[OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Mateusz Konieczny]

On Wed, 9 Sep 2015 09:33:45 +0200
Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> sent from a phone
> 
> > Am 09.09.2015 um 09:01 schrieb Mateusz Konieczny
> > <matkoniecz at gmail.com>:
> > 
> > Currently it is done on really limited scale and still may be
> > stopped.
> 
> 
> I doubt this has the potential to become a big scale "problem"
> because there aren't sufficient sources and traces to reconstruct the
> world as it was hundreds or thousands of years ago (not to forget
> that there were much fewer people in these times, and much fewer
> alteration of the world in general).
> 
> FWIW, there have been several mentions of historic objects naming
> "hundreds" or thousands of years in this context of former railways
> on the lists. Actually the first railway was built in 1830, that is
> not even 200 years ago, and this is also more or less the period
> where you can get detailed spatial information (good maps) from.
> Please stop FUD about people completely mapping the past into OSM and
> obfuscating the present thereby.

Now it is done with railways and may be stopped. But if completely
dismantled railways are not deleted from OSM what would stop somebody
interested in mapping completely destroyed buildings, canals etc?

Given that some are happily mapping in detail individual bicycle
parkings or individual trees (I encountered forests and parks where
mapping of every single tree is in progress) etc - it is almost certain
that sooner or later somebody will decide to import for example
buildings that were documented to exist in the past.


> > 
> > OSM is map of the current state of the world - not map
> > of the world how it was yesterday, 10 years ago or five thousands
> > ago.
> 
> 
> Nobody is advocating to map the past, what is discussed is mapping
> those elements of the past which somehow have lasted or have had a
> strong impact that is still observable today. You say these objects
> would make mapping more difficult and confusing but the opposite is
> true: it makes mapping more sensible when the relevant context is
> present (including traces of the past).

For some "strong impact that is still observable today" is set so low
that extreme amount of completely dismantled structures will pass it.

Maybe people interested in mapping completely gone features may propose
what they consider as minimum threshold so we would be able to make
this discussion more useful?