[OSM-talk] Planned revert of added surface and tracktype tags without local knowledge in various countries

[Hauke Stieler]

Hi,

I like your idea.

Just a week ago, the user Gassol also edited tracks in Hamburg, Germany,
and he used bad, old and blurry imagery (Bing). A lot of his edited
tracks aren't even visible there, because of trees or just bad image
quality. I talked to him and he isn't a local person, just makes edits
in quite random places and thinks that obviously (see below) wrong data
is better than no data.

I am a local mapper and our latest local imagery already shows, that
most of his edits are false (example: He added "tracktype=grade4" on a
way with "surface=paved" which looks on the latest imagery also very
grade1-like). I checked about ten of his edits from home and only 3
looked plausible as far as the imagery showed. I probably will revert
his Hamburg-specific changes but maybe you want to check and revert his
other edits too?

Those bad armchair-tags, which are mostly wrong, are as good as random
values [0]: Those tags are completely useless. Removing those obviously
wrong tags is a good idea IMHO.


Hauke

[0] 3/10 are plausible and maybe 2/10 are actually correct, which is
mathematically exactly as good as a random tracktype-tag

On 18.07.20 12:53, Michael Reichert wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> while reviewing changes in my local area, I discovered that user Modest7
> has been adding tracktype=* tags to lots of highway=track at various
> locations. I asked him what sources he used apart from the satellite
> imagery mentioned in the imagery_used=* tag of his changesets. See
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/87236896 for a discussion with him.
> 
> I do not believe that one can add reliable tracktype=* information from
> satellite imagery without having some ground truth knowledge in order to
> know how to interpret the imagery in that region. Adding estimated
> tracktype=* does not help OSM on the long term. People how rely on the
> information (e.g. some wanting to drive or cycle on that track) are
> disappointed about this low-quality OSM data. Mappers who decide where
> to map assume these roads to be mapped properly. IMHO, adding
> fixme=resurvey tracktype will not improve it. Data consumers usually do
> not use tags like fixme=* In the case of imports (another type of mass
> editing), we say that an import must not add fixme=* to cover
> shortcomings of the data to be imported because they usually do not get
> fixed in a reasonable time. Therefore, I plan to revert these changes.
> 
> Modest7 does not seem to realise that estimating tracktype from
> satellite imagery is not doing a service to OSM. I am currently
> preparing a revert of all additions of surface=* and tracktype=* by him
> he uploaded since 1 January 2020 [1]. The revert will only edit tags,
> geometry will stay unchanged. I revert changes on surface as well
> because that's not very different to tracktype except that it applies to
> other types of roads as well.
> 
> The countries which will be affected are:
> Germany
> Denmark
> Turkey
> United States
> Poland
> Ukraine
> Morocco
> Czech Republic
> Lithuania
> Sweden
> Norway
> eSwatini
> 
> A changeset discussion with him can be found at
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/87236896
> 
> Best regards
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
> [1] This date is not fixed yet.
> 
> 
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> 

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