Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Hi, Just wanted to put my 2 cents on on this. OSM already has a rough consensus on its relationship to external data sources. I don't think there we be any controversy saying no thank you if somebody showed up wanting to import a shape file containing the habitat of say black bears. We don't import contour data, parcels (at least in the US), image data, historical roads, light pollution map, etc. Other data is mostly imported, such as country/state/town boundaries. I think that this committee should not talk about this kind of stuff, it is best left to the wider OSM community to handle the gray areas in this space. It seems to me that the current rough consensus on what is in/out is pretty reasonable. We do have a problem of a lot of hurt feeling when somebody new shows up and wants to do an import. This committee can act as mentors/facilitators for people with external data sources. We can help them navigate the existing process as documented on the wiki *off list*. So that all of the common/expected mistakes can happen in private, without embarrassment or hard feelings. The benefit to the community is that when/if an import is about to start, a well formed RFC will land on the list. The people on the list can stop worrying about the easy things, and focus on the whatever gray area may exist for that specific data source. The mentors can also set the expectations what parts are going to cause heated discussions/versus items that will be non-issues. Implementing this is easy, get a couple to volunteers and put their contact info at the bottom of the import guideline page, saying if you want help figuring this stuff out please message one of these people, x,y,z. Lets keep all of the real controversial items on the mailing list. When/if an import is ready, the person sending the RFC will have a good understanding about what is going on. Of coarse, if somebody wants to just do it the old fashioned way and get the full hazing on the email lists, then that should also be allowed. With the rapid growth of the project, Soon (perhaps already) most people in OSM will not be software engineers. Compared to software people, they will have less awareness of IP law, will be less able to deal with the wiki, and be much less tolerant of the rough behavior that is customary between engineers. We will need to give them help when dealing with external data sources, or they are going to just leave with hurt feeling and we will lose a new enthusiastic mapper. Thanks Jason On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:42 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: Folks, I know what it's like to be excited about OSM, and I know what it's like to be frustrated with OSM, struggling with low data quality, or lack of data altogether. And then you get access to a large dataset, and you know that having it in OSM would improve things. It would improve the quality, and maybe even get people mapping. At the same time, I think many of you have seen the damage that bad imports can do. The result is that folks like myself and others are frustrated by the import process, and folks who have good, useful datasets are frstrated by the import process. So I'm proposing a new committee, run by the US Chapter, to help guide imports and large edits. This will give step by step guidance to those who want to import data, and offer the larger community time to review and provide feedback. When I helped create the US Chapter several years ago, this was one of the main reasons I thought it should exist, but I think there's finally the amount of data and interest to justify it. What do folks think? - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Hi, On 17.12.2012 18:47, Serge Wroclawski wrote: I'm suggesting a different approach, one where you have a proposed importer saying I have this data, they then take it to a committee/working group who has been blessed by the community to help with this process. I'm keen on the import process including a number of exit lanes - it should ask questions like: questions like: * How will this import improve the community mapping effort? * Would it perhaps be better to mix and match this data at the rendering stage, rather than adding it to OSM, since this data is unlikely to be edited by anyone anyway? (An extreme example for this is height contours - nobody would dream of uploading them into OSM, yet many a novice will mistakenly think it has to go into OSM to be on the map, right?) * Would it perhaps be better to stick this data into a WMS/WFS/Snapshot server/... and offer it to the mapper community as an additional data source instead of importing it outright? I think that, when confronted with new third-party data sources, many people have a knee-jerk let's import that reaction which experienced OSMers should counterbalance by asking questions like the above. I would be happy if your working group would embrace this idea and find a name that doesn't explicitly say imports - what we need is people who help with the responsible use of third party data for the benefit of OSM - which might occasionally mean an import, but many other things as well. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
To me, imports are any bulk transfer of data from an existing data source into OSM. They can be big (10's of 1000's of nodes) or small (10-40 nodes); they can be mechanized, curated (reviewed by eye and hand), or otherwise. I'm not sure a different name will help other than to create a faux taxonomy. If it looks like a duck * How will this import improve the community mapping effort? This first question might best be asked last, as much of the answer to this questions should be contained in answers to questions about the targeted import data and planned import process. Plus, asking this first is fairly aggressive. Someone has taken the time to get involved in OSM, to identify a data set, and to come forward to ask permission. Clearly, they have some idea that this would be beneficial. Listen first. Hear them out. Presume innocence. Last, this is a qualitative, subjective question with widely varying opinions and interpretations across the OSM community. Why derail the review on first question? * Would it perhaps be better to mix and match