[OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

[Tobias Knerr]

On 06.06.2012 14:38, Pieren:
> On Wed, Jun 6, 2012 at 2:05 PM, Frederik Ramm
>> Assess the impact that your import will have on the community.
> 
> But you can say the same for manual editions too. What is the impact
> of adding indoor mapping, rooms, floors, private footpaths, 3D roofs
> and textures, tons of lane tags making data interpretation almost
> impossible for newcomers ?

We have traditionally held imports to a higher standard than manual
editing in this regard, and for good reason: A mapper with unusual
mapping practices may be a problem for his or her immediate
surroundings, but an import can do damage on a much larger scale,
possibly delaying the formation of communities in entire countries.

And obviously, there has to be at least a minimum amount of mappers in
the area for them to create all that potentially controversial data
manually. So there is a chance that if there are enough mappers to
create it, there should also be enough of them to maintain it. This is
not at all true for imports: They can add much more data to an area than
a local community is able to handle, and automatically updating imports
once the data is in OSM has never worked in my experience.

So I agree with Frederik that we should evaluate imports for their
impact on the community. I also feel that "make available instead of
import" is a good way to ensure that a) there is a local community to
maintain the data and b) that local community is fine with the import.

Tobias