[OSM-talk] THIS is the kind of enthusiasm some would reject

[Dave F.]

On 14/09/2015 18:40, EthnicFood IsGreat wrote:
> Russ is a railfan.  I am a railfan.  We are a group of people for whom
> railroads hold a lot of interest and nostalgia.  Being able to see
> locations of abandoned railways in OSM is very desirable for us.
I'll guess there a lots of OSMers who are interested in defunct railways 
& would love to see an OSM rendering of them. I include myself in that 
number. However the OSM database is not the place to store the info.



>   (Not
> to mention that some of them will eventually be converted to rail
> trails, and so their location is important from that aspect.)  I guess
> we're asking that an exception to the "verifiable features only" rule
> be made for these features.

The rule is whether it exists or not. OSM is for current entities.


>    Simply confining abandoned railroad
> features to OHM is not a good solution, because without being able to
> view them in the context of existing features, they lose a lot of
> their value.

It needs to be transferred (not deleted, as some have stated) to a 
separate database & mashup techniques used to create a render with the 
current OSM database.

> A long time ago someone decided that administrative boundaries would
> be granted an exception.

As boundaries exist *&* verifiable no exception was needed.

> We are also mapping cycle routes.

Yes, as they *exist* on *current* cycle ways.

> Is it too much to ask for abandoned railroads to be granted an exception too?

Yes. They don't exist any more.

> Iknow the classic argument against this is that it would open the
> floodgates for all kinds of other historic objects to be mapped,
> thereby cluttering the map.  But are there really that many people
> that would clamor for feature type "x" to also be included?

As you & others won't let it lie, I'm going to answer: Yes.

> I've not heard anything on this mailing list from anyone advocating
> passionately for any other type of historic feature.

There are some against removing *any* entity, which is how OHM came about.

> We cater to cyclists (of which I am one as well), why not railway enthusiasts?

If a cycleway is destroyed in the real world, then it would get deleted 
in OSM.


Cheers
Dave F.

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