I believe that imports into the Austraklian OSM data have been both of the good and bad kinds and have therefore both benifited but also detracted from the project and the community.
If the data can be easily collected and mapped by survey, then importing it is always a very bad idea and OSM just becomes a dumping ground for low quality data. If the data is not easily collected by survey then importing it is probably a good idea, subject to certain restrictions. OK - first the good imports. The ABS data for suburbs and coastlines was a good thing for OSM since they appear to be high quality and are not easily to collect by survey. However I really wish that people would not glue them to roads, rivers etc. This is the similar problem to people gluing landuse polygons to roads which has already made the Canberra OSM map well nigh uneditable. Also, gluing ABS data to OSM data will make it very difficult to import the next, improved and updated ABS data. Now for the bad imports. 1) Gas station data. Although I have no interest in verifying fixing or maintaining any imported data, I thought I'd better check out the Queanbeyan imported data. I noticed that OSM now had a petrol station right next to the fire station. I knew this to be wrong so, after a quick drive past to make sure no one had built a new station the previous night,I deleted the bogus OSM data. I appears that the data providers had mistaken the address (from memory, 2 Lowe Street rather than the correct 46-48 Lowe Street) then geocoded it from somewhere and then published the wrong data. If someone had used the OSM data to try to find the nearest petrol station, they'd probably have run out of gas before they even got near it. 2) Weather station data. I checked the one that the imported data said was in Queanbeyan and it came as absolutely no surprise to me that it was no longer there. I belive that a few decades ago it way well have been there (in the grounds of a ladies bowling club). Canberra Bridges - the case for "survey it, if at all possible" Since it is relatively trivial to convert any amount of ACT grid co-ordinates to WSG84 geographic co-ordinates, I could have easily imported the ACT bridge date straight into OSM. Howevewr this would have been a bad import. I'm only about half way through visiting and photographing the number plates on the 900 or so bridges but already I have come across about two dozen cases where the official data is probably incorrect a) bridges that are no longer there b) missing bridges c) bridges position is wrong d) number plates are on wrong bridge (or data is transposed) I am notifyig the ACT Government of these issues so eventually OSM and the Govt will both have good data. To be fair, the Govt is in the process of fixing their bridge data since they have also reclassified what constitues a bridge. Similarly I could easily import the BBQ list but once I've finished the bridges, I'll then visit all the BBQs (theres only about a hundred of them so it shouldn't take too long. I really hope no one imports the Australian Toilet map date. It suggests that there is only one public toilet in Queanbeyan, which is a long way from reality.
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