this data at the rendering stage, rather than adding it to OSM, since this data is unlikely to be edited by anyone anyway? (An extreme example for this is height contours - nobody would dream of uploading them into OSM, yet many a novice will mistakenly think it has to go into OSM to be on the map, right?) * Would it perhaps be better to stick this data into a WMS/WFS/Snapshot server/... and offer it to the mapper community as an additional data source instead of importing it outright? This is a great question. OSM could help inform potential importers prepare for this question by describing what types of data OSM *is* good at - e.g. roads, buildings, addresses, POIs, land *areas*, whatever I think that, when confronted with new third-party data sources, many people have a knee-jerk let's import that reaction which experienced OSMers should counterbalance by asking questions like the above. To improve efficiency and reduce frustration, we should document those questions so that the people planning an import have a chance to prepare answers to the questions before submitting ideas to the committee. I'll be adding many of the questions from this recent thread to the wiki (not that that's the perfect answer... just to record the data outside of email archives...) On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 8:21 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: Frederik, On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 11:16 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: I'm keen on the import process including a number of exit lanes - it should ask questions like: questions like: We talked about this a bit last night; I agree. Many times an import isn't useful for one or another reason. It could be license related, or data quality, or the data doesn't belong in OSM, etc. I would be happy if your working group would embrace this idea and find a name that doesn't explicitly say imports - what we need is people who help with the responsible use of third party data for the benefit of OSM - which might occasionally mean an import, but many other things as well. Name ideas welcome. I was hoping that large automated imports (like the tiger expansion) would be included, but maybe you're saying they're separate problems? - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us -- Jeff Meyer Global World History Atlas www.gwhat.org j...@gwhat.org 206-676-2347 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:42 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: [...] So I'm proposing a new committee, run by the US Chapter, to help guide imports and large edits. [...] What do folks think? Excellent idea and a good time to do it. Cleaning up the wiki around US-related imports should be among the first tasks, and bringing together all the lessons learned from imports to date. -Josh ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
On 12/17/12 9:42 AM, Serge Wroclawski wrote: When I helped create the US Chapter several years ago, this was one of the main reasons I thought it should exist, but I think there's finally the amount of data and interest to justify it. What do folks think? i think it's a necessary step, thanks for working to move it forward. richard ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Interesting idea… trying to wrap my mind around this. On Dec 17, 2012, at 9:42 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: So I'm proposing a new committee, run by the US Chapter, to help guide imports and large edits. What specifically would this committee (or point person or whatever it might be) offer? I'm asking this question as I'm thinking that our problem for guiding imports properly is quite simply this: time and/or money. Making a new committe won't solve either of these problems, but being very specific about what a more formal process would bring us could help us find the proper resources (likely volunteer resources but maybe we need to think bigger). This will give step by step guidance to those who want to import data, and offer the larger community time to review and provide feedback. I've seen that in the recent Mass GIS import there was broad feedback on the proposed import, I'm assuming that a mailing list based feedback process like that will continue to be a good idea in the future. What will a committee add to this process? Or how will it facilitate it? Can we describe the problem areas that arise when doing imports in more concrete terms so that we can delineate better what such a committee would do for us? Alex Barth http://twitter.com/lxbarth tel (+1) 202 250 3633 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Two more quesions just came to my mind: - Are there any volunteers who would love to run with guiding imports better? - Would also love to learn Jason Remillard's perspective of what could be done better given that he's in the middle of working on the MassGIS building import :) On Dec 17, 2012, at 9:42 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: Folks, I know what it's like to be excited about OSM, and I know what it's like to be frustrated with OSM, struggling with low data quality, or lack of data altogether. And then you get access to a large dataset, and you know that having it in OSM would improve things. It would improve the quality, and maybe even get people mapping. At the same time, I think many of you have seen the damage that bad imports can do. The result is that folks like myself and others are frustrated by the import process, and folks who have good, useful datasets are frstrated by the import process. So I'm proposing a new committee, run by the US Chapter, to help guide imports and large edits. This will give step by step guidance to those who want to import data, and offer the larger community time to review and provide feedback. When I helped create the US Chapter several years ago, this was one of the main reasons I thought it should exist, but I think there's finally the amount of data and interest to justify it. What do folks think? - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us Alex Barth http://twitter.com/lxbarth tel (+1) 202 250 3633 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 6:42 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: This will give step by step guidance to those who want to import data, and offer the larger community time to review and provide feedback. On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 7:16 AM, Josh Doe j...