Serge,
First, I am among the majority of OSM members who do not
program or write code. Yet, we also contribute, heavily. I don't
think writing code makes one some kind of special contributor.
Second, I am aware that many thousands of hours of
volunteeer work went into this. I also know that we had to do it.
Still, there has been a great deal of damage in a major urban area.
As for open and transparent, with that I'm not so sure. It
may have been open and transparent if you know how to write code, but
I saw little nontechnical discussion. Those of us who use only
Potlatch were kind of on the sidelines.
It's not enough just to do a good job technically. The
process has to take into account the map in general and specific
instances, such as LA. We could have used a "blars bot" to process
work by that member who often simply changed or deleted TIGER data.
Anything to prevent the scale of damage that's there now.
So, now, what can be done to fix it? Are there tools? And
will they be publicized or will we have to find out about them
through side channels (which is how I found geofabrik.de)? The idea
of a tools that highlights places that have been changed seems like a
good start.
--C
At 09:19 AM 7/19/2012, you wrote:
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 11:05 AM, Charlotte Wolter
<[email protected]> wrote:
> This is very disappointing and, to my mind, wrongheaded. Poorly done!
When I see comments like this, I feel angry, because this bot came
from hard working volunteers who give up their valuable time. Not
only are these particular volunteers valuable for their mapping, but
also for their tireless work dealing with the worldwide politics of
the license transition, and of the very difficult technical issues
associated with fixing an entire planet's work of OpenStreetMap data.
The redaction isn't something that was dreamed up yesterday, but
represents years of discussion, a completely open and transparent
process, and months of codification and testing.
If you had constructive input to give, there was a well documented
time and place for that, or better yet would have been an offer to
contribute working code. Comments like this do nothing to further the
discussion or make any forward progress.
If you want to fix the map using TIGER data, TIGER 2011 tiles are
provided for remapping, or, better still would be on the ground
surveying.
As for the feasibility- most nations have been mapped with no
government provided data. If most of Europe, South America, Africa,
and developing nations can manage to map without government data, I
think the citizens of the nation's second most populated city can
manage.
- Serge
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Charlotte Wolter
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