Serge et al, Has there been discussion yet about creating a list of base layer datasets (imports or survey) that OSM would encourage contributors to focus on? Also, creating a list of datasets considered inappropriate for the main map might steer contributors and their communities into a direction that would help reduce some of the friction, especially during the import approval process.
Thanks, Carol ------------------------------------- Carol Kraemer North River Geographic Systems, Inc http://www.northrivergeographic.com 404.431.0125 [email protected] On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 3:42 PM, Serge Wroclawski <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 12:50 PM, David Days <[email protected]>wrote: > >> Greetings, all. >> >> I am a new user to OpenStreetMap, but a long-time software developer. >> Currently, I'm working on a project that would benefit from having >> political subdivisions in the state of Ohio represented on a map. >> > > >> A quick run through of the import history page doesn't show any similar >> data sets, so it appears that the results could be a worthwhile >> contribution. >> >> To clarify, "political subdivisions" means not only the standard mapping >> features (city, village, county), but also township, voting wards and >> precincts, congressional districts, etc. Some of these divisions are >> atomic (don't cross other jurisdictional lines), while others can cross >> several larger groups. >> >> Voting wards, congressional distrincts, etc. aren't really things that > we've had in OSM. Political boundaries even for towns are somewhat > controversial, and difficult to maintain- I certainly have a lot of > reservations about adding new data sources. > > I understand that you need this data for your map- but since you seem to > already have this data in another format- why can't you simply mix the data > for your particular map? > > >> The intent is to start with one county at first, then expand as the >> project grows. That translates into roughly 100 subdivisions, of which 75+ >> are non-city/town/village in the first data set. >> >> I'm planning on getting local experts within the areas described to >> manually create the mapping features at first, but eventually I would like >> to take other public domain data that's coming available and import it on a >> large scale. >> >> (As for licensing and reuse--the political divisions themselves are >> public domain, and I'm the owner of the project; even though the primary >> purpose is narrow, I thought that OSM and everyone else could benefit from >> having this map available). >> >> With all of that in mind: >> >> >> 1. Good idea, ok, or really, really bad idea? >> >> > I think it's not a good fit for the project, personally. > >> >> 1. Reuse of existing datapoints is probably important (these >> divisions usually follow clear boundaries, so finding existing boundary or >> markers would cut down on the import size). Pointers or gotchas? >> >> Would be very complex not only to import, but to maintain. > > >> >> 1. Import scale: Ohio has 88 counties, with probably 100 of these >> subdivisions on average. If the entire idea is acceptable, would >> per-county imports work better for the community, or would it be better to >> get it all together and push it all at once? >> >> This is a technical detail that would be better discussed if you decide > to go through with the import proposal, but I don't think it would be well > received by the general OSM community. > >> >> 1. Maintenance: Most of these areas are pretty stable--about 100 out >> of the whole state get reworked every 10 years. Is this a factor, and how >> much commitment to maintenance should I factor in? >> >> > Yes, it's a factor. > > > IMHO this is similar to the discussion we've had in the past about land > plots, which is something that some people would like to import. Generally > these are centralized in terms of a source, and they're not something the > OSM community can improve upon. Clearly the data is useful to some people, > but it's not a good match for the kind of general purpose resource that OSM > exists to serve. > > That doesn't mean it's not good data, or not particularly useful, or that > you couldn't mix the datasources together on your own- but that it doesn't > belong in this dataset. > > That's MHO. > > - Serge > > _______________________________________________ > Imports-us mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/imports-us > >
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