@joshdoe.com wrote: Excellent idea and a good time to do it. Cleaning up the wiki around US-related imports should be among the first tasks, and bringing together all the lessons learned from imports to date. -Josh What is stopping these this from happening without a committee? I appreciate the interest in reducing import frustration all around, but there's nothing stopping the wiki from being cleaned up in a way that fosters group discussion and there's nothing stopping people from turning lessons learned into well-defined rules. From the above example, what's the appropriate amount of time for the community to review the data? That seems like something we could define without a committee. I'm not saying we shouldn't have a committee, but I believe process definition - and not organizational structure is our current biggest issue with imports. Serge - thanks for taking the lead in bringing this idea forward. - Jeff -- Jeff Meyer Global World History Atlas www.gwhat.org j...@gwhat.org 206-676-2347 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Alex, You're asking good questions. Instead of trying to answer them point by point, let me try instead to give you a comprehensive answer. The community (US and broader worldwide community) have issues with imports. I won't rehash those issues now- we can do that another time but what we have are a lot of people, especially older, more respected members of the community, who are very anti-import. And on the other side, we have some really nice data resources. How do we bring these two together in a way that makes sense. And by make sense, I mean doesn't cause the kinds of problems that imports have caused in our past, which are well documented. We've tried documentation, but documentation alone hasn't worked. It's been partial and difficult to maintain and a bit hap-hazard. For the maintainers, it's difficult and frustrating and for the importers, it's vague and a bit confusing. The same goes for formalizing the process, which is just another way of saying documentation, but sounding more fancy. I'm suggesting a different approach, one where you have a proposed importer saying I have this data, they then take it to a committee/working group who has been blessed by the community to help with this process. They evaluate the data (license, quality, suitability, etc.) and then if it makes sense, work with the person making the import to get it done. That can mean documenting it, making sure the data is properly formatted, figuring out if there are conflation steps necessary to be taken, etc. Because this committee will be doing this somewhat frequently, and with a mandate of proper documentation to be presented to the US Chapter Board, then documentation will come out of it, born out of the actual experiences of the group, so it should be more concise, more practical, and more concise. The community gets a group of motivated people who want to make imports happen (where it makes sense). Importers get a process, and someone to work with. The board (and the US Community, as well as the larger OSM community) gets accountability. Does that answer your question? - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Jeff Meyer wrote On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 6:42 AM, Serge Wroclawski lt; emacsen@ gt; wrote: What is stopping these this from happening without a committee? Probably nothing. Although a committee might not strictly be necessary, it can give an additional boost of motivation and sense of responsibility to get through times when the work is necessary but less rewarding. It can also make things easier (better defined) for people with data to approach the committee rather than random individuals. But really, from the OSMF committees I have worked on, they are mostly just a bunch of people that would be doing things anyway now meet regularly on irc instead of on an random and adhoc basis. So it really doesn't make much of a difference and so if it helps with motivation, one might as well. Overall, I think it is a great idea. It seems clear that in general the US community is in favor and is (and has been) going down the direction of large scale imports. As imports are technically challenging and difficult, it is great to see if technically capable people deeply routed in the community take charge of the import process to ensure that they are done to the highest technical standard, instead of just standing on the sidelines and complaining that imports are bad and leaving the imports to people who are less familiar with the community standards and tools doing it anyway. Which leads to the poor execution of imports we have unfortunately seen so often in the past. Kai -- View this message in context: http://gis.19327.n5.nabble.com/Imports-and-Mass-Edits-in-the-US-tp5740698p5740730.html Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Serge, This is a good idea. I have a large file of data from the Acoma tribe, but my efforts to negotiate the import wiki have been fruitless. I can't made heads or tails of it. Further, I don't know if it's the kind of data we want (though they say it is public domain and gave permission in writing). It is road center lines for the whole reservation. I remember a remark somewhere in this forum that center lines are not the best data. At any rate, I'm not a good judge of whether or not it is what we want. In addition, I've already done work on the main roads, though often I'm lacking a name or number. And, I don't have tools to exmine a data file to see if it is congruent with what OSM can use. So, for many reasons, having a knowledgeable group take this on seems to me like a great idea. Best, Charlotte At 06:42 AM 12/17/2012, you wrote: Folks, I know what it's like to be excited about OSM, and I know what it's like to be frustrated with OSM, struggling with low data quality, or lack of data altogether. And then you get access to a large dataset, and you know that having it in OSM would improve things. It would improve the quality, and maybe even get people mapping. At the same time, I think many of you have seen the damage that bad imports can do. The result is that folks like myself and others are frustrated by the import process, and folks who have good, useful datasets are frstrated by the import process. So I'm proposing a new committee, run by the US Chapter, to help guide imports and large edits. This will give step by step guidance to those who want to import data, and offer the larger community time to review and provide feedback. When I helped create the US Chapter several years ago, this was one of the main reasons I thought it should exist, but I think there's finally the amount of data and interest to justify it. What do folks think? - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us Charlotte Wolter 927 18th Street Suite A Santa Monica, California 90403 +1-310-597-4040 techl...