Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-29 Thread Colin Smale
 

This is your opinion, which you are seeking to impose on everybody.
Somewhat selectively it would appear, as you are not going to burn your
fingers on highway=proposed. I guess you will be deleting the HS2
(proposed UK high speed rail line) route as well, right? If you would
like to, you will find it here: 

http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1986960 

Go on, I dare you. 

On 2015-08-29 09:48, Mateusz Konieczny wrote: 

 On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 23:18:17 -0400
 Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
 
 But what gives them the right to delete things that other people CAN
 see and DO want to have in OSM?
 
 Because mapping thoroughly destroyed objects that no longer exist (like
 rail lines where even earthworks are levelled and houses are built over
 place where railway used to be - something defended in this thread by
 some) is a dangerous precedent that would lead to a complete mess (like
 mapping destroyed and no longer existing objects and slapping end_date
 on them or mapping objects that never existed and pretending that
 putting start_date on them makes it OK).
 
 Mapping proposed and potential (so not existing, unverifiable and
 likely to never appear) is already major problem in my region.
 
 Adding to that objects that no longer exist is an extremely poor idea.
 
 Therefore I will delete any object that no longer exists or never
 existed (after communication with mapper or other method to verify
 whatever I am mistaken, with exception of highway=proposed).
 
 It is important to avoid treating mapping completely destroyed railways
 as OK - we already have terrible highway=proposed (mapped in some
 valid places and many where projects are pure political fiction or
 outright SF - like highway=proposed that used to be mapped across
 Boering Strait*).
 
 * Yes, I deleted it. I am not OK with mapping abandoned railroads (as
 in traces of it are present) but railways where only trace is
 presence on old documents should not be mapped.
 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-29 Thread Mateusz Konieczny
On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 23:18:17 -0400
Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:

 But what gives them the right to delete things that other people CAN
 see and DO want to have in OSM?


Because mapping thoroughly destroyed objects that no longer exist (like
rail lines where even earthworks are levelled and houses are built over
place where railway used to be - something defended in this thread by
some) is a dangerous precedent that would lead to a complete mess (like
mapping destroyed and no longer existing objects and slapping end_date
on them or mapping objects that never existed and pretending that
putting start_date on them makes it OK).

Mapping proposed and potential (so not existing, unverifiable and
likely to never appear) is already major problem in my region.

Adding to that objects that no longer exist is an extremely poor idea.

Therefore I will delete any object that no longer exists or never
existed (after communication with mapper or other method to verify
whatever I am mistaken, with exception of highway=proposed).

It is important to avoid treating mapping completely destroyed railways
as OK - we already have terrible highway=proposed (mapped in some
valid places and many where projects are pure political fiction or
outright SF - like highway=proposed that used to be mapped across
Boering Strait*).

* Yes, I deleted it. I am not OK with mapping abandoned railroads (as
  in traces of it are present) but railways where only trace is
  presence on old documents should not be mapped.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-29 Thread Richard Fairhurst
Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
 Therefore I will delete any object that no longer exists or never
 existed (after communication with mapper or other method to 
 verify whatever I am mistaken, with exception of highway=
 proposed).

OSM would be a better, and nicer, place if people went out and did mapping,
rather than staying at home and doing deleting.

Richard



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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-29 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 29.08.2015 um 12:42 schrieb Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.net:
 
 OSM would be a better, and nicer, place if people went out and did mapping,
 rather than staying at home and doing deleting.


+1, deletionism and relevance discussions have seriously harmed Wikipedia by 
shooing away contributors in many countries and I really hope we don't follow 
their example. 

Mapping is too laborious to really expect the whole history of the world 
reappear in OSM anyway.

cheers 
Martin 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-28 Thread Phil! Gold
* Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com [2015-08-21 09:22 +0200]:
 railway=dismantled means there is no railway currently but there are clear 
 traces / remains of a railway (because if there weren't we would not put it 
 in Osm).

Just for clarity:

railway=abandoned (per the wiki and my understanding of things) is for
when there remain traces of a railway whose rails are no longer present.
railway=dismantled (and its synonym, railway=razed) was introduced to
cover the case where people wanted to tag the path of a former railway
where no traces of the railway remain (e.g. because the area was
completely leveled to may way for a subdivision or mall).  (Reasons for
using railway=dismantled usually amount to, The railway=abandoned traces
on either side of the leveled area make the former presence of a railway a
ground truth (because you wouldn't just have a gap in a railway) so the
railway=dismantled way bridges that gap in the OSM database.)

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PGP: 026A27F2  print: D200 5BDB FC4B B24A 9248  9F7A 4322 2D22 026A 27F2
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-28 Thread Russ Nelson
Pieren writes:
  There is a large consensus on that in the community. Why are you
  insisting ? If you like, check the OHM project which is dedicated
  for historical maps.

We've been through this before. You're just insisting on your view and
claiming that everyone agrees with you. There is no consensus; rather
a number of people want to map disued / abandoned / dismantled
railways. Some people don't! Good for them! I'm happy for them that
they don't.

But what gives them the right to delete things that other people CAN
see and DO want to have in OSM?

The problem is that this disagreement is not symmetric. It's not like
the power=sub_station or power=substation disagreement. You don't have
one side saying we don't map power lines and the other saying but
we do. No, instead, we have one side saying YOU CANNOT MAP THIS.
That is not how we do things here -- and THAT is the true consensus.

I'm fine with you mapping the things you want. Why aren't you fine
with me mapping the things I want? Why the urge to delete? Why
encourage other people to delete things that are not accidents, not
TIGER mistakes, but things that people WANT in OSM and have PUT in
OSM?

I simply cannot comprehend the desire to delete.

You want to improve OSM? Fine. Add things that aren't
there. Contribute to Richard Welty's collection of fire hydrants. He's
got a useful project going on there. The Bing aerials are good enough
now that you can see traffic lights. There are a TON of missing ones.

You improve OSM by adding things. You make OSM worse by deleting
things.

Don't make OSM worse. Don't be that guy everyone hates.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-25 Thread Jo
For what it's worth, I'm in favour of tagging dismantled railways as

railway=dismantled

Even if it does pass through newly built buildings.

Polyglot

2015-08-25 9:52 GMT+02:00 Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org:

 On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 6:09 PM, moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 On 22/08/2015, John Eldredge j...@jfeldredge.com wrote:
  So, if you are looking for a route without steep grades, a former
  railway is a natural choice.

 Do people actually do this ?


 Yes, I do.


 It sounds like a strawman argument to me.
 I do a fair bit of walking and cycling, and when planing a trip I look
 at the global topographic data but it never occured to me to look for
 railroads. Why use the local railroad hint when you've got the global
 DEM data ?


 DEM is great for showing large differences in elevation, but it tends to
 suffer a bit when it comes to subtle cues.  Compare
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14953012 ,
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14939296 ,
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/199770540 , and
 http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14943691 to the roughly parallel highway
 OK 11.  These segments are likely (but not yet formally proposed) to be an
 extension of the Osage Prairie Trail, closing the gap from metro Tulsa to
 the capitol of the Osage Nation and a yet to be determined distance farther
 north along the former railroad.  That grade, just from standard railroad
 engineering practices, is unlikely to be steeper than 2% for any
 significant distance and extremely unlikely to be steeper than 4%.  OK 11,
 however, is a rollercoaster of a highway with many steep grades, some of
 which are easily past 8%.  The DEM really glosses over this thanks to Tulsa
 and Pawhuska only being about 100 feet difference in elevation.  The
 intervening terrain is pocked with rolling hills and cliffs formed from
 erosion, with the highest point on the highway being about 1000 feet.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-25 Thread Paul Johnson
On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 6:09 PM, moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com
wrote:

 On 22/08/2015, John Eldredge j...@jfeldredge.com wrote:
  So, if you are looking for a route without steep grades, a former
  railway is a natural choice.

 Do people actually do this ?


Yes, I do.


 It sounds like a strawman argument to me.
 I do a fair bit of walking and cycling, and when planing a trip I look
 at the global topographic data but it never occured to me to look for
 railroads. Why use the local railroad hint when you've got the global
 DEM data ?


DEM is great for showing large differences in elevation, but it tends to
suffer a bit when it comes to subtle cues.  Compare
http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14953012 ,
http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14939296 ,
http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/199770540 , and
http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14943691 to the roughly parallel highway
OK 11.  These segments are likely (but not yet formally proposed) to be an
extension of the Osage Prairie Trail, closing the gap from metro Tulsa to
the capitol of the Osage Nation and a yet to be determined distance farther
north along the former railroad.  That grade, just from standard railroad
engineering practices, is unlikely to be steeper than 2% for any
significant distance and extremely unlikely to be steeper than 4%.  OK 11,
however, is a rollercoaster of a highway with many steep grades, some of
which are easily past 8%.  The DEM really glosses over this thanks to Tulsa
and Pawhuska only being about 100 feet difference in elevation.  The
intervening terrain is pocked with rolling hills and cliffs formed from
erosion, with the highest point on the highway being about 1000 feet.
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-25 Thread phil


On Tue Aug 25 09:12:15 2015 GMT+0100, Jo wrote:
 For what it's worth, I'm in favour of tagging dismantled railways as
 
 railway=dismantled
+1
 
 Even if it does pass through newly built buildings.
-1
I passionately believe dismantled railways should both be in openstreetmap and 
be rendered,  but only where they actually still exist on the ground. They are 
important landscape features, and are shown by our biggest competitor in terms 
of maps for walkers. 

Existing as a road, cycleway, footpath,  then leave the tags.

Where they have been built on, then they no longer belong in openstreetmap. 

Rendering would highlight to local mappers that they exist in the database and 
provide an impetus to fix where they exist and where they don't. 

Phil (trigpoint)


 
 Polyglot
 
 2015-08-25 9:52 GMT+02:00 Paul Johnson ba...@ursamundi.org:
 
  On Sat, Aug 22, 2015 at 6:09 PM, moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com
  wrote:
 
  On 22/08/2015, John Eldredge j...@jfeldredge.com wrote:
   So, if you are looking for a route without steep grades, a former
   railway is a natural choice.
 
  Do people actually do this ?
 
 
  Yes, I do.
 
 
  It sounds like a strawman argument to me.
  I do a fair bit of walking and cycling, and when planing a trip I look
  at the global topographic data but it never occured to me to look for
  railroads. Why use the local railroad hint when you've got the global
  DEM data ?
 
 
  DEM is great for showing large differences in elevation, but it tends to
  suffer a bit when it comes to subtle cues.  Compare
  http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14953012 ,
  http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14939296 ,
  http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/199770540 , and
  http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14943691 to the roughly parallel highway
  OK 11.  These segments are likely (but not yet formally proposed) to be an
  extension of the Osage Prairie Trail, closing the gap from metro Tulsa to
  the capitol of the Osage Nation and a yet to be determined distance farther
  north along the former railroad.  That grade, just from standard railroad
  engineering practices, is unlikely to be steeper than 2% for any
  significant distance and extremely unlikely to be steeper than 4%.  OK 11,
  however, is a rollercoaster of a highway with many steep grades, some of
  which are easily past 8%.  The DEM really glosses over this thanks to Tulsa
  and Pawhuska only being about 100 feet difference in elevation.  The
  intervening terrain is pocked with rolling hills and cliffs formed from
  erosion, with the highest point on the highway being about 1000 feet.
 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-23 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 23/08/2015, mick bare...@tpg.com.au wrote:
 On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 00:09:43 +0100
 moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com wrote:
 Do people actually do this ? It sounds like a strawman argument to me.
 I do a fair bit of walking and cycling, and when planing a trip I look
 at the global topographic data but it never occured to me to look for
 railroads. Why use the local railroad hint when you've got the global
 DEM data ?

 How fine is the granularity of the DEM data?

Between 30 and 90m depending on location, when you look at the most
common publicly-available data. Most of the world is at 30m now, and
most of the really bad artefacts have been fixed.

30m is plenty of granularity when you're planning a walk or a cycle.
It can miss a cutting or an embankment, but those areas are normaly
flat enough to begin with that you wouldn't have been put off by the
DEM data alone. I'm sure there are extreme cases where this isn't
true, but you still want to mainly look at DEM most of the time.

Tags that I actually look at when choosing an osm path/footway/track
is surface, tracktype, and sac_scale.

http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/srtm/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Radar_Topography_Mission
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Spaceborne_Thermal_Emission_and_Reflection_Radiometer

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-22 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 22/08/2015, John Eldredge j...@jfeldredge.com wrote:
 So, if you are looking for a route without steep grades, a former
 railway is a natural choice.

Do people actually do this ? It sounds like a strawman argument to me.
I do a fair bit of walking and cycling, and when planing a trip I look
at the global topographic data but it never occured to me to look for
railroads. Why use the local railroad hint when you've got the global
DEM data ?

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-22 Thread John Eldredge
Not precisely flat, but with very shallow grades, by definition. Regular 
railroad engines (as opposed to cog railway engines) can't climb steep 
slopes. So, if you are looking for a route without steep grades, a former 
railway is a natural choice.


--
John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot 
drive out hate; only love can do that. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.




On August 18, 2015 8:28:47 AM Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote:


Hi,

On 08/18/2015 03:21 PM, Richard wrote:

Especially as many railways come with more or less dense key:ele tagging
they are much more reliable to derive height profile information than any
other data we have.


Do I understand you correctly: We should map abandoned railways because
we lack a good source of elevation data?

That sounds like a very strange proposal to me. Perhaps the wiki
documenting the abandoned value should be amended by not to be used
for abandoned mountain railways, because cycle routers will prefer
routing along abandoned railway lines under the assumption that they
must be flat?

Bye
Frederik

--
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-22 Thread mick
On Sun, 23 Aug 2015 00:09:43 +0100
moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 22/08/2015, John Eldredge j...@jfeldredge.com wrote:
  So, if you are looking for a route without steep grades, a former
  railway is a natural choice.
 
 Do people actually do this ? It sounds like a strawman argument to me.
 I do a fair bit of walking and cycling, and when planing a trip I look
 at the global topographic data but it never occured to me to look for
 railroads. Why use the local railroad hint when you've got the global
 DEM data ?

How fine is the granularity of the DEM data?

The DEM data I've found is about 5km.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-21 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 21/08/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote:
 Am 20.08.2015 um 14:59 schrieb Pieren pier...@gmail.com:

 where is the railway here ? were are the rails ?

 there aren't any rails, but there is a railbed, this cutting wouldn't make
 sense for a cycleway, would it? (inappropriate effort)

IMHO (and I've been arguing against mapping railway=abandoned in many
cases), I think that in this case tagging railway=abandoned (along
with highway=cycleway and cutting=yes) is acceptable, meaning that I
don't think the tag should be deleted, but I wouldn't add it myself.

For: even an on the ground unmoving observer would easily figure out
that this was a railway.

Against: it is neither a railway nor abandoned, it is a cycleway, the
characteristics of which can be fully described without refering to
its railway origin. There has to be a point in a way's physical
evolution when we can stop tagging railway=abandoned, where do you
draw the line ? The it was a railway fact can if desired be kept in
a relation with start/end tags (a rare case where these can work).

