On Thu, Mar 12, 2009 at 5:36 PM, Russ Nelson <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mar 12, 2009, at 7:43 AM, Ted Mielczarek wrote: >> . However, I reject the idea that there is any data that belongs in >> OSM that "makes no sense to edit". If you can't edit it, then by >> definition it shouldn't be in a wiki-style map. > > No one has been able to refute my claim that if someone would enter it > by hand, it belongs in OSM regardless of its source. And if it comes > from surveyed data, then it makes no sense to edit its position. > Metadata, perhaps. But unless you've been out in the field with a > theolodite, you have no business changing the location of the NYS DEC > Lands position.
So my point of view is that there's no place for data in OSM that can't be collected and/or maintained by the community. Data imports of things that we can otherwise collect are useful bootstraps. But if we don't have the ability to verify/improve/dispute/resolve problems about it, whether through technical means or issues of authoritiveness, then there's not much point in it being there. So I think there's absolutely no point in this boundary data being put into OSM, since you have described how it's logically impossible for us to either maintain it or collect it or dispute it. It's not that it's technically impossible. We have trained surveyors amongst the community, and I'm sure we could rustle up a theodolite if needs be. But if we collect evidence of boundaries that disagree with the dataset, and therefore by definition it's our evidence that's incorrect, then we've lost already. OSM isn't a dumping ground for unmaintainable datasets, they can be kept elsewhere and combined at another point in the toolchain. Cheers, Andy _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
