[OSM-talk] Import guidelines proposal update

[Pieren]

On Wed, Sep 19, 2012 at 10:55 PM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:

> I've combined their responses and made them generic.

I take my turn to combine your arguments:

> - "Too hard to register with another email."  I say use
> username+osmimport at yourisp.com if they support it.  Alternatively,
> those concerned in the French community can surely offer their members
> additional email accounts to support their community.

- Uploading other contributor's work is probably breaking another
"guideline". Using a single separate user account or a proxy user for
all users has been already suggested. It would comply with the import
guideline but we don't want that.

> - "I don't want to change account settings in JOSM."  I say start josm
> with alternate josm.home directory with your saved credentials.  Like:
> java -Xmx2038M -Djosm.home=/home/username/import -jar
> /home/username/bin/josm-latest.jar

- in Europe, the trend is to open more and more public geodata. It's
usual to find contributors uploading external data from 2, 3 or 4
different sources. Each will require a different user account, a
different email address and a different JOSM preference file. Each
time you change something in your preference, you will have to repeat
it in all your homes.

> - "Cadastre is not an import."  Cadastre is an import.  Could you do
> the same thing if there were no Cadastre to import?  No,

- Untrue. The cadastre is also available as WMS. We started by tracing
manually over raster images. I guess what UK users are doing today
with OS buildings, we did it in the past until we were able to
retrieve the vector data.

> - "Cadastre is different; I am careful before I upload."  All mappers
> are careful don't insult the rest of the community. :-)  Fixing and
> reconciling data before upload is the obligation you have when
> contributing.  Cadastre is still an import.

- I agree. Cadastre is an import, but not a blind, automated, large
scale import done after conflation on a GIS application.

> - "No. I want credit for all of my mapping statistics all in one
> place."  Simplest to fix.  UserStat now allows you to combine stats
> from a group of your accounts.

- nobody came here for statistics.

Pieren