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-21 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 20.08.2015 um 14:59 schrieb Pieren pier...@gmail.com:
 
 where is the railway here ? were are the rails ?


there aren't any rails, but there is a railbed, this cutting wouldn't make 
sense for a cycleway, would it? (inappropriate effort)


 why should we keep
 any mention about rails when it's a cycleway now ?



because it's a cycleway in a railbed?


 map what we see,
 the path or track and the cuttings/embankments.


map what we see does not mean to only look the next 2 meters in front of you. 
There clearly is an artificial cutting and if you look at this in a bigger 
context you (or at least someone else who neither isn't a railway expert) can 
likely understand that this is a former railway.
railway=dismantled means there is no railway currently but there are clear 
traces / remains of a railway (because if there weren't we would not put it in 
Osm).


How do you see that a highway is primary? without looking at a bigger picture 
you won't.  if we mapped like you suggest, we would only map highway=road... 

cheers 
Martin 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-20 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 19.08.2015 um 20:06 schrieb Glenn Powers gl...@net127.com:
 
 For the record, I deleted an abandoned railway that leads through a new
 housing development, because it didn't make any sense to leave it there.
 
 Satellite images clearly show ground gradings indicating an abandoned
 railway.


What was the situation on the ground? Were you able to take some photos?


Cheers 
Martin 

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-20 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 20/08/2015, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
 moltonel 3x Combo writes:
   But it's equally annoying and tiring to repeatedly encounter the
   ludicrous kind of railway=abandoned,

 Then tag it as railway=dismantled. You won't find me defending
 incorrect tagging of anything.

If 'dismantled' is meant to be used for cases like going thru
buildings in a housing estate then no, this data just doesn't belong
in OSM.

 moltonel 3x Combo writes:
   To me the distinguishing criteria between disused and abandoned is
   wether the rails are still present or not.

 Indeed. disused means the rails are still there. Abandoned means that
 the rails are gone. Dismantled (or some people use razed) is when a
 section of the railbad cannot be seen. Railways that were never there,
 placed by mistake, should be deleted.

The wiki only describes abandoned and disused. Some people have
mentioned cases where the rails are still there but trees are growing
in the middle so it really should be 'abandoned' and/or there should
be a value between 'abandoned' and 'disused'. From what you said
earlyer, maybe 'dismantled' is the new 'abandoned' and 'abandoned'
sits somewhere between 'dismantled' and 'disused' ? Maybe you could
give the wiki some TLC.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-20 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 20/08/2015, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
 moltonel 3x Combo writes:
   The demolished: prefix only makes sense when there is something left
   of the former feature, typically rubble (useful for example to alert
   boattripers of the hazard). When there is nothing left in reality,
   there should be nothing left in OSM.

 Question: should we tag the aqueduct underneath Sunrise Highway
 between Aqueduct Raceway and Freeport, NY?

I'm not at all familliar with that area, please provide some links.

   Deleting an object is hardly different from editing it as far as
   osm history is concerned.

 Except that deletion excises it from the database that you see when
 make an API call.

So does editing. When you change the geometry or tags of an object,
the old versions are not downloaded/displayed by you editor unless you
take special action. I know that outside of Potlach1 that special
action is a bit more complicated, but that is just an API issue that
will hopefully get fixed someday.

 In the case of dismantled railways, that is not
 accurate. There *is* a dismantled railway there, and you can tell
 because the railway was at point A and at point B, and you can still
 see it there, and so you should expect to see it in-between.

The argument (which is not making any progress so this might be my
last comment on it) is between *is* and *was*, and where to draw the
line. If there *is* an abandoned railway it can be mapped. If there
*was* a railway it cannot be mapped. abandoned isn't a synonym of
was.

See for example http://osm.org/go/esz3FWUuB- (toggle satellite
imagery). There *is* an abandoned railway south of the river, there
*was* a railway north of it. The fact that you can infer that the
railway was indeed there because it's clearly visible again at
http://osm.org/go/esz18LcmF- (and visible all the way in the GSGS 3906
imagery) doesn't matter.

We've discussed a few criterias to distinguish between *is* and *was*
on this thread, but you've dismissed even the most basic A building
has not been constructed at that location one.

On the subject of is/was criterias, I'd like to weight against the
less basic railway grade slope one. Firstly because railways usually
followed existing flat grades instead of following them, secondly
because in other cases the cuttings and embankments should be mapped
for themselves rather than implied by a railway=abandoned. There might
be some cases where that argument still makes sense (montainside
railways come to mind), but it needs to be evaluated case by case
IMHO.

 I understand that most people don't give a crap about map feature X,
 Y, and Z. I get it, really I do. I look at things in OSM myself and
 wonder why the hell did you map that?? Who cares?? And when it comes
 to railways, there's a lot of people who don't give a crap. Fine. Go
 ahead. Don't care. But I do. So don't delete the things that I (and
 other railfans) have added.

For the last time, this isn't about esoteric mapping topics (abandoned
railways is actually quite popular in OSM), but about reconising then
something just doesn't exist anymore and (in another part of this
thread) about wether mapping the past is acceptable in OSM at all.

 From whence comes this impulse to destroy other people's work? Cuz it
 seems pretty anti-community, anti-mapper, and anti-OSM.

Quality assurance. We all want the map to be as correct as possible,
and that sometimes require deleting data. The only anti-* case is when
the decision to modify/delete is controversial but not discussed.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-20 Thread Pieren
On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 7:12 AM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
 Frederik Ramm writes:

 The trouble is that I'm being
 threatened with having my contributions deleted!

 DELETED!

 Why incentive do I have to correctly tag, when people are saying Go
 ahead, I'm just going to delete it anyway and I'm going to encourage
 other people to do the same thing.

Russ, seriously. Many people already told you that if it is removed
physically, then we remove it in OSM as well. Even if you use a tag
dismantled, the point isn't changing : we don't keep removed
features in OSM. We map the present (and basically, I'm also if favour
to delete the future, like the  planned stuff when it's not 100%
sure). There is a large consensus on that in the community. Why are
you insisting ? If you like, check the OHM project which is dedicated
for historical maps.

I got some examples from the net:

[1] 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunstable,_Dismantled_railway_and_National_Cycle_Network_Route_6_-_geograph.org.uk_-_146322.jpg

where is the railway here ? were are the rails ? why should we keep
any mention about rails when it's a cycleway now ? map what we see,
the path or track and the cuttings/embankments.

[2] http://ukbeach.guide/photos/uk-photos.php?photo=15295
[3] http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2496379

disused is fine here.

[4] https://outoftheloopdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/p6090099.jpg

Who knows that this track was a railway from 1881 to 1961 ? why should
we keep any railway tag here ?

Pieren

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-20 Thread Lester Caine
On 20/08/15 14:06, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
 On 19/08/2015, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:
 98% of the history that we are looking to manage properly is currently
 existing in OSM. All that is needed is to add start dates to the bulk of
 the existing data.
 
 What do you do when a road gets upgraded, widened, straightened,
 renamed, or some combination thereof at various points in time ?
 start/end_date tags are way too crude, they can't capture any
 evolution (as opposed to construction/demolition) of the real world,
 making their use very limited.

The same applies today to mapping the fine detail of what you describe.
Many of the footpaths around here have been improved and expanded but
there is currently no easy way to map the current state ... but simply
adding a date when the footpath first appeared is better than nothing,
and that has nothing to do with OHM, it is simply adding current data to
the current map.

 The SMALL amount of material that
 is a result of new development work invariably maps into currently
 existing objects.
 
 That's just not true, by definition new developments are new objects
 (and often a lot of old objects relegated to the past). And the amount
 of evolution in the real world is by no mean small.

Some parts of the world are demolishing large areas of 'history' but on
the whole, the increase in volume of currently valid data considerably
outstrips the small amount of historic data it replaces.

 Insisting that this data is only available for
 rendering purposes in a second database is just wrong, and even worse,
 the 98% of the supporting data exists in OSM so why maintain a second
 copy of it.
 
 I would actually love to be able to map the past in OSM. But if all
 you have to offer me is start/end tags and some renderer/editor
 workarounds, I'll say no thanks.

Totally agree!
The current problem *I* have is that the OHM is a complete waste of
space since the material I have a growing amount of is the start_date
for the CURRENT objects on OSM. All that I am allowed to add is that
start and end date tag, but YES there is room to improve the model ...
but it's not just improving management of object evolution, it's adding
EXISTING fine detail to current objects.

 To me OHM's value is not so much in its data as in being a sandbox to
 experiment with tooling to map the past, which can eventually be
 merged back into OSM. I suppose the OSM data model itself has to be
 modified to support a nonlinear history, but this is tricky.

There is no point my even looking at OHM at the present. Unless I can
import all of the existing data from OSM since that is what I want to
work on. Along with managing the evolution of the road system in the UK,
where very few roads get 'abandoned', while the railway system has not
survived quite as well. Just up the road from here one of the military
depots is now a new housing development. We have the existing railway
structure and can track it's destruction as the new development
progresses, and the historic view is already well mapped so there is no
work needed to record that ... ONLY tag it's end_date as sections get
removed, leaving the elements that are to be retained since restoration
of the line down to Broadway is still a potential target. The Broadway
bypass was built with a railway bridge 'capable of handling
electrification' despite the fact that there is no track bed currently.
The route still forms part of the 'protected' network which may be
required in the future.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-20 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 19/08/2015, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:
 98% of the history that we are looking to manage properly is currently
 existing in OSM. All that is needed is to add start dates to the bulk of
 the existing data.

What do you do when a road gets upgraded, widened, straightened,
renamed, or some combination thereof at various points in time ?
start/end_date tags are way too crude, they can't capture any
evolution (as opposed to construction/demolition) of the real world,
making their use very limited.

 The SMALL amount of material that
 is a result of new development work invariably maps into currently
 existing objects.

That's just not true, by definition new developments are new objects
(and often a lot of old objects relegated to the past). And the amount
of evolution in the real world is by no mean small.

 Insisting that this data is only available for
 rendering purposes in a second database is just wrong, and even worse,
 the 98% of the supporting data exists in OSM so why maintain a second
 copy of it.

I would actually love to be able to map the past in OSM. But if all
you have to offer me is start/end tags and some renderer/editor
workarounds, I'll say no thanks.

To me OHM's value is not so much in its data as in being a sandbox to
experiment with tooling to map the past, which can eventually be
merged back into OSM. I suppose the OSM data model itself has to be
modified to support a nonlinear history, but this is tricky.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-20 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 20/08/2015, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
 moltonel writes:
 When they show up, we can have a discussion. In the meantime, I'm
 here, and many other mappers map abandoned and dismantled railways,
 and we would like to NOT HAVE YOU FRICK WITH OUR STUFF.

Please don't shout and curse, it just kills the debate. Your defense
of railway=* mapped thru buildings of a housing estate is something
that I (and AFAICT most of the community) cannot agree with, so that
topic has reached a dead-end and I'll stop discussing it.

Hopefully someday we'll get a proper way to map in the 4th dimention
in OSM (hint: OHM is not good enough yet). In the meantime, if I
happen to be mapping somewhere and see an abandoned/dismantled railway
going thru houses like in your perfect example of how a railway
should be mapped, I'll delete it.



Regards.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-20 Thread Richard
On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 02:59:34PM +0200, Pieren wrote:

 I got some examples from the net:
 
 [1] 
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunstable,_Dismantled_railway_and_National_Cycle_Network_Route_6_-_geograph.org.uk_-_146322.jpg
 
 where is the railway here ? were are the rails ? why should we keep
 any mention about rails when it's a cycleway now ? map what we see,
 the path or track and the cuttings/embankments.

don't care where the rails are but knowing that it used to be
a railway perfectly explains the the characteristic cutting.
Mapping the cutting itself is not quite as good.

Richard

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-19 Thread Glenn Powers
On 08/16/2015 03:11 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:

 Also I have the impression that, contrary to what you're saying, at
 least some proponents of abandoned railway mapping find it totally ok to
 map an abandoned railway that leads through a modern day housing
 development.

For the record, I deleted an abandoned railway that leads through a new
housing development, because it didn't make any sense to leave it there.

Satellite images clearly show ground gradings indicating an abandoned
railway. IIRC, it was also featured in century-old county atlases.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=13/42.4165/-88.5338

In a related note, Zink Road USED to continue east over camp creek,
there's even an iron bridge to prove it, but there's no road there now.
So, why should it be on the map? (It's not.)

http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/42.2278/-90.1019

I'd love to see a site dedicated to historical mapping, but that's not
the point of OSM. Although, OSM software could be used to implement it.

cheers,
glenn


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-19 Thread Russ Nelson
Frederik Ramm writes:
  Also I have the impression that, contrary to what you're saying, at
  least some proponents of abandoned railway mapping find it totally ok to
  map an abandoned railway that leads through a modern day housing
  development.

Abandoned? No. Dismantled? Yes. Now, I must admit that I have added
a lot of abandoned railways that really ought to be dismantled in
places. At the time, it wasn't an issue. Definitely I can clean up my
data, and I'm willing to do that. The trouble is that I'm being
threatened with having my contributions deleted!

DELETED!

Why incentive do I have to correctly tag, when people are saying Go
ahead, I'm just going to delete it anyway and I'm going to encourage
other people to do the same thing. And indeed, rather than doing
that, I've been adding lakes and ponds and rivers and streams in
NY. These have been multi-year projects for me. If, IF, I can get
agreement from people that they won't delete dismantled railways, I
will go through each and every railway=abandoned in NY and re-tag them
as dismantled as needed. It will be a multi-year project, but I'm good
for it.

Here's a perfect example of how a railway should be mapped: 
https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=14/42.92237423246795/-75.8534094581493

You've got a railway going through a modern day housing
development. The railway is a foot/bike path on the north side of the
development, visible in the back yards going through the development,
and on the south side of the development. It's been bulldozed,
dismantled, razed where houses were built.

Some people think the railway should be deleted. That makes a hash, a
mishmash, a farrago, of the relation which is the railway. Rather than
having a nice neat set of connected ways, you have a way here and a
way there, everywhere a way, way. It's simply true, and makes OSM
better, to say that the railway has, for those stretches, one 130
meters and another 300 meters, been dismantled.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-19 Thread Russ Nelson
moltonel writes:
  The existence of ohm is a strong aknowlegement that osm is only for
  the present. Russ, you're an expert in old railroads, but think of
  all the other old things you could be an expert of. If all the
  niche experts

When they show up, we can have a discussion. In the meantime, I'm
here, and many other mappers map abandoned and dismantled railways,
and we would like to NOT HAVE YOU FRICK WITH OUR STUFF.

  In the meantime, please only map the present in osm.

A dismantled railway has been dismantled in the present. You can go
and look at it and verify that yes, indeed, it has been dismantled.
And then you can go down the block and see where it hasn't been
dismantled. It's simply ridiculous to expect OSM clients to have to go
from one database to another and back within the course of a few
hundred meters.

Maybe, as you suggest, some day it won't be ridiculous.

-- 
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Crynwr supports open source software
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Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-19 Thread Lester Caine
On 19/08/15 01:36, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
 Be carefull not to mix up database history and real-world history.
 Database history keeps track of the mapping process, as geometry gets
 refined, details get added, and blunders get reverted. World history
 tracks what the world was like at a specific point in time. OHM has to
 keep track of both, but OSM is (at least for now) only concerned about
 db history.

