[OSM-talk] Import guidelines review

Nathan Edgars II neroute2 at gmail.com
Wed Jun 6 20:38:05 BST 2012


On 6/6/2012 3:11 PM, Tirkon wrote:
> Worst Fixer<worstfixer at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> It means that we must revert things like TIGER and CanVec. Am I right?
>
> I think fundamentally you are right with this point. My impression is
> that many people at OSM regret these imports - in fact the longer they
> are involved in the project.

Most opinions I've seen are that TIGER is imperfect but better than 
nothing as a starting point.
>
> I imagine Wikipedia would have
> been imported so far and the user were damned to correct it and only
> add bits and bobs. I am pretty sure it never ever would have had that
> success it had.

Pull up five articles on small-to-midsized U.S. cities in English 
Wikipedia. You'll probably see many similarities. This is because they 
were created in the early days of Wikipedia by user Rambot, using US 
Census Bureau data (which TIGER also happens to be).
>
> IMHO the community impact of imports should be described in extenso
> before any technical stuff is mentioned. And yes - it should be
> mentioned that TIGER and its friends were early mistakes of OSM.

This view that they were mistakes is far from widespread.



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