[OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[moltonel 3x Combo]

On 24/08/2015, Balaco Baco <balacobaco at imap.cc> wrote:
> buildings are usually
> replaced much faster than maps are expected to last, and the work of
> updating it twice, once for the "empty space, dem. building" and the
> future "new building outline" is better done only one time.

It's nice to avoid unecessary version churn, but if a mapper keeps up
with the real-world changes there's nothing wrong with updating OSM
too. If you search the archives you'll find plenty of discussions on
"mapping temporary features" and how ephemeral a feature needs to be
before it loses its mapworthyness. For example a road closed during a
weekend is a clear no-map, but construction work is usually considered
mappable if it'll last a few months and there is a local mapper to
keep track of the updates.

"how long a map is expected to last" is a tricky question especially
for OSM. Paper maps are often updated yearly but kept for decades in
people's homes. Google Map has TOS that mostly forbid cacheing data
yourself for later. Data on osm.org is updated minutely, but the osm
data on a satnav may never get an update at all.