to eventually
    be categorized and the "error" type issues get fixed.

  * People in their Profile Description identify regions for which they
    will accept notifications of newly detected bugs, even if they
    didn't author the content.  For instance:
      o FixMeOwn: -123.321 -122.959 49.204 49.328

    As a contributor, if I was told about new issues in my area of
    concern, I would take a look at them (no promises I can fix them).

  * I believe that the tiles rendered on the www.openstreetmap.org page
    should be marked up to show errors (not all fixme's, but a known set
    of them).  The tiles on www.openstreetmap.org are there for mappers
    to fix data, not to just look pretty.  A red outline on ways/nodes
    that have FixMe:Legal, FixMe:Topology and FixMe:Vandalism would draw
    mappers attention to things that can improve.


I'm just floating an idea.  I can do very little to forward these ideas, 
but I can tell you I would contribute more if there was a way for me to 
enter bugs I find world wide and find bugs in the areas I know.

John
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