Ricky,
I would not consider an import as "frowned upon". Certainly it is not something
which occurs on a monthly basis. Imports I have been aware of in the past
include those of more-or-less all buildings in France as a donation by the state
cadastre office which occured a couple of years ago.
Imports occur more frequently in humanitarian context because often countries
affected by a crisis are not well mapped. Sometimes other organizations donate
some of their data to OSM and - after an additional mapping effort - get maps of
so far unseen quality to assist their staff on the ground. To give you an idea
of the "paperwork" involved, have a look at
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import_CAR_UNICEF_FOSA That document was
prepared by the initiator of the import as basis for the discussions on the
import mailing list and nicely presents all the items one has to keep in mind,
from obtaining a license to working out a tagging scheme. The more detailed
workflow document mentioned therein was necessary because it was designed to be
a community effort - cleaning the data could not have been performed by just one
person alone.
Regards
Michael
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