98% of the history that we are looking to manage properly is currently
existing in OSM. All that is needed is to add start dates to the bulk of
the existing data. Personally I have no intention of managing THAT
separately to the main OSM database. The SMALL amount of material that
is a result of new development work invariably maps into currently
existing objects. Insisting that this data is only available for
rendering purposes in a second database is just wrong, and even worse,
the 98% of the supporting data exists in OSM so why maintain a second
copy of it. ALTHOUGH transferring material that for one user is a
'deletion' TO a backup copy on a second database is the alternative here
but that is far more complex than simply tidying up object history IN
OSM itself.

YES development history of the data is different to the evolution of the
objects on the ground, and in the FIRST instance it is those objects
which are being mapped in OSM. And new material should have it's
start_date and that is independent of when it was added to the map. THAT
is why the history contained in the change log is different to the
history of the evolution of an object on the ground!

Overlaying the physical model of the world is additional material which
like much of the secondary data is much better provided as overlays, and
I count things like shop names, contact details and the movement of some
military battle in that category so such material DOES need a clean ID
in OSM which can access the current state of the secondary data. The
history of changes to that are not a job for OSM although that may well
be contained in the change log ... but mixed up with the 'editing' history.

This part of the model does need fixing now since it IS broken and the
longer we go on adding material without also maintaining it's physical
history the more data is also being lost each day. Material such as
'abandoned railroads' is simply part of that evolution of physical data.
The volume of data involved is much less than some of the third party
data already swamping the database so what is the problem simply
properly tracking stop_date in existing rendering and leaving the
evolutionary data in tact with the current material?

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-19 Thread Russ Nelson
Glenn Powers writes:
  For the record, I deleted an abandoned railway that leads through a new
  housing development, because it didn't make any sense to leave it there.
  
  Satellite images clearly show ground gradings indicating an abandoned
  railway. IIRC, it was also featured in century-old county atlases.

I don't understand. You're saying that you could see the railroad on
satellite imagery, and you deleted it rather than marking it as
railway=dismantled??

I'm NOT in favor of incorrectly tagging railways. Not at all. If a
section of it is dismantled, then by all means mark it as
dismantled. Go ahead. Don't let me stop you from improving the map.

But deleting it? That isn't improving the map data, it's destroying it.
Why is that so hard for people to understand? You don't make the map
better by deleting true things out of it. I can see the railway at
point A, I can see it at point B, I can't see it inbetween, I'm going
to mark it as dismantled. THAT is perfectly fine. But deleting it?
Whyever in the world would you do that?

Seriously, folks, I don't understand the impulse to delete rather than
tag correctly.

-- 
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Crynwr supports open source software
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-19 Thread Russ Nelson
moltonel 3x Combo writes:
  The demolished: prefix only makes sense when there is something left
  of the former feature, typically rubble (useful for example to alert
  boattripers of the hazard). When there is nothing left in reality,
  there should be nothing left in OSM.

Question: should we tag the aqueduct underneath Sunrise Highway
between Aqueduct Raceway and Freeport, NY?

  Deleting an object is hardly different from editing it as far as
  osm history is concerned.

Except that deletion excises it from the database that you see when
make an API call. In the case of dismantled railways, that is not
accurate. There *is* a dismantled railway there, and you can tell
because the railway was at point A and at point B, and you can still
see it there, and so you should expect to see it in-between.

Is that a difficult concept to understand? I can point to various
unfinished railroads in NY where part was built (and is in OSM,
because you can see it), and part was never built (which isn't in OSM,
because it was never created). Contrast that with a dismantled
railway, which *is* in OSM, marking the location where it was
dismantled.

I understand that most people don't give a crap about map feature X,
Y, and Z. I get it, really I do. I look at things in OSM myself and
wonder why the hell did you map that?? Who cares?? And when it comes
to railways, there's a lot of people who don't give a crap. Fine. Go
ahead. Don't care. But I do. So don't delete the things that I (and
other railfans) have added.

Is that *really* too much to ask? Really??

From whence comes this impulse to destroy other people's work? Cuz it
seems pretty anti-community, anti-mapper, and anti-OSM.

-- 
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Crynwr supports open source software
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-19 Thread Russ Nelson
moltonel 3x Combo writes:
  I do empathise with Russ being angered at his work being deleted
  without discussion.

Not any happier if it gets deleted after discussion either. I brought
my data (I started mapping railways in 2004) to OSM because I thought
that the community was friendly to abandoned railways. Really,
decidedly unhappy if people are deleting data older than OSM.

  But it's equally annoying and tiring to repeatedly encounter the
  ludicrous kind of railway=abandoned,

Then tag it as railway=dismantled. You won't find me defending
incorrect tagging of anything.

But you don't hear me being annoyed or tired by finding data that I
dislike, do you? Perhaps we could all be less annoyed and tired by
what other people map?

-- 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-19 Thread Russ Nelson
moltonel 3x Combo writes:
  To me the distinguishing criteria between disused and abandoned is
  wether the rails are still present or not.

Indeed. disused means the rails are still there. Abandoned means that
the rails are gone. Dismantled (or some people use razed) is when a
section of the railbad cannot be seen. Railways that were never there,
placed by mistake, should be deleted.

-- 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-18 Thread Mateusz Konieczny
2015-08-18 2:30 GMT+02:00 Warin 61sundow...@gmail.com:

 Retag the middle bit demolished:bridge=yes would be a better solution?
 Retains all the data. If the bridge were rebuilt then it could simply be
 retagged back.


Features that are gone from world should be also removed from OSM. There
are places that had
several destroyed structures - marking all is not a better solution.

And it is unlikely that a new bridge would be in exactly the same position.
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-18 Thread Colin Smale
 

Absolutely agreed. I am trying to ignite a constructive debate here, not
to get a specific answer to a rhetorical question. I have been around
OSM long enough to know how it works. 

On 2015-08-18 01:49, Warin wrote: 

 On 17/08/2015 11:54 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote: Hi,
 
 On 08/17/2015 03:13 PM, Colin Smale wrote: So if I think something is useful 
 to me, and I am prepared to maintain
 it to my own satisfaction, I can feel free add it

I'd think it should be documented in the wiki .. so others can 'see'
what it is and use it if they like.

And the source tag should be used.
Do remember you won't be around forever, so there must be some thought
for the future.
And give some thought to creating tags that are able to be applied world
wide, or if not world wide at least to a fair number of features.

 ... to a file on your local computer where it will continue to please
 you for years to come ;)

With that attitude there would be very little in OSM.

I add stuff that interests me, stuff that others may find usefull and
occasional stuff that simply improves the look of the map (and may give
some help to people not familiar with the area).

Adding new tags .. things that would be usefull to others is my goal
here.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-18 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 18.08.2015 um 04:46 schrieb Nicolás Alvarez nicolas.alva...@gmail.com:
 
 They are easy to survey and verify: shops either have them in a sign visible 
 from outside, or in a sign inside near the point of sale


around here they don't have these signs but they have to be on the receipt and 
you can often find them on their website 


cheers 
Martin 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-18 Thread Colin Smale
 

On 2015-08-18 02:13, Warin wrote: 

 On 17/08/2015 11:13 PM, Colin Smale wrote: 
 
 ...which IMHO is part of the bigger picture of data quality. Quality is not 
 the same as perfection. It is about agreeing things, complying with what has 
 been agreed, the ability to measure the compliance objectively and feedback 
 to help improve the compliance.
 
 ISO 9000 is a standard for quality .. it means if you produce something .. 
 you will continue to produce that something consistently .. rubbish or not.

Actually it is a standard for Quality Management Systems. It does not
tell you what attributes your product should have - that's between you
and your consumer/customer. OSM doesn't really have any way of assessing
its product against desired attributes. How do you think OSM's product
should be measured for these purposes? At the moment it is very
subjective - good is anything which is not considered bad, and bad
means shouted down by a few people on a mailing list and/or vetoed by
the DWG in a sort of Star Chamber process. 

 'Agreed'? Buy whom? OSM can have new tags introduced by anyone. The reality 
 of this is that tags that get used frequently by a number of mappers get 
 'recognised'.

Agreed between producer and consumer. Our definition of quality will not
include a limitation to ONLY use certain tags, implying that it is the
consumer's responsibility to ignore arbitrary tags. What are our
consumer's expectations? What (apart from product price) will drive
their decision to use OSM instead of other sources? 

 Tags that get 'approved' by the tagging group get the status=approved thing, 
 those rejected get the status=rejected .. but even the rejected tags get 
 used, some even advocate their use. 
 One can take the attitude that at least these tags have been review by some, 
 compared to tags that are simply added by one person without review. 
 
 Compliance .. with what? The wiki documented tags? Those can be added by 
 anyone. As there is no scheme/philosophy for OSM .. then you have nothing to 
 comply to that cannot be changed so easily that it is not worth the effort.

Compliance with the agreed specifications. Once again, we don't have a
good definition of quality for OSM data, so we cannot use that to
judge whether data is good or bad, or, put another way, compliant
or non-compliant. 

So what dimensions could we apply to OSM data to assess its quality? I
am just throwing some ideas in the mix here, this is not my answer. In
all cases please imagine the words to what extent at the start of the
sentence. 

Completeness 

* Is the data complete, given its intended scope? For example, do we
have ALL the train stations in the UK? 

* Correctness 

Are there any typos in the tagging? Is a train station not tagged as a
tram stop? 

Is the use of those tags which are documented, in line with the
documentation? 

* Consistency 

Is the tagging consistent, across its intended applicable domain? (I
intend to suggest that it is probably impossible to get tagging
consistent across the whole world, but within a country for example it
should most definitely be achievable) 

* Timeliness 

Is the data still valid today? Or to make it SMART, how long ago was
the data reviewed? Different things will need different standards here -
some things are obviously more volatile than others. 

* Verifiability 

Did the date come from a suitably licenced source? 

Is the data verifiable by an independent member of the public without
any legal privilege? 

* Consumability 

Is the data represented and made available in a way which facilitates
its use? For example, dates in arbitrary local formats would not be
compliant here. We might not be too happy with tags using non-Latin
characters. The use of XML is good, but it's a shame we don't have even
a basic XSD yet (I am working on this though) 

All this might tell us how the data scores, but it doesn't tell us what
we should consider good enough. In some cases we can expect to get
close to 100% (e.g. train stations in the UK), but all sorts of factors
will keep the score below 100% in practice (like when a new station
opens, it MAY take a long time to find its way into OSM. In the mean
time we are down to 99.9%). In other cases, we might be ecstatic if 15%
of the data was entered/reviewed in the last 5 years. 

--colin 

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-18 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 18/08/2015, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
 Serge Wroclawski writes:
   TIGER wasn't what I was referring to.
  
   Please don't speak on my behalf.

 Very well. Feel free to point to anything anywhere that people are
 afraid to delete. I want to see 1) something that obviously doesn't
 belong there, 2) which isn't TIGER and 3) evidence that someone
 expressed a reluctance to delete it.

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2015-August/073819.html

Didn't have to look far. But really this is a commonplace occurence.
Most of the OSM world isn't TIGER, and doubting one's edits (including
but not limited to deletions) is a healthy quality-assurance reflex.


 Is it unreasonable of me to ask for evidence of a claim that you have
 made? I mean, besides TIGER, which is a perfectly reasonable
 assumption for an ambiguous claim.

If I'm following things right, the claim was :

 in other parts, we have an abundance of bad imports, and a general
 timidness around the removal of data that we can't find the owner of, which
 leaves us with data that *we know is bad*, but where the individual mappers
 do not feel empowered to act on because of this exact attitude of needing
 to contact and work with the importer.

 This leaves our project with a problem of lots of data and no one feeling
 empowered to remove it.

I'm sure nobody will disagree that we have a lot of bad data (in
absolute numbers, not in percentage :p), and it's silly to think that
TIGER is the only source of it, or even that all TIGER data is bad.

In that context, arguing that deletions are intrinsincly a bad thing
does harm OSM's QA process. Clearly we should think twice before
deleting something and don't want to reach an extreme of if in doubt,
delete, but what you've proposed is the opposite extreme and is just
as unhealthy.

For what it's worth, the only place I've felt disempowered in OSM
(appart from the lack of free time) is the very high bar set for
automated edits. Wether that disempowerment has resulted in a net
positive or negative for OSM is left as an exercise to the reader.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-18 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 18/08/2015, Warin 61sundow...@gmail.com wrote:
 On 17/08/2015 10:48 PM, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
 On 17/08/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote:
 Am 17.08.2015 um 02:39 schrieb moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com:

 * A broken bridge with just a few meters left on both riverbanks
 I surely wouldn't have removed this one. Isn't this a significant feature
 to
 many people?
 In only deleted the middle bit, not the bridge=yes stumps. At least
 that's what I remember; I couldn't find it again in
 https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/16286467. Maybe it was a
 different railway line.

 Retag the middle bit demolished:bridge=yes would be a better solution?
 Retains all the data. If the bridge were rebuilt then it could simply be
 retagged back.


 On the other hand, there's an instance of a bridge that is the only
 thing left standing (green undisturbed meadows on both sides), and
 that bridge is kept in OSM (while the sections in the meadow were
 not).

 Then retag the ways leading to the bridge using the prefix demolished:

The demolished: prefix only makes sense when there is something left
of the former feature, typically rubble (useful for example to alert
boattripers of the hazard). When there is nothing left in reality,
there should be nothing left in OSM.

Even when we expect the feature to be rebuilt someday (not the case
for this bridge), there's no advantage in keeping the OSM object
around just to simplify restoring it: creating a new osm way is just
as easy as retagging an old one.

Saying that we should retag no-longer-existing objects rather than
deleting them is like saying that we should always use strike-through
in a text document rather than using document history, or that we
should always comment lines in a program rather than using source code
management like git.

Remember that deleted osm objects *are* kept in the osm history and
can even be undeleted (finding the old object id is currently a pain,
but I certainly hope that this'll become easyer someday). Deleting an
object is hardly different from editing it as far as osm history is
concerned. Russ singled out actual deletion as something specific, but
disagreement on if/how to map something happen all the time in OSM
(thankfully rarely with that level of drama), not just when deletion
is involved.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-18 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 18/08/2015, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:
 On 18/08/15 13:04, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
 Remember that deleted osm objects *are* kept in the osm history and
 can even be undeleted (finding the old object id is currently a pain,
 but I certainly hope that this'll become easyer someday). Deleting an
 object is hardly different from editing it as far as osm history is
 concerned. Russ singled out actual deletion as something specific, but
 disagreement on if/how to map something happen all the time in OSM
 (thankfully rarely with that level of drama), not just when deletion
 is involved.

 On OHM these objects need to co-exist ... if OSM is going to create yet
 another version of the historic object if recovering from the change log
 we are going to get into even more of a mess. This is why 'delete' *IS*
 the wrong concept for objects that CAN be authenticated historically.
 The whole problem here is that objects like railways are going to evolve
 over time, and while some elements may no longer be visible, maintaining
 the sequence IS important even if some people think that there is no
 place for that information is OSM.

