On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 10:22 PM, Frederik Ramm <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, > > Russ Nelson wrote: >> On Mar 9, 2009, at 3:07 PM, Matthew Toups wrote: >>> If we can't change the data, what's the point of having it in OSM? >> >> Having consistent metadata and a consistent single-source API. > > That's exactly what I said in my first reply: > > Once OSM and its tool chain are established, everyone is going to want > to have their data in OSM. ("Because then I only have to change my style > file and the data is there on my map, instead of having to think about > how to download it from elsewhere.") > > Which is ok, even desired, as long as the data is relevant and unless > you consider the data your property that nobody must change. > > The power of OSM is not the API but the people. If you don't want the > people then don't misuse our API to store your data just because it > makes it easier for you to generate nice maps. > > By all means, set up another server with the OSM API running on it where > you hand out accounts only to those who are privileged enough to change > immutable data and adapt your toolchain to query both servers. (Or > generally adapt the OSM toolchain to work with multiple servers.) > > I am absolutely sure that the dataset in question will, like any other > dataset on the planet, contain errors. And if we find erroneous data in > OSM, and know better, we will fix it in OSM, rather than asking some > authority to please correct their data and then have a fixed update half > a year later. > > There are a number of things one could do when working with such > official data. As 80n has suggested, the data could be tagged and > editors could make the user aware of the fact that someone was of the > opinion that this data should not be changed and whether he's sure of > what he's doing. It would also be possible to write software that works > in a web-of-trust kind of way: "Extract these boundaries from OSM but > only accept changes from users I trust; if other users have changed the > data then go back in history until you find a change done by a trusted > user". So anyone who is keen on extracting the "official" view rather > than what OSM mappers made of it could do so. > > The cool thing about this is that it would follow OSM's mantra of > filtering on the output side, not on the input side. The output you get > would depend on which people you trust; whereas what you had been > suggesting would be to just discard, in the database, everything done by > people you don't trust. > > I maintain that it would be totally inacceptable to OSM to automatically > revert changes to objects that are deemed "immutable".
+1 Reminds me a lot of the discussions about SRTM data. There's no point in importing it into OSM since it's not community-editable (and it's authoritative in its own context), but we've written tools to convert it into OSM format for easier use. But we don't confuse the on-the-wire-format with which db / project it should be sourced from. Cheers, Andy _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
