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

[Greg Troxel]

Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> writes:

> 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.

Well said.

I think people should keep in mind that a culture of deltionism is
demoralizing to contributors and harms OSM more than a few  marginal
items in the database.

I also agree with stevea@ -- old railways are usually visible in the
landscape, and the data about where they were in between visible places
seems more useful than harmful.

Also note that people who do not like railroads often do not see the
evidence as well as people who are used to looking for it.

> 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".

Good point.   "Deletionists double-plus bad".
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