Are you implying that OSM should do what it can to be easily merged in
OHM ? Currently OHM is a completely different db, with its own object
ids. There's no link between OSM ids and OHM ids to keep track of. The
OSM data model would make that tracking very difficult (way
splits/joins, etc) but maybe it could work. More pragmatically, OHM
could have OSM data as an ever-evolving present day data layer, with
its own ids.

Or are you saying that OSM should take on OHM techniques (and thereby
become OHM) ? With OSM's data model, if you want to keep track of both
today's world and yesterday's, you're going to need to track two sets
of objects, not just two versions of the same object (because of
splits and such). Tracking this using tags is horribly messy at scale.
A better solution would require some data model changes and editor
support, but OHM currently has neither. So we currently say no
thanks to historical data in OSM.

In OSM's data model, deletion is not different from modification. If
your historical project can't deal with that, you need to get back to
the drawing board.


 I repeat what I have said many times before ... we are documenting that
 very history today, ad while the information is available from the
 change log, it ALSO needs to be directly accessible from the OHM view so
 why not simply maintain that information in a format that the CURRENT
 rendering tools can show and the current editing tolls can improve on.
 The change log is simply the wrong place for this data to exist in ...

Be carefull not to mix up database history and real-world history.
Database history keeps track of the mapping process, as geometry gets
refined, details get added, and blunders get reverted. World history
tracks what the world was like at a specific point in time. OHM has to
keep track of both, but OSM is (at least for now) only concerned about
db history.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-18 Thread Frederik Ramm
Hi,

On 08/18/2015 03:21 PM, Richard wrote:
 Especially as many railways come with more or less dense key:ele tagging 
 they are much more reliable to derive height profile information than any 
 other data we have.

Do I understand you correctly: We should map abandoned railways because
we lack a good source of elevation data?

That sounds like a very strange proposal to me. Perhaps the wiki
documenting the abandoned value should be amended by not to be used
for abandoned mountain railways, because cycle routers will prefer
routing along abandoned railway lines under the assumption that they
must be flat?

Bye
Frederik

-- 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-18 Thread Richard
On Tue, Aug 18, 2015 at 03:27:14PM +0200, Frederik Ramm wrote:
 Hi,
 
 On 08/18/2015 03:21 PM, Richard wrote:
  Especially as many railways come with more or less dense key:ele tagging 
  they are much more reliable to derive height profile information than any 
  other data we have.
 
 Do I understand you correctly: We should map abandoned railways because
 we lack a good source of elevation data?

no, we should map them for the same reason that we map natural=ridge or
embankment=yes. It provides additional information.
 
 That sounds like a very strange proposal to me. Perhaps the wiki
 documenting the abandoned value should be amended by not to be used
 for abandoned mountain railways, because cycle routers will prefer
 routing along abandoned railway lines under the assumption that they
 must be flat?

the information whether it was a rack railway should be probably preserved
as well. It adds other interesting information, not only for cycle routers.

Richard

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-18 Thread Lester Caine
On 18/08/15 13:04, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:
 Remember that deleted osm objects *are* kept in the osm history and
 can even be undeleted (finding the old object id is currently a pain,
 but I certainly hope that this'll become easyer someday). Deleting an
 object is hardly different from editing it as far as osm history is
 concerned. Russ singled out actual deletion as something specific, but
 disagreement on if/how to map something happen all the time in OSM
 (thankfully rarely with that level of drama), not just when deletion
 is involved.

On OHM these objects need to co-exist ... if OSM is going to create yet
another version of the historic object if recovering from the change log
we are going to get into even more of a mess. This is why 'delete' *IS*
the wrong concept for objects that CAN be authenticated historically.
The whole problem here is that objects like railways are going to evolve
over time, and while some elements may no longer be visible, maintaining
the sequence IS important even if some people think that there is no
place for that information is OSM.

I repeat what I have said many times before ... we are documenting that
very history today, ad while the information is available from the
change log, it ALSO needs to be directly accessible from the OHM view so
why not simply maintain that information in a format that the CURRENT
rendering tools can show and the current editing tolls can improve on.
The change log is simply the wrong place for this data to exist in ...

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-18 Thread Richard
On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 12:07:05PM +0200, Frederik Ramm wrote:
 Hi,
 
 On 08/11/2015 07:09 AM, Russ Nelson wrote:
  Now, you might think Goddamnit, does Russell have to start again?
  Yes, I have to start again. I was in north-western Pennsylvania last
  weekend looking for the Corry Junction Rail Trail. Problem: it hasn't
  been entered into OSM yet. But that's not a problem, right? Because OF
  COURSE the railway is there, marked as abandoned, right? 
 
 Errr... you are looking for a trail that follows an abandoned railway
 line, and you complain that the abandoned railway line is missing from OSM?
 
 If you were complaining that the trail isn't there then I'd understand,
 and you'd have my full support for adding it. But complaining instead
 that the abandoned railway isn't there...?

the fact there is an abandoned railway and not only a now-trail is important 
information. These can be used almost as elevation lines and if there is now 
a trail/track/path in place of the railway me and all bicycle routing software 
should certainly be very interested to know  it is a former railway. 
Especially as many railways come with more or less dense key:ele tagging 
they are much more reliable to derive height profile information than any 
other data we have.

Richard



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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 17.08.2015 um 02:39 schrieb moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com:
 
 * A broken bridge with just a few meters left on both riverbanks


I surely wouldn't have removed this one. Isn't this a significant feature to 
many people?

cheers
Martin 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

Am 17.08.2015 um 02:53 schrieb moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com:

 http://www.dieter-kloessing.de/Berlin/Berlin-Zehlendorf3.html#Anchor-Stammbahn-47857
 
 That actually looks like disused rather than abandoned to me.


these are clearly abandoned, have been there (although the linked page is not 
mine nor of someone I know). No train there for 35 years, trees growing on the 
tracks and partly tracks removed. Disused are railways where a train could run, 
but doesn't (or could with few maintenance).

cheers 
Martin 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 17.08.2015 um 08:28 schrieb Colin Smale colin.sm...@xs4all.nl:
 
 OSM IDs are too volatile, and IIRC there were objections to putting foreign 
 keys (like shop branch numbers) into OSM on the grounds that someone would 
 need to maintain that link.


Some people are adding tax identification numbers for businesses, the tag is 
ref:vatin
but the number is typically referring to an operator. Of course this has to be 
maintained as well.

cheers 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Warin

On 17/08/2015 4:28 PM, Colin Smale wrote:


If only all this energy were directed at helping OSM forwards. We 
haven't had a lot of progress in the last few years (I am not talking 
about mapping as such, but about the OSM framework itself).


There are still periodical discussions about how to link OSM with 
other data sources - OSM IDs are too volatile, and IIRC there were 
objections to putting foreign keys (like shop branch numbers) into 
OSM on the grounds that someone would need to maintain that link. So 
how ARE we going to do it then?



Maintenance/verification takes place by those concerned.
If a branch shop number is of concern to you .. then you check it.
The idea that everyone must be able to check everything is ridiculous.

Or are we insisting on building what we in the trade call a data 
island? Let's build some technical bridges, so it becomes a real 
alternative to maintain a parallel data set.


And then of course there are support for 3d mapping and the area data 
type which have been under discussion for years.



You forgot 'indoor mapping'... :-)


How will we square the circle with regards to data quality?

I've had students trying to square circles  having shown them how to 
square rectangles/squares/triangles on the same machine.


Will the free-tagging laissez-faire camp win, or will the 
curated/managed tagging camp win?


I'm in the 'systematised free tagging' camp .. I want a structure that 
has a simple good logical basis for the tags. But allows added tags .. 
hopefully following the structure present.

At present there is no structure/philosophy that can be followed.


How will this tug-of-war be organised? Will the forces at work cause 
OSM to tend to converge towards quality or self-destruction? After 
all, OSM says its product is the data, not a mapnik representation. 
The raster tiles may look OK, but the underlying data may tell a story 
of mapnik and OSS-carto having to work very hard to mask bad data quality.




The quality of the data is not your/my issue .. it is the structure of 
the tags.


Where is this all going to end?

Aren't there more important things to worry about than whether or not 
a couple of hundred ways deserve a place in OSM?


--colin


Those who are worried about it .. do it .. and try to fix these issues. 
Big issues or small issues ... depends on your view point.


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Warin

On 17/08/2015 10:48 PM, moltonel 3x Combo wrote:

On 17/08/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote:

Am 17.08.2015 um 02:39 schrieb moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com:

* A broken bridge with just a few meters left on both riverbanks

I surely wouldn't have removed this one. Isn't this a significant feature to
many people?

In only deleted the middle bit, not the bridge=yes stumps. At least
that's what I remember; I couldn't find it again in
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/16286467. Maybe it was a
different railway line.


Retag the middle bit demolished:bridge=yes would be a better solution?
Retains all the data. If the bridge were rebuilt then it could simply be 
retagged back.



On the other hand, there's an instance of a bridge that is the only
thing left standing (green undisturbed meadows on both sides), and
that bridge is kept in OSM (while the sections in the meadow were
not).


Then retag the ways leading to the bridge using the prefix demolished:


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Warin

On 17/08/2015 11:13 PM, Colin Smale wrote:


On 2015-08-17 13:37, Warin wrote:


On 17/08/2015 4:28 PM, Colin Smale wrote:


 Will the free-tagging laissez-faire camp win, or will the 
curated/managed tagging camp win?


I'm in the 'systematised free tagging' camp .. I want a structure 
that has a simple good logical basis for the tags. But allows added 
tags .. hopefully following the structure present.

At present there is no structure/philosophy that can be followed.

How do you see this structure/philosophy taking shape? Where will it 
come from? I don't think there is consensus that such things are 
actually worth working on.




I'll give an example of the present.

 shop=bicycle has a number of sub tags ... these are usefull ... but 
have NO application to other shop= tags!


It would be better to structure this for all shops .. and possibly other 
things too!!! This would lead to a consistent scheme that would aid 
learning and implementation ...


I have a thread on the tagging group about shop sub tags .. one 
suggestion has been to us the same sub tags as the vending machine ... so


shop=grocer

vending=bread

vending=sweats


etc... This is still very much in the discussion/thinking stage.Another 
suggestion is to use the new sub tag 'sells' ...


SO .. I hope over time OSM will recognise that an overall structure is 
of benefit to all. The structure itself ... that will take yet more time.



How will this tug-of-war be organised? Will the forces at work cause 
OSM to tend to converge towards quality or self-destruction? After 
all, OSM says its product is the data, not a mapnik representation. 
The raster tiles may look OK, but the underlying data may tell a 
story of mapnik and OSS-carto having to work very hard to mask bad 
data quality.
The quality of the data is not your/my issue .. it is the structure 
of the tags.


...which IMHO is part of the bigger picture of data quality. Quality 
is not the same as perfection. It is about agreeing things, complying 
with what has been agreed, the ability to measure the compliance 
objectively and feedback to help improve the compliance.




ISO 9000 is a standard for quality .. it means if you produce something 
.. you will continue to produce that something consistently .. rubbish 
or not.


'Agreed'? Buy whom? OSM can have new tags introduced by anyone. The 
reality of this is that tags that get used frequently by a number of 
mappers get 'recognised'.


Tags that get 'approved' by the tagging group get the status=approved 
thing, those rejected get the status=rejected .. but even the rejected 
tags get used, some even advocate their use.
One can take the attitude that at least these tags have been review by 
some, compared to tags that are simply added by one person without review.



Compliance .. with what? The wiki documented tags? Those can be added by 
anyone. As there is no scheme/philosophy for OSM .. then you have 
nothing to comply to that cannot be changed so easily that it is not 
worth the effort.


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Russ Nelson
Serge Wroclawski writes:
  TIGER wasn't what I was referring to.
  
  Please don't speak on my behalf.

Very well. Feel free to point to anything anywhere that people are
afraid to delete. I want to see 1) something that obviously doesn't
belong there, 2) which isn't TIGER and 3) evidence that someone
expressed a reluctance to delete it.

Is it unreasonable of me to ask for evidence of a claim that you have
made? I mean, besides TIGER, which is a perfectly reasonable
assumption for an ambiguous claim.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Warin

On 17/08/2015 11:54 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:

Hi,

On 08/17/2015 03:13 PM, Colin Smale wrote:

So if I think something is useful to me, and I am prepared to maintain
it to my own satisfaction, I can feel free add it


I'd think it should be documented in the wiki .. so others can 'see' what it is 
and use it if they like.

And the source tag should be used.
Do remember you won't be around forever, so there must be some thought for the 
future.
And give some thought to creating tags that are able to be applied world wide, 
or if not world wide at least to a fair number of features.


... to a file on your local computer where it will continue to please
you for years to come ;)


With that attitude there would be very little in OSM.

I add stuff that interests me, stuff that others may find usefull and 
occasional stuff that simply improves the look of the map (and may give some 
help to people not familiar with the area).

Adding new tags .. things that would be usefull to others is my goal here.


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Nicolás Alvarez
2015-08-17 6:04 GMT-03:00 Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com:



 sent from a phone

  Am 17.08.2015 um 08:28 schrieb Colin Smale colin.sm...@xs4all.nl:
 
  OSM IDs are too volatile, and IIRC there were objections to putting
 foreign keys (like shop branch numbers) into OSM on the grounds that
 someone would need to maintain that link.


 Some people are adding tax identification numbers for businesses, the tag
 is ref:vatin
 but the number is typically referring to an operator. Of course this has
 to be maintained as well.


I have added many ref:vatin tags in my area. They are easy to survey and
verify: shops either have them in a sign visible from outside, or in a sign
inside near the point of sale, or they are about to get into trouble with
the tax office. They can perhaps serve as foreign keys.

-- 
Nicolás
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 17/08/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote:
 Am 17.08.2015 um 02:39 schrieb moltonel 3x Combo molto...@gmail.com:

 * A broken bridge with just a few meters left on both riverbanks

 I surely wouldn't have removed this one. Isn't this a significant feature to
 many people?

In only deleted the middle bit, not the bridge=yes stumps. At least
that's what I remember; I couldn't find it again in
https://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/16286467. Maybe it was a
different railway line.

On the other hand, there's an instance of a bridge that is the only
thing left standing (green undisturbed meadows on both sides), and
that bridge is kept in OSM (while the sections in the meadow were
not).

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Colin Smale
 

On 2015-08-17 13:37, Warin wrote: 

 On 17/08/2015 4:28 PM, Colin Smale wrote: 
 
 If only all this energy were directed at helping OSM forwards. We haven't 
 had a lot of progress in the last few years (I am not talking about mapping 
 as such, but about the OSM framework itself). 
 
 There are still periodical discussions about how to link OSM with other data 
 sources - OSM IDs are too volatile, and IIRC there were objections to 
 putting foreign keys (like shop branch numbers) into OSM on the grounds 
 that someone would need to maintain that link. So how ARE we going to do it 
 then?
 Maintenance/verification takes place by those concerned. 
 If a branch shop number is of concern to you .. then you check it.  
 The idea that everyone must be able to check everything is ridiculous.

So if I think something is useful to me, and I am prepared to maintain
it to my own satisfaction, I can feel free add it and it will not be
deleted by someone else who doesn't see the point or who has different
priorities?

