On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 11:26 PM, Tyler Ritchie <[email protected]> wrote: >> OpenStreetMap should be left to people on the ground holding gps units. > > Really? I see this sentiment often and it's baffling. > If anything OpenStreetMap shouldn't have even allowed on the ground edits in > areas with good unencumbered data before the basics were imported (TIGER and > NHD in the US).
I nearly fell off my chair laughing when you implied that TIGER and NHD were good datasets. Sometimes I wonder if one of the problems OSM is facing in the US is the relative paucity of examples where OSM volunteers have mapped to higher standards - instead you have endless amounts of poor, basic TIGER data with broken buildings and other imports, and that influences expectations of OSM map data quality - to the point where they are so low that things like TIGER are considered an adequate end result. And then the downward spiral of "we don't need mappers, just look at the datasets we already have, they'll do" becomes self-reinforcing. > It would take decades to get any sort of a meaningful map in the US without > the TIGER import. That's a defeatist attitude and not borne out by experiences elsewhere in the world. > Sure, the high population density areas will get mapped > well and quickly, but not the low density areas. As opposed to what happened after the TIGER import, where high population density areas haven't seen the same level of mapping activity/quality that we'd hoped for? I'm not arguing against using external datasets to help make the map, but the imports that are a direct substitute of things that are otherwise easily mappable seem to cause the most problems. Lots of people expect that they will somehow "kickstart" the next stages, but they seem so far to be a displacement activity more than any genuine help. Cheers, Andy _______________________________________________ Imports mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/imports