@techlady.com Skype: thetechlady The Four Internet Freedoms Freedom to visit any site on the Internet Freedom to access any content or service that is not illegal Freedom to attach any device that does not interfere with the network Freedom to know all the terms of a service, particularly any that would affect the first three freedoms. ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Hi, On 17.12.2012 19:55, Kai Krueger wrote: it is great to see if technically capable people deeply routed in the community take charge of the import process to ensure that they are done to the highest technical standard That is one thing. Another thing that will usually distinguish an acceptable import from those, quote we have unfortunately seen so often in the past. is also the relationship of the person doing the import with the land. You will get better results if someone imports his own city quarter than if you allow him to import a whole county he's never set foot in, for two reasons - (a) he's familiar with what he's importing and has a better chance to spot problems; (b) he's more likely to actually care for what he's importing. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
The result is that folks like myself and others are frustrated by the import process, and folks who have good, useful datasets are frstrated by the import process. [import/mechanical-edit committee proposal] I agree with your broad sentiments. Having observed some recent discussion, I think we have two fundamental problems: 1) the import guidelines don't adequately describe what is actually expected (reasonably so) by the more experienced people 2) people who want to import are very enthusiastic and often do not fully appreciate the difficulty of doing it right and the benefits of review and care, and aech new would-be importer needs to have the norms communicated to them I have a concern that while there is wide agreement that imports must be careful, there is also a view (which I perceive to be a minority view) that all imports are harmful. For the committee and import with care effort to be socially successful, I think it has to be separated from the do not import at all view. I think your note expresses that separation (or rather, only expresses the view that imports must be done with care, and I am speculating that you did that on purpose), but I wanted to mention this explicitly. I realize my proposals below may come across as strict, but I am actually in favor of careful imports of high-quality data, when done by people with a sense of stewardship for the affected area. (I'm in Massachusetts, and most of the MassGIS data is very high quality, so that's my implicit reference point.) So I am not trying to stop imports; rather, I think that with more care and especially more delays for review, we'll get a better outcome in terms of the ratio of map utiltity to total volunteer time. My thinking is heavily influenced by the experience of leading a ~20-person software team, with a loose analogy of preparing changes on branches and then merging to master with approval. I know imported data isn't software, but in terms of preparing bits and then changing the shared code/data base, I think it's quite analagous. Overall I suggest three concrete steps: 1) document the actual expectations on the wiki. Specifically a) The conversion process has to be described well enough to be considered High Level Design from a software viewpoint so that someone else could write the conversion scripts. This should address datum/projection issues. Most importantly, it should address how the import avoids new data that conflicts with old data. The plan should describe which tools will be used to put the data in the main database b) The actual data to be uploaded (with all pre-upload cleanup actually done, not the notion that each file will get manual cleanup before uploading) has to be posted for review. c) No data can be uploaded until the per-import page has met the standards, and the scripts and converted data that will be uploaded has been published, and there's been a 14 day review period, which is reset by any substantive change in the page or any change in the script or data. d) (probably) the data should be uploaded to some test server (assuming there is one) so that people can see what happens in the database and with rendering. Each person doing uploads should be expected to do the test server upload. e) Once the two weeks have passed, and there is rough consensus that the plan and data are adequate, a small amount of data (but bigger than can be examined 100% by hand) can be uploaded. The idea is to have something that is not that big in case there is trouble, but for which the process will be representative of the rest. An example would be a single town in Massachusetts, with thousands of buildings or address points or hundreds of roads. f) After the initial small upload, there is another 14 day review period, during which people can find issues with the data. If there are significant issues, the proposal, script and data should be fixed, and the 14-day review period in step c starts anew 2) Add the notion that when people talk about imports, the committee contacts them privately and makes sure they really understand point 1. Probably also a public note in response, briefer. Someone from the committee should stay in touch about judging when the consensus in (e) has happened. Overall, aside from documenting the norms, I see this as the main job of the committee. 3) For areas where it makes sense, consider sending private messages via the web site to registered active mappers in the area. For example, if after the MassGIS buildings import entered the 14-day review period (where all concerns had been met), it might make sense to message every Mass mapper who has edited in the last 90 days and point out the wiki page and that it's being discussed on
