Hi all Since 4 April 2017, an OpenStreetMapper has been using Glenn's tool to systematically import GRB buildings into OpenStreetMap in select places in East-Flanders. There are severe issues though: * They haven't taken care to preserve history, instead removing all existing buildings. * They have imported outdated data like demolished buildings that had already been removed from OSM. * The integration with existing other data was also not quite good. As an example, you can find road going through buildings. * Also just plainly bad data has been imported, like the tags "building=chemise installatie", "building=overbrugging", "building=brugpijler"...
The import instructions have not been followed, so the GRB import in itself, nor Glenn's tool, are to blame for this. Also note that the import has not been officially started yet. A formal proposal and approval process has yet to take place. It's clear that ideally those edits should never have happened. Reverting them comes to mind. I discussed this on the osm-be Matrix channel and I have already reverted the changesets done in July. It's desirable to have the other stuff, starting April, reverted as well. I found and adapted a script that automates the reversion process, so this is actually no effort at all. But that's also what makes me suspicious. By having done "manual" reversions with JOSM's revertor plugin, I know that there can be conflicts. I've inspected places that I thought would be problematic after reverting, but they're all right. I'm still not entirely confident though. You can help check them. Take a look at the extents of the reverts in my history[1][2]. Changesets with comment "revert bad GRB import" were done with the tool, those with comment "revert ... changesets from ... to ..." were done with the JOSM revertor plugin. I'm particularly interested in the results of the tool's reversions, as that's what I would use for any further actions. You can use Achavi[3] to find out what exactly has changed in each changeset. Take care, however, to also look at what *hasn't* changed. The concrete matter for which I submit this RFC (request for comments): “Should we (1) revert further and then clean up, or (2) never revert any further and start cleaning up now, or (3) do something else?” As for communicating this to the mapper, Joost has written a message on one of the changesets explaining what's going on. We want this to be a learning experience for everyone and not scare anyone away. We might have to repeat the message if more reversions happen, since the revertor script leaves a comment on each changeset it reverts. That means that by now the mapper will have received around 100 mails. [1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/M!dgard/history [2] permalink to a plain list, without a map: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/M!dgard/history?list=0&max_id=50728501 [3] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Achavi#Bookmarklet Kind regards Ruben _______________________________________________ Talk-be mailing list Talk-be@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-be
