[OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> Am 14.08.2015 um 10:48 schrieb Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com>:
> 
> These discussions are nuanced. Are there going to be things one person can identify that another can't- yes. But at the same time, I still think that as a project, we've collectively made a decision here that we don't require any special external knowledge or equipment to modify data.


We have underlined repeatedly in the past that OSM should be a home for special interest groups as well as for occasional generic mappers. I believe we as a project do require from our contributors some respect towards the previous contributions aka the map data the find when they start contributing. For example we do not tolerate to delete a way and then redraw it, even if it's done better, but rather we ask people to improve what is there by iterating over the existing data. This respect towards the others that we expect from all contributors leads to a situation where people without special knowledge and or equipment go one step back and refrain voluntarily from editing/deleting stuff they find and recognize as special interest data.


cheers 
Martin