[OSM-talk] Import guidelines & OSMF/DWG governance

[Lester Caine]

Pieren wrote:
>> OSM is not unique, wikipedia too require a dedicated account for bots.
> The uploads we are talking are normally done with JOSM after the
> integration with the existing data and validation. If it is performed
> with a script, then it's a bad import done by one of the "black
> sheeps" mentionned earlier. We also agree to block such bad imports.

Pieren
I think that one of the problems here is that if a large block of data is 
uploaded in one 'commit' it is difficult to know if it IS a manually edit, or 
something that has been created automatically off-line, and is being slipped in 
to bypass the bot rules. If a commit is too big then it is as bad as a bulk 
upload from one of the bots, or 'import'. Perhaps all that is needed here is 
that the chunks of data that are being integrated are kept down to a size that 
makes managing the history a little more manageable? Personally however I can 
see a commit that wipes out an entire town and then reloads it with new data 
would be somewhat irritating, and I think that this is what has been happening 
with the French data? Maintaining the history of the development of the data in 
an area, while being totally ignored by some users, is as important as simply 
creating a current map. *I* like to see when a change is made to information on 
the ground, so loosing that link to previous instances of an object is a 
problem. This is ONE of my gripes with imports of OS data loosing the 'history' 
of the previous development of an area but is totally ignored as a valid reason 
for not 'blanked wiping' an area to allow new data to be uploaded! Merging new 
imports with existing data is difficult, so tends not to happen, delete and 
reload is the quick fix but is destroying often valuable data :(

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-----------------------------
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk