[OSM-talk] razed railways and other things that don't exist today

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

you are correct in all aspects, however in the spirit of friendly 
collaboration I would say that a limited amount of 
stuff-that-should-not-be-in-OSM can be *tolerated*. If someone does a 
lot of good work for OSM otherwise and would really like to record an 
ancient former railroad that ran through where their house now sits - I 
shrug and let them do it. Only if someone starts to make it their 
mission to map every ancient railroad in the country and/or create 
relations so that you can see where trains used to ride in 1848 is when 
I'll ask them to stop and find a better place for it.

In a non-railway context, the various "this does not exist any more" 
prefixes can have value if the object in question is still visible on 
aerial imagery - otherwise, if you simply delete the thing from OSM, 
someone else will draw it back in.

The wiki should definitely say that all these tags are meant for special 
situations and the existence of these tags is not a reason/excuse to map 
every vanished object there is.

I would stress "not adding more of this" over "removing the stuff that 
already is in OSM" though. I don't want a horde of self-appointed 
cleaners running through OSM "because the wiki says so".

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"