Hi,
On 31.12.2012 01:27, Jeff Meyer wrote:
Can you clarify if the wiki guidelines are the official import policy or
not?
What exactly do you mean by "official import policy"?
The existing documents have to be viewed in a historic context. There
used to be a time when imports were so rare (and if they happened, so
big) that more or less the whole community would usually be involved in
preparing them (or at least have a chance to be involved). There was no
need for a policy back then.
When imports became more frequent, and people unfamilar with OSM or
mapping tried their hands at importing data, they often were a source of
friction/problems for DWG, and we came up with a couple of guidelines to
make it less likely that an import becomes a problem.
However, this does not mean that if your import follows these
guidelines, it will automatically be "good" or "allowed". It can still
turn out to be problematic, and could be reverted. But at least if you
follow the guidelines you have proven that you can read and are willing
to engage with the community which is a good sign.
At the same time, imports that do *not* follow the guidelines will not
automatically lead to a revert or a blocked account; it is possible to
ignore the guidelines and still make an import that doesn't cause
trouble, for example if it is very small and in a barely noticed corner
of the world.
Unfortunately, there's no link to the guidelines. Does this page
constitute the DWG's import guidelines:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Import/Guidelines?
As I said, I'd need to know what exactly you mean by "official"; that
page has certainly been edited by many people without any "office".
We've long planned to consolidate a number of documents into a coherent
set of guidelines (as the wiki bars "it has been proposed to merge..."
say) but not yet done that.
Serge is leading an effort to review / improve US import guidelines.
I think the most important bit is to make clear that guidelines are
there to help you make an import without problems - but following them
does not give you an automatic right to make an import. It's not a flow
chart where you tick off boxes and if you ticked the final box you can
go ahead.
Bye
Frederik
--
Frederik Ramm ## eMail [email protected] ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
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