 Or are we insisting on building what we in the trade call a data island? 
 Let's build some technical bridges, so it becomes a real alternative to 
 maintain a parallel data set. 
 
 And then of course there are support for 3d mapping and the area data type 
 which have been under discussion for years. 
 
 You forgot 'indoor mapping'... :-)

Indeed, another good example 

 How will we square the circle with regards to data quality? 
 
 I've had students trying to square circles  having shown them how to 
 square rectangles/squares/triangles on the same machine. 
 
 Will the free-tagging laissez-faire camp win, or will the curated/managed 
 tagging camp win? 
 
 I'm in the 'systematised free tagging' camp .. I want a structure that has a 
 simple good logical basis for the tags. But allows added tags .. hopefully 
 following the structure present.
 At present there is no structure/philosophy that can be followed.

How do you see this structure/philosophy taking shape? Where will it
come from? I don't think there is consensus that such things are
actually worth working on. 

 How will this tug-of-war be organised? Will the forces at work cause OSM to 
 tend to converge towards quality or self-destruction? After all, OSM says 
 its product is the data, not a mapnik representation. The raster tiles may 
 look OK, but the underlying data may tell a story of mapnik and OSS-carto 
 having to work very hard to mask bad data quality.
 The quality of the data is not your/my issue .. it is the structure of the 
 tags.

...which IMHO is part of the bigger picture of data quality. Quality is
not the same as perfection. It is about agreeing things, complying with
what has been agreed, the ability to measure the compliance objectively
and feedback to help improve the compliance. 

 Where is this all going to end? 
 
 Aren't there more important things to worry about than whether or not a 
 couple of hundred ways deserve a place in OSM? 
 
 --colin 
 
 Those who are worried about it .. do it .. and try to fix these issues. Big 
 issues or small issues ... depends on your view point.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Frederik Ramm
Hi,

On 08/17/2015 03:13 PM, Colin Smale wrote:
 So if I think something is useful to me, and I am prepared to maintain
 it to my own satisfaction, I can feel free add it

... to a file on your local computer where it will continue to please
you for years to come ;)

Bye
Frederik

-- 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-17 Thread Serge Wroclawski
Russ,

TIGER wasn't what I was referring to.

Please don't speak on my behalf.

- Serge
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-16 Thread Frederik Ramm
Colin,

   it is a very common fallacy in OSM to claim that out of some sense of
fairness, the fact that there is already some data in OSM that
violates some rules (e.g. boundaries being in OSM even though hardly
verifiable on the ground) is an automatic enabler of any and all other
content violating some rules.

This misconception needs to be fought whenever it is encountered.

Data that is not verifiable on the ground is the absolute *exception* in
OSM, and needs a very strong reason for being there. Administrative
boundaries are very useful not only for users, but also for mappers, and
hence allowed by common consent (and not everybody is happy with that).

I don't see nearly as strong a reason to allow the mapping of things
that were, *especially* if something else is there in their place today.

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-16 Thread Richard Fairhurst
Frederik Ramm wrote:
 What everybody can see is a clearing or change in the surface 
 of something. That's fine to map.
 
 Inferring from that that there must have been a railway there is a 
 step too far. We are mappers, not trappers.

Ok, let's try an experiment.

Go to http://cycle.travel/map/journey/15120, click the route highlight (in
purple), and click 'Find photos'.

I spot a bridge in the characteristic Victorian railway style, a viaduct,
the remains of a signal box, a large embankment of the type used to build
railways and nothing else from that period, and A SODDING RAILWAY PLATFORM
FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

Tell me again you can't infer there must have been a railway there. I dare
you. I double dare you.

cheers
Richard





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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-16 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 16.08.2015 um 22:11 schrieb Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org:
 
 What everybody can see is a clearing or change in the surface of
 something. That's fine to map.
 
 Inferring from that that there must have been a railway there is a step
 too far. We are mappers, not trappers.


it really depends, this is an example for an abandoned railway where reading 
the traces is quite easy, and which is tagged (IMHO correctly) as abandoned 
railway in osm: 
http://www.dieter-kloessing.de/Berlin/Berlin-Zehlendorf3.html#Anchor-Stammbahn-47857

http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/225549367#map=13/52.3982/13.1674

the wiki shows some interesting inconsistencies btw, it currently says disused 
are railways that could technically re-enter into service any time without much 
effort (track and infrastructure are intact), while abandoned are railways that 
railways where tracks and infrastructure are removed. This is there since 2012 
(or 2011), but doesn't make sense because it leaves out at lot of stuff which 
would then fall between disused and abandoned.
An older definition can be found here:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Railwaysoldid=712930
Abandoned - The feature has been dismantled, been reused or left to decay. 
but has itself contradictions (because dismantled is a value on its own there, 
introduced after this version: 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/w/index.php?title=Railwaysdirection=prevoldid=712925)

Cheers 
Martin


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-16 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 16/08/2015, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.net wrote:
 Frederik Ramm wrote:
 What everybody can see is a clearing or change in the surface
 of something. That's fine to map.

 Inferring from that that there must have been a railway there is a
 step too far. We are mappers, not trappers.

 Ok, let's try an experiment.

 Go to http://cycle.travel/map/journey/15120, click the route highlight (in
 purple), and click 'Find photos'.

 I spot a bridge in the characteristic Victorian railway style, a viaduct,
 the remains of a signal box, a large embankment of the type used to build
 railways and nothing else from that period, and A SODDING RAILWAY PLATFORM
 FOR CRYING OUT LOUD.

 Tell me again you can't infer there must have been a railway there. I dare
 you. I double dare you.

Sure, no need to be an expert to spot the former railway in this case.
I'm pretty sure Frederik had some less obvious examples in mind. But
that's IMHO not the point : the discussion is more about what's
mapworthy than what's inferable.

The problem with railroads is that because they are so long and
straight, it's easy to spot the missing sections wich wouldn't stand
out on their own. That's surely an important reason why we have more
arguments about dismantled railways than dismantled anything else.

IMHO being able to assert there was a FOO here does not imply that
we should map that FOO. At most, we should map the signs, such as
leftover embankments, sections of the railway that are now highway=*,
tree rows, etc. Some signs that help spot former railways but are IMHO
not reason enough to map a railway=abandoned include
differently-colored crop in a field, and neat long aligments of
various features.

Here are some railway sections that I have deleted, always aiming to
be conservative and giving a heads-up to the other mapper :
* Going through buidlings, a pond, and uneven slopes
* Running alongside (even reusing some nodes of) a perfectly modern highway=*
* Buried under the 15m high embankment of a trunk road
* A broken bridge with just a few meters left on both riverbanks
* Going across a field with just the faintest crop color difference
* Going between fields with just a 1m hedge separating them

I do empathise with Russ being angered at his work being deleted
without discussion. I'm sure most of his railway=abandoned are of the
mapworthy kind (yes, I know we don't have an objective definition for
this) and if those got deleted by an overzealous or badly-advised
contributor, it sucks.

But it's equally annoying and tiring to repeatedly encounter the
ludicrous kind of railway=abandoned, just because the mapper could
infer the location of the former railway using nearby visible sections
or old maps, or because he feels that former railways *must* be mapped
as an unbronken string of osm ways.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-16 Thread moltonel 3x Combo
On 16/08/2015, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote:
 it really depends, this is an example for an abandoned railway where reading
 the traces is quite easy, and which is tagged (IMHO correctly) as abandoned
 railway in osm:
 http://www.dieter-kloessing.de/Berlin/Berlin-Zehlendorf3.html#Anchor-Stammbahn-47857

That actually looks like disused rather than abandoned to me.

 the wiki shows some interesting inconsistencies btw, it currently says
 disused are railways that could technically re-enter into service any time
 without much effort (track and infrastructure are intact), while abandoned
 are railways that railways where tracks and infrastructure are removed. This
 is there since 2012 (or 2011), but doesn't make sense because it leaves out
 at lot of stuff which would then fall between disused and abandoned.

To me the distinguishing criteria between disused and abandoned is
wether the rails are still present or not. This sometimes leads to
strange results (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/223082804 would be
much harder to put back in service than
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/216942301 despite being disused
rather than abandoned) but it's a nicely objective criteria.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-16 Thread Russ Nelson
Warin writes:
  On 16/08/2015 1:35 AM, Russ Nelson wrote:
   Seriously? THIS is your line of reasoning? There's a simple way to
   empower them: If it's got TIGER tags and you don't see it, delete it.
  
  TIGER tags?
  
  Don't they only occur in one area of the world? Rather a small view
  of the world then.

Yes. TIGER is the only data that needs a serious amount of
deleting. That's what Serge was talking about. The rest of the
wrongly-added features that needs to be deleted is way WAY down in the
noise.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-16 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer
2015-08-16 11:03 GMT+02:00 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org:

 Data that is not verifiable on the ground is the absolute *exception* in
 OSM, and needs a very strong reason for being there.



this thread as far as I have understood is not about things that have
disappeared without any traces but it is about things that might not be
recognized by everybody but are there, on the ground

cheers,
Martin
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-16 Thread Russ Nelson
Richard Fairhurst writes:
  Frederik Ramm wrote:
   Inferring from that that there must have been a railway there is a 
   step too far. We are mappers, not trappers.
  
  Tell me again you can't infer there must have been a railway there. I dare
  you. I double dare you.

Nobody is asking Frederik to infer anything.

We're asking him to stop interfering with our inferring things -- an
action he has said he will not stop doing. This is a problem.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Warin

On 15/08/2015 10:08 PM, Lester Caine wrote:

On 15/08/15 12:55, Colin Smale wrote:

Good question. We assume they were not entered from sources without a
suitable licence. Should we delete them? I certainly don't need to know
where the gas pipelines are.

But someone buying a house close by may be interested? A number of
pipelines have been laid around here and we could have plotted their
routes as the various roads were dug up and trenches cut ...



Someone digging a hole (for a planting tree as an example) may be very 
interested in where things are underground.


There are also roads and train lines that are underground.
Those are mapped in OSM .. and they are not 'on the ground' nor could I 
verify them - the GPS stops working inside the tunnels.

Yet I would not suggest they be removed! I know they are there ..
and the position is approximately correct as far as I can determine
(entry points are good, direction of travel is good and the shape 
complies with my impression of it).


So ..
Deletion .. for me ... only where
the feature is entirely removed and replaced with another feature.

If a feature is abandoned, raised etc, leave the nodes/way there and 
change the tag... add the prefix demolished:


Where there is doubt, do nothing! Doubt should be removed before acting, asking 
the originator may remove doubt.


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread moltonel


On 15 August 2015 16:29:56 GMT+01:00, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
Are we even talking about the same thing? Let's assume that you made a
s mple t po.

Don't those last two words look a little weird with missing bits?
Shouldn't those letters be there? Shouldn't the dismantled bits of a
railroad be in OSM as dismantled bits?

That metaphor is a bit of a strech. Let's bring it closer to reality with 
http://osm.org/go/esT4qhWnF these WWII signs which are technically just stones 
in a field. What if some real-life vandal removed the stones of one letter and 
nobody repaired the damage long enough that all signs of the former letter are 
gone ? You're arguing for some kind of *=razed tag, while I (and probably most 
other osm contributors, who arent wwii-stone-markings enthusiasts experts in 
deducing a former sign from peripheral hints) would argue for deleting the 
non-existing letter from osm.

 even if it's only because you can look left
and see evidence of the railroad, and you can look right and see
evidence of the railroad. Should they NOT be mapped through the
farmer's field where they have been plowed into dismantlement?

It's a circular argument at this stage, but yes if the ground there has been 
flattened and ploughed, osm should IMHO not map anything else than the field. 
I'd support deletion of that railway section in such a case, but of course it 
should be discussed with the other contributors. As a last resort, the DWG can 
arbitrate between two parties.

Now, I'm sure somebody will, at some point say, Russell, just go off
to OpenHistoricalMap and put your data there. That's fine, except for
those pesky implementation details where THEY ARE IN TWO DISPARATE
DATABASES, UNCONNECTED. How, exactly, do you make a relation that
shows the entire route of a railroad when half of it is off in a
different corner?

That's clearly a big pain point of ohm. But it isn't an insurmountable one, 
hopefully ohm will eventually manage a continous merge of osm data as a 
'present day layer'.


I don't understand why we're having this argument. We map tons of
things that you can't see. Why not map as dismantled railroads that
have been dismantled? Why not make an exception to the Delete it if
you don't see it guideline?

The existence of ohm is a strong aknowlegement that osm is only for the 
present. Russ, you're an expert in old railroads, but think of all the other 
old things you could be an expert of. If all the niche experts got their 
exception, the osm tools, cpnsumers, and contributors would suffer heavily from 
all the historical data. In its curent state, osm isn't fit for historical data 
(end_date and other lifecycle tags are only good enough for some narrow cases 
of objects that still exist in some deteriorated form and haven't been recycled 
yet).

Hopefully someday the ohm framework will be mature enough to be adopted by osm, 
so that we can map in time as well as in space (better tools to map in the 3rd 
dimention would be great too). In the meantime, please only map the present in 
osm.

-- 
Vincent Dp

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Warin

On 16/08/2015 1:29 AM, Russ Nelson wrote:

Warin writes:
   On 15/08/2015 3:46 PM, Russ Nelson wrote:
Railway=dismantled. Doesn't get rendered except where it should be,

 do you still want railway=disused to remain?

Are we even talking about the same thing? Let's assume that you made a
s mple t po.


No .. just two things at once. Sorry .. should have been

Where the railway has completely gone, do you still want

Railway=dismantled to be used.

And your answer is yes (I think).




Lookit, I'm also a fan of unfinished
railroads. http://russnelson.com/unfinished-railroads.html You don't
see me insisting that the unbuilt sections of these railroads get
mapped, do you? No, because they never existed, and you can't see any
evidence that they did. W


There is also proposed, planned... and under construction.

Proposed and planned I cannot verify .. many things get 'proposed' or 'planned' 
by politicians .. and there is no sight of them for many decades if at all.

Under construction I should be able to verify.



Now, I'm sure somebody will, at some point say, Russell, just go off
to OpenHistoricalMap and put your data there. That's fine, except for
those pesky implementation details where THEY ARE IN TWO DISPARATE
DATABASES, UNCONNECTED. How, exactly, do you make a relation that
shows the entire route of a railroad when half of it is off in a
different corner?


Good question. Pose it on OpenHistoricalMap ? Maybe they have a solution.



I don't understand why we're having this argument.


Discussion. Well as far as I'm concerned.



I WILL BE HAPPY AND GO AWAY WITH AN EXCEPTION. Don't you want me to be
happy? Don't you want me to go away?



No I, for one, don't want you to go away. Quite the contrary!

I do take your point...
You want old things that may no longer be present in any shape or form 
to be represented ?


within OSM?

I sympathise. But is OSM the place for these? (I'd call them 'ghosts', 
visions of things past.)


However ...
Why stop with railways? Roads and buildings have history too.
Some OSM people mantra on about verification. How are these things to be 
verified?


Umm the old 'Tank Stream' in Sydney ... that was a fresh water source 
for the establishment of Sydney.

Most, if not all, of it is underground. Should that be mapped as
demolished:waterway=stream
and then other tags to reflect what it is now ..
? Probably. But I would have problems with verifying its' location. Humm..

So I'd not let 'us' (as in OSM) off with some exception just for 
railways, other things should have the same consideration.


You have raised a good issue. An it is a policy issue .. and OSM is not 
good with policy. Hence this lengthy thread heading off in may directions.



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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Warin

On 16/08/2015 1:35 AM, Russ Nelson wrote:

Serge Wroclawski writes:
   Our project's policy thusfar has been in contrast to other projects in that
   each and every one of us is empowered to make changes to anything we see.

You're starting to understand! You should make changes to things you
see. Things you don't see require a higher standard of knowledge.

   This leaves our project with a problem of lots of data and no one feeling
   empowered to remove it.

Seriously? THIS is your line of reasoning? There's a simple way to
empower them: If it's got TIGER tags and you don't see it, delete it.


TIGER tags?

Don't they only occur in one area of the world? Rather a small view of the 
world then.


Done. Next problem.



Not done. For example I have deleted roads in the middle of houses, a clear 
error, possibly mine, and yes I did go and look on foot.
I don't think there are any TIGER tags at all within 8,000miles. And I have no 
problem with that deletion.


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Warin

On 15/08/2015 7:19 PM, Volker Schmidt wrote:
I would like to argue for a general 
do-not-remove-if-you-do-not-have-the-original-mapper's-ok-beforehand 
policy for these and similar cases.


I have myself mapped a couple of abandoned railways where the remains 
were often no longer recognizable individually as traces of a former 
railway, but as a whole, in particular in satellite photos it is 
clearly visible. This includes roads, paths, and vegetation strips 
that mark the former track, and former railway buildings.
In my case the specific interest is to keep the memory of these former 
railway routes alive with the scope to have documentation ready to 
argue for the (partial) re-utilization as bicycle routes.


Two other types of routes, not railway-related, also spring to mind:

Historic Route 66 (which is actually being recreated as an official 
USBRS route for cycle tourists, trying to follow as much as possible 
the original roads).



Unfortunately there are many people interested in old Route 66 ...
Tours from Australia have been done .. and I think that is now a yearly 
event where a group of Australian tourist go over, hire a car (each or 
in pairs) and travel as much of Route 66 as possible .. with a guide or 
two.


Another example where historic roads have traditional appeared on maps 
are the Roman Roads on UK Ordnance Survey maps.


There are remnants of old Highway 1 in Australia ... not much interest 
in them. Some bits are handy for camping on.
I wonder if the old Ghan Railway line is tagged in OSM? It is a tourist 
attraction. ,,, checking...

Yes it is there, and can be seen on the bing sat photos.
Tagged as 'disused' rather than abandoned. It is both!
But at least some it it remains - bridges over rivers (when they run), 
some stations with water tanks for the steam locomotives.
One of the bridges I'm looking at .. does not have the river tagged! 
Shows how often it runs, and the importance of the old railway line.


I'll just go and tag that bit of the river now.



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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Colin Smale
 

So who decides what is good data and what is bad data? 

And visibility on the ground needs nuancing. Are we to remove
underground pipelines/power lines? Or boundaries? Visible and/or
verifiable might be better. A rule that needs loads of exceptions, is
not a well formed rule. 

An abandoned railway route IS an abandoned railway route, even today
(i.e. that is current data). It WAS a working railway line. That is all
verifiable. 

On 2015-08-15 12:31, Serge Wroclawski wrote: 

 On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Volker Schmidt vosc...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 I would like to argue for a general 
 do-not-remove-if-you-do-not-have-the-original-mapper's-ok-beforehand policy 
 for these and similar cases.
 
 Then you are (whether or not you intend it) arguing in favor of 
 dis-empowering users.
 
 Our project's policy thusfar has been in contrast to other projects in that 
 each and every one of us is empowered to make changes to anything we see.
 
 We certainly have policies in regards to quality control- if someone makes a 
 bad edit, we revert it, but we are always in favor of the empowerment of our 
 users to fix problems, rather than saying that they can't, or need to ask 
 permission beforehand.
 
 Let's be very clear on the issue in this case- it's regarding a very subtle 
 line of objects which are in one of two states:
 
 1. Visible on the ground but difficult to detect (ie require specialized 
 knowledge)
 
 or
 
 2. No longer visible at all.
 
 The problem that we have in some parts of the world is a lack of data, but in 
 other parts, we have an abundance of bad imports, and a general timidness 
 around the removal of data that we can't find the owner of, which leaves us 
 with data that *we know is bad*, but where the individual mappers do not feel 
 empowered to act on because of this exact attitude of needing to contact and 
 work with the importer.
 
 This leaves our project with a problem of lots of data and no one feeling 
 empowered to remove it.
 
 If we continue to go down that road, we will be left in an untenable 
 situation of living in the data equivalent of a hoarder's house.
 
 I'm very much in favor of mapper to mapper collaboration. In fact I am the 
 person who mentored the GSoC project to add changeset discussions, but I do 
 not believe we want to change the project's culture into one where no one 
 feels empowered to edit the map without first asking permission.
 
 - Serge
 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Serge Wroclawski
On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 6:43 AM, Colin Smale colin.sm...@xs4all.nl wrote:

 So who decides what is good data and what is bad data?

The community as a whole decides what is good and bad data. That starts
with the local community and moves up to the OSM community as a whole in
terms of whether or not data belongs in OSM or not.

 And visibility on the ground needs nuancing. Are we to remove
 underground pipelines/power lines?


If you were able to go underground, then you'd find such data. But if you
can't- how do you know these lines exist? You probably are using a feature
that you *can* see without being underground.


 Or boundaries?

I specifically addressed political boundaries in my previous mail.

Visible and/or verifiable might be better. A rule that needs loads of
 exceptions, is not a well formed rule.

Verifiable and visible are essentially synonymous in this discussion.

 An abandoned railway route IS an abandoned railway route, even today (i.e.
 that is current data). It WAS a working railway line. That is all
 verifiable.

Yes, but we don't map things that used to be present but are no longer
present. A road used to be here but is now a building. We don't map the old
road, only what's present now.

- Serge
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Volker Schmidt
I would like to argue for a general
do-not-remove-if-you-do-not-have-the-original-mapper's-ok-beforehand policy
for these and similar cases.

I have myself mapped a couple of abandoned railways where the remains were
often no longer recognizable individually as traces of a former railway,
but as a whole, in particular in satellite photos it is clearly visible.
This includes roads, paths, and vegetation strips that mark the former
track, and former railway buildings.
In my case the specific interest is to keep the memory of these former
railway routes alive with the scope to have documentation ready to argue
for the (partial) re-utilization as bicycle routes.

Two other types of routes, not railway-related, also spring to mind:

Historic Route 66 (which is actually being recreated as an official USBRS
route for cycle tourists, trying to follow as much as possible the original
roads).

Another example where historic roads have traditional appeared on maps are
the Roman Roads on UK Ordnance Survey maps.

Best regards from Italy

Volker
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Serge Wroclawski
On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 5:19 AM, Volker Schmidt vosc...@gmail.com wrote:

 I would like to argue for a general
 do-not-remove-if-you-do-not-have-the-original-mapper's-ok-beforehand policy
 for these and similar cases.


Then you are (whether or not you intend it) arguing in favor of
dis-empowering users.

Our project's policy thusfar has been in contrast to other projects in that
each and every one of us is empowered to make changes to anything we see.

We certainly have policies in regards to quality control- if someone makes
a bad edit, we revert it, but we are always in favor of the empowerment of
our users to fix problems, rather than saying that they can't, or need to
ask permission beforehand.

Let's be very clear on the issue in this case- it's regarding a very subtle
line of objects which are in one of two states:

1. Visible on the ground but difficult to detect (ie require specialized
knowledge)

or

2. No longer visible at all.


The problem that we have in some parts of the world is a lack of data, but
in other parts, we have an abundance of bad imports, and a general
timidness around the removal of data that we can't find the owner of, which
leaves us with data that *we know is bad*, but where the individual mappers
do not feel empowered to act on because of this exact attitude of needing
to contact and work with the importer.

This leaves our project with a problem of lots of data and no one feeling
empowered to remove it.


If we continue to go down that road, we will be left in an untenable
situation of living in the data equivalent of a hoarder's house.

I'm very much in favor of mapper to mapper collaboration. In fact I am the
person who mentored the GSoC project to add changeset discussions, but I do
not believe we want to change the project's culture into one where no one
feels empowered to edit the map without first asking permission.

- Serge
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Warin

On 15/08/2015 3:46 PM, Russ Nelson wrote:

Mateusz Konieczny writes:
   In another case where railway tracks that were removed, embankment
   demolished and somebody build there houses. In that case railway
   track should not be mapped in OSM because this feature is gone.

Railway=dismantled. Doesn't get rendered except where it should be,
on openrailwaymap.org.

Why is this so hard? I'm not asking you to do it. I'm asking you to
stop preventing me from doing it.

I'm not trying to make extra work for anybody.

I'm asking you to find a different way to make the map better than by
deleting things, valid things, real things, that other people entered.



Russ ...
if the railway has been removed ...
and another use has taken over totally and nothing remains (so no real 
things remain)...

 do you still want railway=disused to remain?

Personally when some feature has been replaced with another feature... 
such that nothing remains of the original .. I'd be inclined to delete.


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Colin Smale
 

On 2015-08-15 13:15, Serge Wroclawski wrote: 

 On Sat, Aug 15, 2015 at 6:43 AM, Colin Smale colin.sm...@xs4all.nl wrote: 
 
 So who decides what is good data and what is bad data?
 
 The community as a whole decides what is good and bad data. That starts with 
 the local community and moves up to the OSM community as a whole in terms of 
 whether or not data belongs in OSM or not.

I disagree here, you are in a dream world. The decision is made on an
individual, case-by-case basis by the mapper who exercises his
inalienable right to delete or modify data. These decisions are not
ratified by the community, but they are discussed to death if anyone
happens to notice and takes exception. There is no consensus, there is
just one vociferous minority (of the set of all mappers) shouting at
another vociferous minority until one party or the other loses the will
to live. 

Should we be working towards creating a consensus, or at least working
out a workable definition of consensus? (Actually I think the current
malaise is deeper than that - it's an identity crisis) 

Should we still be saying that the user is free to tag as they see fit?
Quote from the wiki: Remember that OpenStreetMap does not have any
content restrictions on tags that can be assigned to nodes, ways or
areas. You can use ANY TAGS YOU LIKE, but PLEASE DOCUMENT THEM here on
the OpenStreetMap wiki, even if self explanatory. (Interestingly, it
doesn't mention relations, but I assume this is an oversight.) 

 And visibility on the ground needs nuancing. Are we to remove underground 
 pipelines/power lines?
 
 If you were able to go underground, then you'd find such data. But if you 
 can't- how do you know these lines exist? You probably are using a feature 
 that you *can* see without being underground.

Good question. We assume they were not entered from sources without a
suitable licence. Should we delete them? I certainly don't need to know
where the gas pipelines are. 

 Or boundaries?
 
 I specifically addressed political boundaries in my previous mail.

I was talking about all kinds of boundaries, not just political. 

 Visible and/or verifiable might be better. A rule that needs loads of 
 exceptions, is not a well formed rule.
 
 Verifiable and visible are essentially synonymous in this discussion.

If that were true, then the existence of an abandoned railway route
would effectively be visible by virtue of the fact that it is
verifiable. 

 An abandoned railway route IS an abandoned railway route, even today (i.e. 
 that is current data). It WAS a working railway line. That is all verifiable.
 
 Yes, but we don't map things that used to be present but are no longer 
 present. A road used to be here but is now a building. We don't map the old 
 road, only what's present now.

An abandoned railway route is present now. It may not may not be
immediately obvious from a quick look on site. What about roman roads
which are no longer visible without remote sensing or ground penetrating
radar? Are we suggesting they also have no place in OSM? 

 - Serge
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Colin Smale
 

I meant it a bit rhetorically... Let's live and let live, instead of
deleting stuff that *we* don't happen to be interested in. Which brings
us back to Russ's original point. 

On 2015-08-15 14:08, Lester Caine wrote: 

 On 15/08/15 12:55, Colin Smale wrote: 
 
 Good question. We assume they were not entered from sources without a
 suitable licence. Should we delete them? I certainly don't need to know
 where the gas pipelines are.
 
 But someone buying a house close by may be interested? A number of
 pipelines have been laid around here and we could have plotted their
 routes as the various roads were dug up and trenches cut ...
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[OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Volker Schmidt
I realize that I was not clear with my comment.
My point is that we cannot resolve this issue by simply deleting data.
Former railroads, or for former (historic) streets (as in Roman Street) or
former important road routes (like historic Route 66) could best be handled
by relations.
To take as an example a former railroad route:
The relation would comprise of modern streets, agricultural tracks, paths,
embankments (even without any path) plus, possibly, buildings (which today
in most cases are used in a completely different way or are in ruins)

The tagging that is most used (I think) is
route=historic
historic=railway

example:
relation 3183397

(my own attempts are not tagged like this - I m going to change them to
this style)
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Lester Caine
On 15/08/15 12:55, Colin Smale wrote:
 Good question. We assume they were not entered from sources without a
 suitable licence. Should we delete them? I certainly don't need to know
 where the gas pipelines are.

But someone buying a house close by may be interested? A number of
pipelines have been laid around here and we could have plotted their
routes as the various roads were dug up and trenches cut ...

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 15.08.2015 um 12:31 schrieb Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com:
 
 1. Visible on the ground but difficult to detect (ie require specialized 
 knowledge)
 
 or
 
 2. No longer visible at all.



no, the second case would be mistagged with railway=abandoned in most of the 
cases (should be 'razed' or 'dismantled') and the first case (visible on the 
ground) might need specialized knowledge in some cases and in many others not.


cheers 
Martin 


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Lester Caine
On 15/08/15 12:15, Serge Wroclawski wrote:
 So who decides what is good data and what is bad data?
 
 The community as a whole decides what is good and bad data. That starts
 with the local community and moves up to the OSM community as a whole in
 terms of whether or not data belongs in OSM or not.

The problem is one of terminology. Or rather visibility. The data many
of us are looking to use is already in the change logs of the main
database. It is managing the continuity of that older data in
conjunction with later additions that is the problem. An example link
given on this thread showed the break in an old track bed which has been
removed, but currently there is no content for the new road which
follows the line of that track bed. We have lost data which would have
been retained if the relevant section of track bed had been re-tagged as
a road ... and the section that was actually removed by the new highway
was the only piece actually 'deleted'. Just as micro-mapping has little
interest to some users, history is irelevent to others, but that is not
'bad data', but rather data that needs to be managed by a more open
consensus that just 'you can't see it delete it'?

 And visibility on the ground needs nuancing. Are we to remove
 underground pipelines/power lines?
 
 If you were able to go underground, then you'd find such data. But if
 you can't- how do you know these lines exist? You probably are using a
 feature that you *can* see without being underground.

That more and more companies are using OSM over google as a base layer
is fact. The question is perhaps should THEIR data be included in the
main database or only accessible as a secondary layer. The points were
underground services are accessed need to be mapped on the main
database, such as station entrances, or storm water outflow pools, so at
what point does third party data become 'mainstream'?

Historic material has exactly the same problem ... that some elements
are 'currently visible' combines with elements that no longer exist is a
a verifiable fact, but either one duplicates the whole lot on an OHM
version of the data, or one simply maintains a little more material in
the main database. The tagging decides what can be seen for a current
rendering rather than snipping out bits which still need to be
maintained for an historic one.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 15.08.2015 um 12:31 schrieb Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com:
 
 The problem that we have in some parts of the world is a lack of data, but in 
 other parts, we have an abundance of bad imports, and a general timidness 
 around the removal of data that we can't find the owner of, which leaves us 
 with data that *we know is bad*, but where the individual mappers do not feel 
 empowered to act on because of this exact attitude of needing to contact and 
 work with the importer.


Being myself mapping in areas where the few bad imports (and also those 
possibly bad and not discussed beforehand) have been almost instantly reverted, 
I am often not thinking about imports at all. Yes, you are right, data trash 
resulting from badly performed imports (or where bad or unsuitable data has 
been imported) should be cleaned up and can be removed if manual cleanup seems 
too tedious and the overall quality is below our standard in manually mapped 
areas.

But this is (I hope) not the typical situation in osm besides a few countries, 
and it is not what this thread is about. Russ started this thread complaining 
that someone had deleted some railway=abandoned he had surveyed (i.e. something 
is still there to survey) and added to OSM, and he was suspecting that some 
people in the community were encouraging such actions by questioning the 
railway=abandoned tag and telling others to delete stuff they can't _easily_ 
see (what in turn some mappers interpret as visible from aerials).

cheers 
Martin 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 15.08.2015 um 13:55 schrieb Colin Smale colin.sm...@xs4all.nl:
 
 What about roman roads which are no longer visible without remote sensing or 
 ground penetrating radar? Are we suggesting they also have no place in OSM?


actually I am living in an area with a lot of ancient roman roads, even if most 
of them are now covered by modern roman roads (roads tend to remain on the same 
place if it was originally chosen well, what is typically the case for ancient 
roman (and other like etruscan) roads), there are some spots where the old 
paving comes to light (often on purpose with an educational / exemplary 
motivation), one infamous example is a cycleway I used to take, where the roman 
paving (for 2 meters or so) was a major nuisance ;-).   --- for sure they don't 
dare to try this on a road.

To make it short: I only tag those parts of ancient roman roads as such, which 
can still be recognized as roman road (i.e. ancient paving still present).  


Btw: I don't find the tagging historic=roman_road particularly well chosen. 
Shall we use a different value for every ancient culture that built roads? IMHO 
not, I suggest to use historic=road together with historic:civilization=* for 
ancient roads (currently used 10 times fewer).

See here for current geographical distribution of this tag:
http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/tags/historic=roman_road#map


On the other hand, I do add old_name tags to objects if I am aware of it, 
despite the fact that you mostly won't find them on the literal ground (but 
they are of course verifiable by anyone who seriously tries to).

cheers 
Martin


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Russ Nelson
Warin writes:
  On 15/08/2015 3:46 PM, Russ Nelson wrote:
   Railway=dismantled. Doesn't get rendered except where it should be,

do you still want railway=disused to remain?

Are we even talking about the same thing? Let's assume that you made a
s mple t po.

Don't those last two words look a little weird with missing bits?
Shouldn't those letters be there? Shouldn't the dismantled bits of a
railroad be in OSM as dismantled bits?

Lookit, I'm also a fan of unfinished
railroads. http://russnelson.com/unfinished-railroads.html You don't
see me insisting that the unbuilt sections of these railroads get
mapped, do you? No, because they never existed, and you can't see any
evidence that they did. With a built, operated railroad, you *can* see
evidence that they did, even if it's only because you can look left
and see evidence of the railroad, and you can look right and see
evidence of the railroad. Should they NOT be mapped through the
farmer's field where they have been plowed into dismantlement?

Now, I'm sure somebody will, at some point say, Russell, just go off
to OpenHistoricalMap and put your data there. That's fine, except for
those pesky implementation details where THEY ARE IN TWO DISPARATE
DATABASES, UNCONNECTED. How, exactly, do you make a relation that
shows the entire route of a railroad when half of it is off in a
different corner?

I don't understand why we're having this argument. We map tons of
things that you can't see. Why not map as dismantled railroads that
have been dismantled? Why not make an exception to the Delete it if
you don't see it guideline?

It's only a small handful of people who are deleting and counseling
deletion of dismantled railways. They are pushing a rigid,
mechanistic, inconsistent view of what to map. If we can simply tell
them dismantled railways are cool, we love them, deal with it then
we'll be done here.

I WILL BE HAPPY AND GO AWAY WITH AN EXCEPTION. Don't you want me to be
happy? Don't you want me to go away?

-- 
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Russ Nelson
Serge Wroclawski writes:
  Our project's policy thusfar has been in contrast to other projects in that
  each and every one of us is empowered to make changes to anything we see.

You're starting to understand! You should make changes to things you
see. Things you don't see require a higher standard of knowledge.

  This leaves our project with a problem of lots of data and no one feeling
  empowered to remove it.

Seriously? THIS is your line of reasoning? There's a simple way to
empower them: If it's got TIGER tags and you don't see it, delete it.

Done. Next problem.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-15 Thread Lester Caine
On 15/08/15 16:29, Russ Nelson wrote:
 Now, I'm sure somebody will, at some point say, Russell, just go off
 to OpenHistoricalMap and put your data there. That's fine, except for
 those pesky implementation details where THEY ARE IN TWO DISPARATE
 DATABASES, UNCONNECTED. How, exactly, do you make a relation that
 shows the entire route of a railroad when half of it is off in a
 different corner?

And it's not just railroads that this affects ...

In my book OHM needs to be a clone of OSM AND all the history so that we
can manage things properly. But the bulk of the missing historic data IS
start_date for every object currently documented, and that then needs
passing back to OSM. So why not just have the one database?

The alternative is a model that CAN use multiple databases, but I think
that only really works for secondary data? Trying to merge geometry is
not something that works well unless that geometry can be completely
isolated. Trying to use the same way elements for different objects in
different databases does not work :(

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Mateusz Konieczny
On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 02:23:29 -0400
Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:

 What if I was to add the aqueduct which goes past Aqueduct Race Track
 on Long Island, NY? It is without question there (the name Aqueduct
 should be a pretty good hint), yet it cannot be seen anywhere. Why not
 map that? Why map the Catskill aqueducts, which also cannot be seen?

That is a good example. Buried railway tracks, that are known to exist
may be mapped (and marked as buried) and should not be deleted just
because this feature is not visible.

In another case where railway tracks that were removed, embankment
demolished and somebody build there houses. In that case railway
track should not be mapped in OSM because this feature is gone.

See for example
http://www.dawnotemuwkrakowie.pl/miniatury/95-most-podgorki-i-kladka-ojca-bernatka/

There were multiple bridges in this location. First constructed in 1335
(destroyed by fire), there was later a floating bridge, in 1801 next
documented bridge (quickly destroyed by a flood) and next one in 1844,
this time from stone. In 2010 footbridge/cyclebridge was constructed.

There are still well visible traces of bridge from 1844, maybe there
are some traces of older ones (aligned streets, maybe also some buried
remains).

But only a single bridge should be mapped at
http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/242682567#map=19/50.04659/19.94752

Traces of bridges should be mapped as traces (tourism=attraction,
archeological site, navigation hazard) not things like [man_made=bridge;
status=burned in XIX century].

Or a railway case:
http://www.dawnotemuwkrakowie.pl/miniatury/83-kolej-obwodowa-pociagi-alejach-trzech-wieszczow/
- completely and utterly removed railway, leaving no traces (road that
  replaced railway follows its course, but it is likely that railway
  itself followed available space).

This railway certainly should not appear in OSM.

Location:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=50.0641mlon=19.9239#map=16/50.0641/19.9239

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Russ Nelson
Maarten Deen writes:
  On 2015-08-14 07:44, Russ Nelson wrote:
   Maarten Deen writes:
 I beg your pardon? I read this as nothing can be deleted, since 
   you
 say that deleting something you don't see (which usually means it's 
   not
 there) is reason for a ban.
   
   No, nobody is going to get banned for just one action. But if they
   consistently go around deleting things because *they* didn't see the
   thing, and are counselled that that is not how we do things, and
   persists in doing it (and advising others to do it), yeah, deleting
   things that can be seen is reason to ban somebody, just as is any
   other kind of damage to the map data.
  
  That last statement is something different than I didn't see it,
  so I deleted it So I'm still confused. Please confine the answer
  to the deletion of things that are not present.

You are mixing two ideas: 1) that something is not present, and 2)
that everyone who doesn't see something is competent to judge that it
is not present.

Examples: a blind person doesn't see anything. Why can't they delete
everything? Trivial, I know, but that's the claim. Less trivial:
someone with limited vision. Are we now administering eye tests before
we allow people to map? What about somebody with left neglect? Should
they delete something because it's on their left? They won't see it.

Less trivial examples: A subway (for all of the meanings). A
pipeline. Aqueduct. Buried electrical mains. We map above-ground, why
not map buried? Underground fire hydrants. Rich Welty has mapped all
the fire hydrants in the Albany area, for good reason. What about
places where they are underground? Don't map them??  Why? Delete them
if they're mapped?

A very strong example: we map political boundaries. The only boundary
I've ever seen is the one between the US and Canada. It's a 30' wide
clearcut with concrete pillars every klik or so. We map
placenames. Never seen a big pin sticking in the ground saying
Potsdam, NY where we have it mapped.

What if I was to add the aqueduct which goes past Aqueduct Race Track
on Long Island, NY? It is without question there (the name Aqueduct
should be a pretty good hint), yet it cannot be seen anywhere. Why not
map that? Why map the Catskill aqueducts, which also cannot be seen?

See? The simple Delete things you don't see is just plain wrong.
And I didn't see it so I deleted it is not always a valid
defense. If I started deleting NY political boundaries, I'd get my ass
canned in a New York minute, and deservedly so.

Obviously there could be a project called ISawItMap, where you only
map things that an ordinary man can see. OpenStreetMap, however, is
not that project.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Maarten Deen

On 2015-08-14 08:23, Russ Nelson wrote:

Maarten Deen writes:
  On 2015-08-14 07:44, Russ Nelson wrote:
   Maarten Deen writes:
 I beg your pardon? I read this as nothing can be deleted, 
since

   you
 say that deleting something you don't see (which usually means 
it's

   not
 there) is reason for a ban.
  
   No, nobody is going to get banned for just one action. But if they
   consistently go around deleting things because *they* didn't see 
the

   thing, and are counselled that that is not how we do things, and
   persists in doing it (and advising others to do it), yeah, 
deleting

   things that can be seen is reason to ban somebody, just as is any
   other kind of damage to the map data.
 
  That last statement is something different than I didn't see it,
  so I deleted it So I'm still confused. Please confine the answer
  to the deletion of things that are not present.

You are mixing two ideas: 1) that something is not present, and 2)
that everyone who doesn't see something is competent to judge that it
is not present.

Examples: a blind person doesn't see anything. Why can't they delete
everything? Trivial, I know, but that's the claim. Less trivial:
someone with limited vision. Are we now administering eye tests before
we allow people to map? What about somebody with left neglect? Should
they delete something because it's on their left? They won't see it.

Less trivial examples: A subway (for all of the meanings). A
pipeline. Aqueduct. Buried electrical mains. We map above-ground, why
not map buried? Underground fire hydrants. Rich Welty has mapped all
the fire hydrants in the Albany area, for good reason. What about
places where they are underground? Don't map them??  Why? Delete them
if they're mapped?

A very strong example: we map political boundaries. The only boundary
I've ever seen is the one between the US and Canada. It's a 30' wide
clearcut with concrete pillars every klik or so. We map
placenames. Never seen a big pin sticking in the ground saying
Potsdam, NY where we have it mapped.

What if I was to add the aqueduct which goes past Aqueduct Race Track
on Long Island, NY? It is without question there (the name Aqueduct
should be a pretty good hint), yet it cannot be seen anywhere. Why not
map that? Why map the Catskill aqueducts, which also cannot be seen?

See? The simple Delete things you don't see is just plain wrong.
And I didn't see it so I deleted it is not always a valid
defense. If I started deleting NY political boundaries, I'd get my ass
canned in a New York minute, and deservedly so.


I won't go into your point about political boundaries. That's not 
applicable here, we're talking about physical features.
But still you say that noting can be deleted, except maybe by the person 
who created it.
IMHO a bit of a I reject reality and substitute my own attitude. _I_ 
see that something is there and don't you dare delete it because you 
don't see it.


You're talking about abandoned railroads. Sure, if tracks are there, 
they are present. But what if only the groundworks of the railroad is 
present?
What when we subsitute railroad with road in general? Is it also not 
acceptable to delete a road when only a clearing remains?


Maarten


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Mateusz Konieczny
On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 09:33:11 +1000
Warin 61sundow...@gmail.com wrote:

 On 13/08/2015 11:24 PM, Ruben Maes wrote:
  On Thursday 13 August 2015 15:10:14 Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
  On Thu, 13 Aug 2015 21:54:39 +1000
  Warin 61sundow...@gmail.com wrote:
 
  For example a demolished building .. may have a new building
  built on the same spot .. with the same outline.
  Leave the node data in OSM, change the tag building=yes to
  building=demolished (may not be rendered nor official OSM tagging)
  add a note as to who/why ..
  and then if rebuilt change the tag back to building=yes... with a
  source tag please.
  If the site has a different shaped building then the nodes will
  have to be changed, or the site gets used for something else ..
  then change it. But untill then leave the old data there.
  This is a bad idea. Maybe [note=this building is demolished] to
  protect against mapping from outdated aerial images may be OK.
 
  But expecting data consumers displaying buildings to filter out
  building=demolished, building=razed, building=proposed etc etc is a
  really bad idea.
  Or you use demolished:building=yes as I said an hour ago.
 
  This is clearer than a note IMO,
  allows to retain all tags of the demolished building for reference
  and caters for potential data consumers interested in demolished
  buildings.
 
 
 I like it Ruben. demolished: it is.
 
 Not just for use on buildings, but bridges, poles .. any structure
 that could be rebuilt to the same dimensions, especially any with
 foundations that could be reused.

Note that features that are completely gone should not be mapped. This
is OK for features that are no longer a building or a bridge but
something is still left.

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Russ Nelson
Serge Wroclawski writes:
  On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 11:09 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote:
  
   It's really just a small handful of people who think it's okay not
   just to delete things, but to counsel other people to delete
   things. I didn't see it, so I deleted it is a reason for a ban, not
   an excuse against being banned.
  
  Russ, I doubt that you mean it this way, but if you set the bar too high,
  then you're essentially asking people to disprove a negative.

I think you mean prove a negative. It's easy to disprove a
negative. If somebody wants to delete something that I added because
they don't see it, but instead, they ASK ME what did you see? I can
show them what I saw, just as I showed you pictures of what I saw on
one side and the other side of a building, giving me reason and cause
to conclude that there is an abandoned railroad there. That disproves
their claim that nothing was there.

  We allow original research and expert testimony, but we also don't require
  it.

