[OSM-talk] Import guidelines proposal update

[Eric Marsden]

>>>>> "rw" == Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> writes:

  rw> the facts at hand.  A group of importers decided that they weren't
  rw> going to follow the guidelines.  Then one failed to respond when
  rw> approached about a specific guideline.  And now a group is upset to
  rw> find that their self-declared-being-above-the-other-mappers is not
  rw> widely supported.

  You are being unnecessarily inflammatory, Richard. Noone before you
  has talked of some mappers being above other mappers; shame on you for
  framing things in that way.

  One constructive question which has emerged from the debate (see
  messages by Frederik Ramm, Richard Fairhurst and Jean-Marc Liotier) is
  as follows: certain local communities have established, over many
  years, tools, specialized guidelines and monitoring tools for the use
  of specific data sources. In some cases these may deviate from the
  general, broad guidelines for imports/mechanical edits. What criteria
  should be used to distinguish between

   - local customs which have no negative impact on the project and
     allow the project to represent geographically/culturally specific
     features (eg. motorway=yes in Germany)

   - local customs which endanger the project globally (such as
     integrating data from a source whose copyright status is
     unclear/debatable)

   with a whole range of intermediate issues, such as the
   separate-account-for-imports suggestion, where French community
   consensus is that (given all the points already discussed) the
   inconvenience and burden on contributors outweigh the claimed
   benefits. 

-- 
Eric Marsden