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

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 10/25/22 19:18, Brian M. Sperlongano wrote:
> In my experience, it is more often the opposite situation that happens.  
> A mapper, unaware of the lengthy debates on the topic of former 
> railroads, is mapping her house and removes the bit of abandoned rail 
> currently on the map in that spot, assuming it is a data error or poor 
> import.  After all. she's quite aware that there is a house and not a 
> railway at that location as she has personally surveyed it.  Sometime 
> later, an abandoned railway enthusiast comes along and angrily harasses 
> the mapper for removing the bit of railway that quite rightly isn't 
> there.

In that situation, I would clearly support the mapper who has deleted 
the railroad.

(In discussions with abandoned-railway-enthusiasts, you will often get 
to hear that there are remnants of a railway line that betray the former 
existence of it to an educated observer. If a new housing development 
has been built where once there was a railway, then this is obviously 
not a valid line of argument.)

> It's been my experience that allowing enthusiasts to map phantom 
> railways causes far more grief and contention between mappers than 
> simply drawing a line and saying "we don't map things that aren't there."

I agree with that - especially as OSM is very prone to "whataboutism", 
and before you know it there will be a discussion somewhere about 
mapping some other long-gone stuff and people will say "but you allow 
the railways!!!!"

Still I would recommend against, and also word any wiki articles to 
avoid, someone starting a crusade to get rid of abandoned railways. 
Delete the ones you encounter while mapping and which you don't see 
traces of - totally fine. Run an overpass query to find them all and 
delete them - just causes unnecessary strife.

Bye
Frederik

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