[OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[moltonel 3x Combo]

On 02/09/2015, Colin Smale <colin.smale at xs4all.nl> wrote:
> Are you suggesting that parcel boundaries have no place in OSM, or that
> only verifiable sources should be used? Suppose there was a suitably
> licensed source of such boundaries, with authoritative provenance. Would
> you be against this being in OSM on principle? Or is it only your
> supposition that such information cannot be sufficiently verifiable
> which gives rise to your concern?
>
> Anyway, fences, signs etc are not reliable indicators of parcel
> boundaries (where there are land registries), unless the boundary is
> legally described with reference to these physical artefacts.

I always understood that land property was out of scope for OSM. Do
you know of any osm data which records property ?

IMHO verifyability is a major issue here. Real-world barriers don't
match the legal ones, borders change regularly (that's a major
difference with admin boundaries), and even the authoritative source
is often murky (I'm now 3-4 months into the process of figuring out
wether I own a piece of land at the back of my garden).

On top of that, whenever you need to know about land ownership, you
are legally obliged to refer to the authoritative source. Looking up
the info in a crowdsourced db, even if it was completely correct,
would most often be a waste of time.