Second try, first post included too much data for the list. I did not want to argue that manually editing lakes, with or without the aid of lakewalker, can give very good results, but this of course comes at a price: someone has to sit down and do it. Which is something many people have done for their part of the world, but as the statistic has shown (of some 12000 1degree tiles of SWBD data, less than 2000 had water feature data in the equivalent OSM tile), this is not the case for large parts of the planet.
Furthermore, unless a lot of time is spent editing the lakewalker generated outlines, the results are not really that much better than what is in the SWBD set when it comes to larger lakes (small ones are not part of the SWBD set). Importing the SWBD data will give at least a good approximation of larger lakes for the large part of the world where no such data is so far present This is not intended to stop anyone improving on the SWBD data - just the opposite. I always think that the more data is already in OSM, the more it encourages others to add their bit - particularly in those areas of the globe that remain white and unmapped. It particularly provides the incentive to name lakes without having to go through the work of tracing them - and putting names to the lakes is perhaps the most interesting feature missing from the SWBD data set. Unless someone objects I will upload the SWBD data for an area I am otherwise mapping and where no lake data so far exists - I have no intention of trampling on other people's work.. Ludwig
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