[OSM-talk] Adding Missing Roads in the Caribbean

[Andy Townsend]

On 01/02/2022 11:08, Jeroen Hoek wrote:
> On 01-02-2022 09:58, Alan Mackie wrote:
>> How have these missing roads been validated? In some low lying areas 
>> scars that look like roads can persist for decades in imagery despite 
>> having become entirely unsuitable for travel.
>
> Good question, but TomTom is loath to share any details of their work. 
> They do announce their intentions (they have been posting updates in 
> the Dutch community subforum for the Dutch roads), but Marjan does not 
> appear to have clearance to go into details about their source and 
> methodology.

The key I think is that what they add (or actually, any OSM mapper adds) 
needs to be verifiable.

For example, I changed https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1026177053 a 
couple of days ago.  If someone comes along later and says "that's not a 
paved track, that's an unclassified road" (or whatever) they can change 
it.  If I add something and they can't see it at all, then as well as 
removing it, they're entitled to ask me about it (via e.g. a changeset 
discussion comment), and if I keep adding stuff that doesn't exist or is 
of poor quality they're entitled to either report me as a user or email 
a complaint to the DWG.

The source I used for my edit of that way is a series of notes in a 
private GPS trace 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/SomeoneElse/traces/4092244 - there's 
no requirement that all of the notes that I used to help me update OSM 
are made public, and I wouldn't expect to have to explain the full 
details of the methodology used either.

What would be a problem would be if I added things that did not exist to 
work around some external issue - for example, added an imaginary 
stretch of cycleway on a road to prevent motor vehicle routing in some 
external app, or removed surveyed gates because some external router 
could not be configured to route through them.

Where editing is "organised" (which it is in the case of TomTom) there 
is one extra requirement - they as a company and their mappers need to 
follow https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Organised_Editing_Guidelines .

If there's a problem with either of these then email 
data at openstreetmap.org or report the user concerned so that the Data 
Working Group can deal with it.

For completeness, where I've encountered TomTom's editors before - such 
as when tidying up the problems described at 
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-za/2021-July/001310.html 
- their editing quality wasn't as high as other non-corporate mappers in 
the area (but to be clear - it wasn't TomTom that caused the problem 
that I had to fix there).

Best Regards,

Andy (from the Data Working Group)