On Mar 14, 2016, at 8:36 PM, Mike Thompson <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
I support the careful import of high quality data whose license is
compatible with OSM. Those appears to be one of those cases. I
believe the existence of high quality data will aid in the
recruitment of new mappers and will encourage high quality
contributions from those mappers. It is much easier, and less
daunting, to add additional detail from an on-the-ground survey to
some high quality data than it is to start from scratch. People also
like to be associated with successful projects, and the more high
quality data we have the more successful we will be in the eyes of
potential new mappers.
Mike
On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 8:46 PM, Kevin Kenny <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Since I received only a total of three comments about this idea,
one strongly negative (from Frederik Ramm) and two only lukewarm
in support, I'm forced to conclude that this proposal has no
chance of gaining a broad community support. Consider it withdrawn.
I find myself somewhat frustrated about the question of how to
recruit mappers when it appears that the map has such a paucity
of data that it will never become useful solely through the
effort of volunteer mappers. I can demonstrate the map at
http://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html, and state that OSM
is one of many data sources that go into it, but when people go
to openstreetmap.org <http://openstreetmap.org/> and look at it,
my experience is that they lose the connection entirely between
the data that OSM has and the map that OSM enables. The huge
blank area is too intimidating for my friends, it appears!
The fact that we apparently cannot use data that are not our own
in presenting our public face, together with the fact that we do
not wish to import data for which OSM will not become the
authoritative source, leaves us with an impoverished public
appearance outside the cities where streets are sparse. Perhaps
this is outside OSM's ambit. It is, after all, Open STREET Map.
It seems to leave, however, very limited pathways for citizen
mappers to build on what the government has done. Few mappers can
manage to produce such a map under their own steam, and I
certainly don't have the bandwidth - either personal or network -
to support that map as a public resource out of a solo project.
I'm really at a loss where to go from here.
Kevin Kenny
On 02/28/2016 11:42 PM, Kevin Kenny wrote:
Oops: Just realized I originally sent this reply privately:
meant to send to the list.
On 02/27/2016 05:18 PM, Frederik Ramm wrote:
An import is great if it enables a community to go
further, or forms the
basis of solid work in the future. An import is great if
it is one
ingredient that makes OSM the best map of the region. But
it sounds to
me as if your proposed import is hardly more than a small
time saver for
people who want to make maps of the Adirondack - they
*could* go to the
original source at any time, and the likelihood of OSM
hydrography being
*better* than the official data is very low.
In my view, a good import is a catalyst for future OSM
data improvement.
But you seem to say quite clearly that such is unlikely
to happen with
the data you are planning to import. Your main point is
that it'll look
better on the map, which for me isn't good enough.
Can you point to areas where your import would encourage
mappers,
including yourself, to add more knowledge and surveyed
data to OSM?
My personal interest is mostly from the standpoint of
improving OSM as a resource for hikers - and recruiting
citizen mappers to the task. Available databases of hiking
trail alignments are pretty poor. The USGS maps, once
stellar, have not been updated since the first Bush
administration, and keeping them up to date is no longer in
the USGS's charter. They have neither the mission nor the
funding to map hiking trails, shelters, campsites, privies,
viewpoints, and similar amenities. Mapping them falls on the
shoulders of private companies such as National Geographic,
and they are happy to sell us maps - even ones in electronic
format if we are extremely fortunate - of obsolete data of
the most popular areas. The less popular areas are entirely
neglected. If trail data are to be collected, it will have to
be citizen mappers that do it, and OSM is an obvious
repository for it. And none of that data is what I propose to
import.
Why, then, should I import what I don't plan to improve
substantially? When I've tried to recruit my contacts in the
hiking community to mapping for OSM, when they see the state
of the tiles at openstreetmap.org
<http://openstreetmap.org/>, they are put off immediately.
"Why should I bother?" they say, "there's nothing there!"
Particularly before the import of lakes and ponds was done -
an import to which your argument equally applies - this
entire area simply appeared entirely featureless, with no
hope of using OSM to produce a map that could be helpful for
anyone.
When, on the other hand, I show them
https://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html?la=44.1232&lo=-73.9804&z=15
, they see a map that's already useful for navigating the
region, although deeply flawed in many ways. I can point out
that trails shown in magenta with their names in UPPER CASE
are from a State data set that is digitized at an
inappropriately large scale (and for that reason alone, even
before license concerns, I wouldn't propose importing it). I
can point out that a good many of the trail shelters,
privies, parking areas, register kiosks, viewpoints and
similar amenities are missing. I can tell hikers that they
can improve OSM by capturing that information. I can point
out that if enough of us do it as a community, we'll have
up-to-date maps that we can maintain as a community.
The approach has worked for me. For instance, I was able to
persuade a contact who was hiking the route shown with the
overlay in
https://kbk.is-a-geek.net/catskills/test3.html?la=44.1232&lo=-73.9804&z=15
to capture GPS data and contribute it. (The uploads show my
ID because I handled conflating it, simplifying the tracks,
vetting alignment against orthophotos, and similar
administrative tasks.)
OSM is really the only place where the data about trails and
associated amenities can be assembled properly, as far as I
can tell. The government agencies in the US have not had the
funding or authority to collate those data in over twenty
years. Web sites like alltrails.com <http://alltrails.com/>
are great for sharing your experience with a single route,
but don't really make any effort at all to assemble a map.
And the companies like National Geographic and DeLorme are
more than happy to sell our own data back to us at a premium
price, burden it with usage restrictions, and make it
available in formats that we cannot annotate and improve.
I don't have a good way to address your argument that data
whose authoritiative source is not OSM should not be imported
into OSM - and frankly, I mostly agree with it. I tend to
believe that the underlying problem is not what we choose to
import or not to import, but what we show to newcomers. I
believe that the maps we present to the public would be
improved if they included (at least optionally) layers
derived from government data sources that we taxpayers have
the right to use. You can see in the maps that I've presented
that I'm also using (and do NOT propose to import) National
Land Cover Database, National Elevation Dataset, USFWS
National Wetlands Inventory, and layers from the GIS
departments of several states. I'm also using National
Hydrographic Dataset - which has been imported with some
degree of success in regions other than mine. All of these
data sources fall in your hated category of "stuff that OSM
mappers can't readily maintain, for which some other source
will likely be more authoritiative."
Without these external layers, what we present in the tiles
is so sparse in some areas that I, at least, find it nearly
impossible to explain the value of OSM.
I chose the idea of pursuing an import because I haven't very
much hope of convincing anyone that our public face might
include non-OSM data sources. At least there is precedent for
importing government data into OSM; there is none for
non-OSM-derived layers on our tiles.
About the best argument that I can make about the specific
data is that the import should be "mostly harmless", because
physiography in a wilderness area is so slow to change. With
the exception that settlements, roads, railroads, farms and
mines have been reclaimed by nature, bridges have fallen, and
trails have been built and abandoned, a topographic map of
the region from 1916 would be nearly as useful as one from
2016. This is an area where "Man is a visitor who does not
remain."
--
73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin
_______________________________________________
Talk-us mailing list
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
_______________________________________________
Talk-us mailing list
[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
