[OSM-talk] Preserving History ...

Lester Caine lester at lsces.co.uk
Tue Aug 25 15:16:38 UTC 2015


On 25/08/15 15:10, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
>> Because 'it's easier to delete and start
>> > again' is encouraged rather than 'preserve the history of development'
>> > where someone HAS already spent the time doing that in the past so much
>> > is being lost!
> 
> can you expand on this? Where are people encouraged to delete rather than refine? I've always thought we would actually be encouraging people to retain history 

We encourage new users to use iD ... The first button on the tool pallet
when you click on a line is 'Delete' and there are not covering notes in
the learnOSM guide to suggest that it should only be used when
necessary. Actually the getting started guide just ploughs straight in
to adding stuff without any reference to the etiquette of modifying what
is there already. http://learnosm.org/en/

Beginners Guide on the wiki
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Beginners%27_guide is even lighter on
guidelines ...

Editing Standards page
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Editing_Standards_and_Conventions
only has a 'If you choose to delete and redraw a whole road, check that
the nodes don't themselves have tag' which should perhaps be a 'please
do not delete a whole road as previous information will be lost'.

Checking in the help forum many of the questions that as 'why can't I
delete xxx' make no mention of why that should be a last resort.
https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/41329/cant-edit-or-delete-street is
a typical example but there was no mention on NOT deleting it.

Actually I have yet to find ANY advise that advises simply refining what
is there?

( And I'm still trying to track down the history of the Tollbar A46
route changes. Not sure if some if the history was redacted but I'm sure
that these main roads were present ten years back. )

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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