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Hi, There are some technical issues that make imports more complicated than needed. First is the entire user account thing. I don't understand why it is needed. If something gets screwed up, either way, we are reverting the change set. Besides discouraging people form the import, I don't know we benefit it brings. It is like a residual limb that we needed before we had change sets, but keep seem to bring ourselves to let it go. The second technical issue that the apparent JOSM will upload a large change set that can't be easily reverted. It would be good, if ether JOSM would chop up large changes below the actual change set limit, or the 50K limit eliminated on the server side. Not being able to revert something in JOSM is a big issue. We can't be all relaxed about things if we can't do reverts. Some people think all imports are are bad, some are just worried they will be screwed up, in either case the result is the same, a hostile mob waiting for you on lists. This has the effect of driving most of the constructive import discussion off list. For my import, 80% of the useful feedback was off list in private emails because people don't want to deal with the rude behavior in the list. I made a bunch of decisions that might seem weird to people that just follow the list. But I assure you that I cared a whole lot what the 4 people who signed up actually help thought about all of the issues. For example, I was upset/surprised today that Greg said we went too fast. I had to weight peoples opinions on the list much lower because they don't have any skin in the game (not helping do the work, not from MA, they have an agenda contrary to the project goal, and they are not in the loop). Regardless, this is not that much fun, why go through this. If you setup a user group to help with the imports, I think it will be overrun with people that don't like all imports or are terrified of them being screwed up. It will be like the UN human rights committee. More hostility, but now with an official sounding group name. In a sane world, there would be mappers that would be dedicated to imports. They would build up expertise in licensing, data conversion, batch imports, large scale reverts, OSM processes, merging, efficiently communicating with locals, etc. However, if you came out and said I do only imports, you would be getting hazed by the two groups of people all of the time. Does not sound like fun to me. This is my most important point. The map in US is not mature. We need people right now more than we need a good map. I would accept a screwed map of MA in the short term in return for 20 new dedicated MA mappers. We should be optimizing everything we do to get more help, and if the map needs to get screwed up occasionally to accomplish that I am 110% OK with that tradeoff. This project is not going to take in the US without a ton more mappers. The population of MA, is 6.5 million people. My little tiny itty bitty state is larger than Denmark, Slovakia, Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Latvia, ,etc, etc. I am not sure we even have 25 active mappers in the state. Until the people that are still angry about the tiger import from 5 years ago let it go, and the people that are scared of screw ups, decided that right now, building the community is more important than the map, nothing is going to change. I think we are likely stuck in this rut for a long while. I might as well be wishing for world peace. Jason. On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 11:50 AM, Alex Barth a...@mapbox.com wrote: Two more quesions just came to my mind: - Are there any volunteers who would love to run with guiding imports better? - Would also love to learn Jason Remillard's perspective of what could be done better given that he's in the middle of working on the MassGIS building import :) On Dec 17, 2012, at 9:42 AM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: Folks, I know what it's like to be excited about OSM, and I know what it's like to be frustrated with OSM, struggling with low data quality, or lack of data altogether. And then you get access to a large dataset, and you know that having it in OSM would improve things. It would improve the quality, and maybe even get people mapping. At the same time, I think many of you have seen the damage that bad imports can do. The result is that folks like myself and others are frustrated by the import process, and folks who have good, useful datasets are frstrated by the import process. So I'm proposing a new committee, run by the US Chapter, to help guide imports and large edits. This will give step by step guidance to those who want to import data, and offer the larger community time to review and provide feedback. When I helped create the US Chapter several years ago, this was one of the main reasons I thought it should exist, but I think there's finally the amount of data and interest to justify it. What do folks think? - Serge
