On 11 February 2010 12:24, Frederik Ramm <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hi, > > (I'm hijacking this thread which Nic started about legalities of imports > on legal-talk, and moving over to talk) > > Nic Roets wrote: > > My suggestion is that we should have a fixed, but simple procedure for > > users who import data: > > I think that every import should start with a deliberation on whether to > import *at all*. > > Currently, I have the impression that many people are very trigger-happy > when it comes to importing data. I believe that is running the risk of > making OSM into one giant data rubbish dump. > > The old-style GIS community is currently working on several projects > that collect what they call "metadata" - basically, because they know > that there are so many different people with so many different data > sets, they are working on ways to describe these datasets in a way that > hopefully enables intelligent clients to present data retrieved from all > of them as one coherent data set. > > This is of course extremely difficult and introduces many problems that > one does not have when using just one huge database instead of thousands > of different databases. But since many datasets are not static, you > cannot simply grab them and pour them into one large database and be happy. > > What does this mean for our data imports? > > Data that is externally "owned" and maintained should not be imported, > with the following exceptions: > > * if the data is so important for us (usu. as the foundation for other > crowdsourced stuff) that we'd rather have and outdated version of it in > OSM than nothing at all; > * if we are confident that we, the OSM community, will do a better, more > reliable, more thorough, and more timely job in updating the information > than the original owner (this includes cases where the original owner > has ceased maintenance); > * if he are confident that we can easily synchronize our database with > any updates made by the original owner to his data set. > > In all other cases it would be *much* more desirable to establish better > mechanisms of merging OSM data with that other data in preparation for > map drawing etc., rather than pulling it all in and having it rot. > > I would very much like to develop a kind of "litmus test" for imports, > and get the message across that not every import is a good import (even > if legally spotless). Today, even newcomers to OSM sometimes seem > hell-bent on importing large quantities of data just because they can. I > would like to remind people that OSM has a very lively culture of > surveying data - and I'd rather have 1 sq km surveyed by a newbie than > 100 sq km imported. > +1 globally. Emilie Laffray
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