[OSM-talk] Abandoned Rails

[Richard Fairhurst]

moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
> The line is going through multiple buildings and a wide low 
> wall. That's as unambiguous as it gets. The lack of any 
> other sign on the grass and highway areas are an additional 
> good hint. If you're mapping a railroad here, you're mapping 
> the past.

Haha. I have, actually, been to the place you cited.

Or, nearly. I cycled a couple of miles away from that example in June this
year (I took a three-day bike tour after SOTM-US) and saw that railway - I
actually explored its course for a few metres at one point. It was plenty in
evidence if you knew what you were looking for, whether or not you can see
it from the aerials.

>From what I saw elsewhere on the line, I cannot say with any confidence that
there aren't distinctive traces of a former railroad there at the lat/long
you cited. There might be. There might not. I suspect I'm more attuned to
finding these traces than you are. Conversely I suspect you're more attuned
than I am to some other stuff which you enjoy mapping. But I don't go and
delete your mapping thousands of miles away just because I can't see it on
some imagery. Come on.

(And let's not get hung up about "if you're mapping a railroad".
railway=dismantled does not mean it's a usable railway now, and no-one is
claiming that. You have been in OSM long enough to know that the characters
that make up a k/v combination are just that, characters. highway=footway is
Not Actually A Highway. highway=trunk is Just Some Letters Indicating
Importance And Isn't Even A Trunk Road In The UK. And so on.)

But really... can we get a sense of perspective here?

A few metres from the URL you cited is 
    http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/263868309

which doesn't exist, at all. No building. No sign of a building. It's
fiction. Then there's
    http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/263878931

which is an imported square footprint that looks nothing like the actual
building. Pan south a mile and you get
    http://www.openstreetmap.org/edit#map=17/41.88892/-74.03297

which is a textbook example of TIGER barf - a cluster of
"highway=residential"s that are neither highways nor residential and whose
geometry bears little or no relation to what's actually there.

(Also, NY State Bike Route 32 sucks rocks. The traffic is heavy and the
shoulder is either non-existent or too narrow to ride. I would love to find
a way of mapping that.)

If I were going to write 40 messages to a thread trying to make OSM better
(I'm angry enough with myself that I've been drawn into writing four), in
this area or anywhere, I would not choose deleting a few
"railway=dismantled"s as my top priority. I really wouldn't.

Please, give it a break, have a bit of respect for others' differing views,
and go and make OSM better somewhere where it matters.

Richard




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