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: If you setup a user group to help with the imports, I think it will be overrun with people that don't like all imports or are terrified of them being screwed up. I haven't received any negative feedback about this committe except for yours, so I think maybe your judgement's a bit premature. It will be like the UN human rights committee. More hostility, but now with an official sounding group name. In a sane world, there would be mappers that would be dedicated to imports. You seem to have your mind made up about a group that hasn't had its first meeting. They would build up expertise in licensing, data conversion, batch imports, large scale reverts, OSM processes, merging, efficiently communicating with locals, etc. However, if you came out and said I do only imports, you would be getting hazed by the two groups of people all of the time. Does not sound like fun to me. Only do things you enjoy, so if it doesn't sound like fun to you, then I say don't join. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Hi Serge, You are tougher man than me :-) How about this, nobody on the committee that has not personally done at least 1 large import. If you do that, I am happy. Like I said, these imports require a bunch of specialized skills, it would be good to build up an expertise in it. Thanks Jason. On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:38 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: If you setup a user group to help with the imports, I think it will be overrun with people that don't like all imports or are terrified of them being screwed up. I haven't received any negative feedback about this committe except for yours, so I think maybe your judgement's a bit premature. It will be like the UN human rights committee. More hostility, but now with an official sounding group name. In a sane world, there would be mappers that would be dedicated to imports. You seem to have your mind made up about a group that hasn't had its first meeting. They would build up expertise in licensing, data conversion, batch imports, large scale reverts, OSM processes, merging, efficiently communicating with locals, etc. However, if you came out and said I do only imports, you would be getting hazed by the two groups of people all of the time. Does not sound like fun to me. Only do things you enjoy, so if it doesn't sound like fun to you, then I say don't join. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Hi Serge , I am sorry for being negative. I am feeling grumpy from the building import ruckus, I probably just need to take break from this for bit. The US import process is clearly borked right now, and I will support 110% you and anybody that is trying to fix it. Please ignore my snarky email(s) and accept my apologies. Thanks Jason. On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 10:07 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Serge, You are tougher man than me :-) How about this, nobody on the committee that has not personally done at least 1 large import. If you do that, I am happy. Like I said, these imports require a bunch of specialized skills, it would be good to build up an expertise in it. Thanks Jason. On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:38 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: If you setup a user group to help with the imports, I think it will be overrun with people that don't like all imports or are terrified of them being screwed up. I haven't received any negative feedback about this committe except for yours, so I think maybe your judgement's a bit premature. It will be like the UN human rights committee. More hostility, but now with an official sounding group name. In a sane world, there would be mappers that would be dedicated to imports. You seem to have your mind made up about a group that hasn't had its first meeting. They would build up expertise in licensing, data conversion, batch imports, large scale reverts, OSM processes, merging, efficiently communicating with locals, etc. However, if you came out and said I do only imports, you would be getting hazed by the two groups of people all of the time. Does not sound like fun to me. Only do things you enjoy, so if it doesn't sound like fun to you, then I say don't join. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
Re: [Talk-us] Imports and Mass Edits in the US
Jason - Would you be interested in joining the import / large edit committee? Given how you just went through a pretty ad-hoc import process it would be great to have your concrete input. I'm seeing this committee as preliminary and exploratory. We don't have the answers yet. I'd love the committee to be constructive, forward looking and iterative. It ideally focuses in a first phase on aiding imports that are in the planning phase (would not include the ongoing MassGIS work) while parallelly building up solid guidelines for the US community and a plan to make this work sustainable. On Dec 17, 2012, at 10:30 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Serge , I am sorry for being negative. I am feeling grumpy from the building import ruckus, I probably just need to take break from this for bit. The US import process is clearly borked right now, and I will support 110% you and anybody that is trying to fix it. Please ignore my snarky email(s) and accept my apologies. Thanks Jason. On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 10:07 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: Hi Serge, You are tougher man than me :-) How about this, nobody on the committee that has not personally done at least 1 large import. If you do that, I am happy. Like I said, these imports require a bunch of specialized skills, it would be good to build up an expertise in it. Thanks Jason. On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:38 PM, Serge Wroclawski emac...@gmail.com wrote: On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 9:15 PM, Jason Remillard remillard.ja...@gmail.com wrote: If you setup a user group to help with the imports, I think it will be overrun with people that don't like all imports or are terrified of them being screwed up. I haven't received any negative feedback about this committe except for yours, so I think maybe your judgement's a bit premature. It will be like the UN human rights committee. More hostility, but now with an official sounding group name. In a sane world, there would be mappers that would be dedicated to imports. You seem to have your mind made up about a group that hasn't had its first meeting. They would build up expertise in licensing, data conversion, batch imports, large scale reverts, OSM processes, merging, efficiently communicating with locals, etc. However, if you came out and said I do only imports, you would be getting hazed by the two groups of people all of the time. Does not sound like fun to me. Only do things you enjoy, so if it doesn't sound like fun to you, then I say don't join. - Serge ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us Alex Barth http://twitter.com/lxbarth tel (+1) 202 250 3633 ___ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
