> Why do people still insist on converting, and directly importing? > > It makes more sence to 1) Convert the file > 2) make the .osm files available > 3) tell the community about it, so others can take a look before the > most local people to the data actually 'copy it in' to osm.
I completely agree that the imports need to be done with local knowledge. In the case of US NHD, I think it is fair to say that nobody is insisting on doing anything contra to local mapping. Rather, the opposite is happening: nobody is insisting on anything, or bothering to set up the infrastructure to convert the NHD data on a wide scale, store it somewhere as OSM files, and alert other mappers that some data is available for their area. The organizing that is happening for NHD is a little more mundane. The wiki documents the conversion process. If you want NHD data for your area, here is how to go get it and convert it yourself. There is even a signup list for areas and users. So some coordination is happening, it is just pre-conversion instead of post-conversion. I have not looked at your process to see how you convert, manage, organize and communicate the Canadian files, but I commend you for your efforts in doing so. I don't expect I'm going to be the one to organize it all for the US NHD data. Once I've done my area, I don't have any plans for doing more conversions. So yes, it is less than ideal. But ideal takes a coordinator that simply hasn't appeared yet. Can you give a short description or link on how you organize the post-conversion OSM files? Thanks. - Alan -- Alan Millar [email protected] _______________________________________________ Imports mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/imports