Adding things, fine, no expertise required. Deleting things that
somebody else added (because we allow original research and expert
testimony) because we don't require expertise to delete things means
that in fact we don't allow original research and expertise.

Can you see how your sentence doesn't make any sense when it comes to
deletion?

  We have generally not required specialized knowledge or equipment for
  observations in the past and I don't think that we should change that going
  forward.

To add things, no. To destroy things, uh yeah, people should
understand that somebody put something into the map for a good reason
which may have required special knowledge or equipment.

For example, I could go to some place where OSM says there is a
pipeline, look around, not see a pipeline, and say urp, somebody
screwed up and added a pipeline here! I'll fix it by deleting it!

Again ... the problem is deleting. The problem is people who say
Delete things you don't see and people who believe them.

-- 
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Crynwr supports open source software
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Greg Troxel

Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com writes:

 sent from a phone

 Am 14.08.2015 um 10:48 schrieb Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com:
 
 These discussions are nuanced. Are there going to be things one
 person can identify that another can't- yes. But at the same time, I
 still think that as a project, we've collectively made a decision
 here that we don't require any special external knowledge or
 equipment to modify data.

 We have underlined repeatedly in the past that OSM should be a home
 for special interest groups as well as for occasional generic
 mappers. I believe we as a project do require from our contributors
 some respect towards the previous contributions aka the map data the
 find when they start contributing. For example we do not tolerate to
 delete a way and then redraw it, even if it's done better, but rather
 we ask people to improve what is there by iterating over the existing
 data. This respect towards the others that we expect from all
 contributors leads to a situation where people without special
 knowledge and or equipment go one step back and refrain voluntarily
 from editing/deleting stuff they find and recognize as special
 interest data.

This is an excellent expression of a thought I have had during this
discussion but haven't felt coherent enough to post.

For deleting something that I think isn't there - that some other mapper
added, I make sure that:

  I've actually been there on the ground, on foot.

  I have some idea what the thing is that was mapped, and thus how to
  tell if it's there.

Being careless about this is rude, and deleting things without in-person
looking with due care veers into vandalism.   That's especially true when
the deletion is associated with an X shouldn't be in the db.

Note that I'm not arguing that someone on the ground who knows what old
railroads look like and makes a good-faith effort to see if there are
ground features of railway=razed, and doesn't find them, is being rude.
Basically, if USGS would have put old railway grade on their map, we
should definitely have railway=razed.


For deletions, if I'm not local, and I'm not sure, I add a note or send
a message instead.

So I think the basic issue is that there is more-than-occasional
inadequate care towards the work of people who care about railways, to
the point where it's a project-wide issue cluster, rather than the
occasional spot mistake.



pgp2NxxRuY3bc.pgp
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Lester Caine
On 14/08/15 14:16, Ian Sergeant wrote:
 Wow.  Every time I edit, I'm splitting ways to add relations, speed
 limit changes, lane counts, etc. If the original way happens to still
 existing when I've finished it's more good luck than good management. 
 And it's just as likely to be the stub of the via way in a no U-turn as
 it is the freeway it once was.

This is in essence the whole problem ...
In the past it HAS been a practice to wipe something and replace it with
a new version. Certainly imports tend to be easier when processed that
way, but it looses the very history that in the future will be prime
information. If a railway viaduct has become a foot path, one can see
that from the history of changes. The problem is that large elements of
that history may well be deleted simply to create a combination of new
objects describing the new view of the structure. The underlying change
control should be able to keep track of those changes and provide a
complete history back in time even if some of that is created
incorrectly. In my book, OHM is simply looking 5, 10 or more years back
into that history, and as we go forward that record remains.

As I have said before 'Delete' is something that should never happen on
what has at some time been correct information. 'Archive' is the correct
term and making that data available as required ... Delete is only
appropriate when the material is proven invalid.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Serge Wroclawski
Russ,

Instead of replying to every individual point, I'm going to address your
email as a whole, which is around the idea that deletion is different from
addition.

These discussions are nuanced. Are there going to be things one person can
identify that another can't- yes. But at the same time, I still think that
as a project, we've collectively made a decision here that we don't require
any special external knowledge or equipment to modify data.

Let me give you an example that's not about roads, but about power lines.

We have mappers that map a ton of detail about not only the locations but
the details of the power lines.

But they also explain their process online. They show how to read the
signs, what each symbol means, etc.

If I came across a power line, I should be able to use the knowledge from
the wiki page to build an understanding of the ground truth and compare
that to OSM. Then I can correct OSM as necessary.

If it's possible to document these abandoned railways in the same way, then
we can discuss an on the ground feature and compare what we see on the
ground with what's on the map.

But what we can't (or at least shouldn't) do is have only certain community
members be the source for certain features. I shouldn't have to email Alice
or Bob just because I want to edit a feature that Alice entered, or that
Bob modified.

The minute we do that, we are telling certain people that there's no way to
update or improve upon their updates, and at that point, why have the data
in OSM at all?

Improving the map can and sometimes does include the idea of removing a
feature that's no longer present, and I'm not comfortable with the idea
that we have certain special features or special members where the data
can't be modified.

And Russ, I don't think that's what you want either, ultimately. So why not
just update the wiki page to be more complete and focus on educating people
on what to look for?

- Serge
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Ian Sergeant
On 15 August 2015 at 00:12, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:

 As I have said before 'Delete' is something that should never happen on
 what has at some time been correct information. 'Archive' is the correct
 term and making that data available as required ... Delete is only
 appropriate when the material is proven invalid.



Your 'never delete' argument, is of a very different form to the 'never
delete abandoned railroads' argument.  I suspect the railway=abandoned
people wouldn't care less had the nodes been intelligently replaced by more
accurate ones.  They are interested in the line of the railway, not the OSM
markers that make it up.

Your argument is to preserve some kind of history.  And OSM sort-of does
that because nothing is ever deleted - it is all in the full database.  But
you want everything to be in the active database instead.  But OSM doesn't
support that - because today's lake way is tomorrow's multi-poly, and the
next year (hopefully!) we'll have a better way to represent it at OSM
level.  Today's one-way freeway is 17 ways after yesterday's survey edits
get done.  I'd suggest you first work on an OSM model that actually
supports continuity of objects, and then we'll do the Wikipedia linking,
and then we'll talk about never deleting.

Of course people should show respect to previous mappers.  Not tearing down
other's work is the essence of a community project.   But also is the
knowledge that your work isn't sacrosanct.  And OSM isn't open history map,
and isn't a record of everything that ever was.

Ian.
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Lester Caine
On 14/08/15 22:03, Ian Sergeant wrote:
 On 15 August 2015 at 00:12, Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk
 mailto:les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:
 
 As I have said before 'Delete' is something that should never happen on
 what has at some time been correct information. 'Archive' is the correct
 term and making that data available as required ... Delete is only
 appropriate when the material is proven invalid.
 
 Your 'never delete' argument, is of a very different form to the 'never
 delete abandoned railroads' argument.  I suspect the railway=abandoned
 people wouldn't care less had the nodes been intelligently replaced by
 more accurate ones.  They are interested in the line of the railway, not
 the OSM markers that make it up.
 
 Your argument is to preserve some kind of history.  And OSM sort-of does
 that because nothing is ever deleted - it is all in the full database. 
 But you want everything to be in the active database instead.  But OSM
 doesn't support that - because today's lake way is tomorrow's
 multi-poly, and the next year (hopefully!) we'll have a better way to
 represent it at OSM level.  Today's one-way freeway is 17 ways
 after yesterday's survey edits get done.  I'd suggest you first work on
 an OSM model that actually supports continuity of objects, and then
 we'll do the Wikipedia linking, and then we'll talk about never deleting.
 
 Of course people should show respect to previous mappers.  Not tearing
 down other's work is the essence of a community project.   But also is
 the knowledge that your work isn't sacrosanct.  And OSM isn't open
 history map, and isn't a record of everything that ever was.

It is a simple fact that the current model is not suitable for many of
the functions that have already evolved. That a way varies from a single
linear element to a complex of multi-polygons depending on the
resolution is not something that the current model can handle. But the
one thing that the current model has got the capability of handling is
start and stop dates for any facet of an object from the name of a shop
to the evolution of the road and rail system over time. That the 'main'
database only displays elements which have not yet acquired a stop date
is how the model currently works, while the OHM version simply maintains
multiple time stamped versions of the same data. Rather than having to
recover the data from the change log ...

Objects that have evolved but still retain an element of their former
use may have a stop date that indicates when that change occurred, and
some data consumers have the option to ignore them, but the current
'use' may be enhanced by such additional notes as on old track bed or
similar.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Lester Caine
On 14/08/15 23:14, Mateusz Konieczny wrote:
 On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:51:13 +0100
 Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:
 
 But the
 one thing that the current model has got the capability of handling is
 start and stop dates for any facet of an object from the name of a
 shop to the evolution of the road and rail system over time. That the
 'main' database only displays elements which have not yet acquired a
 stop date is how the model currently works, while the OHM version
 simply maintains multiple time stamped versions of the same data.
 
 This is not true. Current model - from mappers, through programs used
 to edit to data consumers is unsuitable for handling several
 intersecting objects, verifiable only for specialists.

? That is basically what I said ... but the problem of combining macro
and micro mapping has been discussed without much progress.
Adding a stop_date is the only element that works ... and is the correct
action rather than 'delete'.

 Rather than having to recover the data from the change log ...
 
 Date of deletion is at best loosely correlated with date of
 destruction of represented object. In particular most edits either are
 mapping the same objects in greater detail - despite lack of change on
 the ground, adding new objects present in reality since decades or in
 some cases thousands of years (in case of natural forms it may be even
 higher).

Start and stop dates are verifiable facts that can be recorded ... WHEN
that information is added is only of academic interest. Potentially the
movement of the techtonic plates could be mapped , and certainly recent
shifts due to earthquakes have a date when the variation occurred, even
if it then takes many months to actually map the movement.

 Many of deleted objects never represented reality.

No argument on that. What I am talking about is exactly where the
historic material has been mapped in detail, but new road works result
in a change the is subsequently also mapped. Or new roads are added with
start_date tags which allows the evolution to be recorded. Reality
changes over time?

 Mapping all buildings that ever existed may seem simple for some cases.
 But many cities were destroyed (partially or fully) and later rebuild.
 
 I would delete any encountered OSM elements that are marking objects
 that are fully and completely gone (obviously, I would do it only for
 places where I can verify this and after asking original mapper for
 clarification whatever there are some mappable traces - maybe just
 tagging was wrong). One exception would be for elements representing
 recently destroyed objects that were mapped to protect from recreation
 based on outdated aerial images (in that case I would convert it to
 ways marked with note=* asking to avoid recreation without survey).

Tag when the object ceased to exist in that format with a stop_date. The
action date is of little use for the historic record. Visibility of the
object is a different problem.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Mateusz Konieczny
On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 22:51:13 +0100
Lester Caine les...@lsces.co.uk wrote:

 But the
 one thing that the current model has got the capability of handling is
 start and stop dates for any facet of an object from the name of a
 shop to the evolution of the road and rail system over time. That the
 'main' database only displays elements which have not yet acquired a
 stop date is how the model currently works, while the OHM version
 simply maintains multiple time stamped versions of the same data.

This is not true. Current model - from mappers, through programs used
to edit to data consumers is unsuitable for handling several
intersecting objects, verifiable only for specialists.

 Rather than having to recover the data from the change log ...

Date of deletion is at best loosely correlated with date of
destruction of represented object. In particular most edits either are
mapping the same objects in greater detail - despite lack of change on
the ground, adding new objects present in reality since decades or in
some cases thousands of years (in case of natural forms it may be even
higher).

Many of deleted objects never represented reality.


Mapping all buildings that ever existed may seem simple for some cases.
But many cities were destroyed (partially or fully) and later rebuild.

I would delete any encountered OSM elements that are marking objects
that are fully and completely gone (obviously, I would do it only for
places where I can verify this and after asking original mapper for
clarification whatever there are some mappable traces - maybe just
tagging was wrong). One exception would be for elements representing
recently destroyed objects that were mapped to protect from recreation
based on outdated aerial images (in that case I would convert it to
ways marked with note=* asking to avoid recreation without survey).

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Warin

On 14/08/2015 10:10 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:


sent from a phone


Am 14.08.2015 um 05:09 schrieb Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com:

We allow original research and expert testimony.

So, is OSM to contain only the obvious that everyone can see? Or
should it contain everything that can be seen?


well spoken, I see this like you and would appreciate if we could change our 
recommendations from: in doubt delete to in doubt keep it.


Where there is doubt, do nothing! Doubt should be removed before acting, asking 
the originator may remove doubt.


And: ask the originator before deleting/changing stuff you don't understand or 
are unsure about, especially if it is concerning a special interest topic.


Where understanding may require specialist knowledge it is even more 
imperative not to delete.


cheers
Martin


PS: I also agree that shut the hell up is not acceptable language in a 
community, while it is somehow suitable to underline the anger ;-)
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Denying someone their input is contrary to the Open part of OSM! Rather a 
need to communicate untill the issue is resolved would be better.

Speak up! rather than Shut up.


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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Russ Nelson
Mateusz Konieczny writes:
  In another case where railway tracks that were removed, embankment
  demolished and somebody build there houses. In that case railway
  track should not be mapped in OSM because this feature is gone.

Railway=dismantled. Doesn't get rendered except where it should be,
on openrailwaymap.org.

Why is this so hard? I'm not asking you to do it. I'm asking you to
stop preventing me from doing it.

I'm not trying to make extra work for anybody.

I'm asking you to find a different way to make the map better than by
deleting things, valid things, real things, that other people entered.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-600-8815
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 14.08.2015 um 05:09 schrieb Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com:
 
 We allow original research and expert testimony.
 
 So, is OSM to contain only the obvious that everyone can see? Or
 should it contain everything that can be seen?


well spoken, I see this like you and would appreciate if we could change our 
recommendations from: in doubt delete to in doubt keep it. And: ask the 
originator before deleting/changing stuff you don't understand or are unsure 
about, especially if it is concerning a special interest topic.

cheers 
Martin 


PS: I also agree that shut the hell up is not acceptable language in a 
community, while it is somehow suitable to underline the anger ;-)
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Re: [OSM-talk] stop deleting abandoned railroads

2015-08-14 Thread Martin Koppenhoefer


sent from a phone

 Am 14.08.2015 um 10:48 schrieb Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com:
 
 These discussions are nuanced. Are there going to be things one person can 
 identify that another can't- yes. But at the same time, I still think that as 
 a project, we've collectively made a decision here that we don't require any 
 special external knowledge or equipment to modify data.


We have underlined repeatedly in the past that OSM should be a home for special 
interest groups as well as for occasional generic mappers. I believe we as a 
project do require from our contributors some respect towards the previous 
contributions aka the map data the find when they start contributing. For 
example we do not tolerate to delete a way and then redraw it, even if it's 
done better, but rather we ask people to improve what is there by iterating 
over the existing data. This respect towards the others that we expect from all 
contributors leads to a situation where people without special knowledge and or 
equipment go one step back and refrain voluntarily from editing/deleting stuff 
they find and recognize as special interest data.


cheers 
Martin 
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