On Mon, 2011-04-25 at 00:55 -0700, Jaak Laineste wrote:
> On 25.04.2011, at 5:17, Alan Mintz wrote:
> 
> > At 2011-04-24 15:36, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> >> Jan Iven wrote:
> >>> As such, is there some agreed way for a large-scale import to pass
> >>> the message to editors such as Potlatch that they need not bother
> >>> editing these features? (this would allow me to go off and pester
> >>> these editors to actually honour such an attribute). Of course, the
> >>> editor could chose not to honour this (i.e. JOSM when
> >>> importing/improving some CORINE areas), but at least this would then
> >>> be intentional.
> >> Potlatch is not a "simple" editor. You can, and many people do, use it as 
> >> your sole OSM editor. I will categorily not permit any function to be 
> >> added to it that prevents certain items from being edited.
> > 
> > How about not "prevent", but at least warn the user and ask them to confirm 
> > when editing such features? The admin borders are a perfect example where 
> > it would take some real research to manually edit/correct them. If someone 
> > wants to do that work, great, but they should be able to then ask others 
> > not to edit unless they know what they are doing. It doesn't have to be 
> > enforced, but we can certainly ask people to comply, right?
> > 
> > Another good example is benchmarks/survey points, some of which I've been 
> > adding. The benchmark itself is at a specific, highly accurate position 
> > (lat/lon), and should not be moved unless the benchmark itself is 
> > re-surveyed. A control point nearby (used to identify imagery offset), 
> > based on a certain imagery set, should not be moved either.
> > 
> > How about confirm_edit=yes | "Some message to be displayed to editing 
> > user"? A value of "yes" displays a default message, while other values let 
> > the user explain the reason why it might not be correct to edit it.
> 
> Any good mapping database should be able to combine original data with 
> existing sources in reasonable way. OSM is very biased to the original 
> surveys, and I would say it is not optimized at all to handle properly 
> external sources which need special handling for various reasons. Currently 
> the only way is to ignore any special requirements, like editing restrictions 
> (like warnings as you suggest), different licenses/attributions, bulk 
> updatability (foreign keys) etc. Also it looses any link with original data, 
> which is no good for different reasons.
> 
> What about following approach:
> a) ban external source imports to the main database
> b) create new separate solution (layer, server, API, whatever fits) for all 
> the imports.
> 
> What would be special about this imported data layer solution:
> - update permission system, someone can be maintainer of the data
> - free to copy data from import->main database
> - planet.osm it would have the data in special section. In mapnik db it would 
> be just as normal data.
> 
>  Actually in principle it would not be too strange, as it would be somewhat 
> similar to existing GPS tracks database solution. Technical API itself can be 
> similar to current one, with minor modifications, so also editing tools 
> require minimum updates.
> 
> I know it would not be easy, a lot of special cases would come (e.g. 
> ownership transfer when someone takes imported object, copies and updates it 
> in main db, how to handle duplicates, what do do with already done imports 
> etc). Perhaps an idea for API 0.7

Would the imported data be accessible through the same API as the survey
based data?  I would hope so, as things such as administrative
boundaries are actually useful.  It would be a shame if I could find all
the benches near me, but not what county I am in via API.

Cheers

-- 
Michael Leibowitz <[email protected]>


_______________________________________________
Imports mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/imports

Reply via email to