> Wrong data is worse than absent data. Osm has so far only contained > current data, so that's what 99.99% of consumers expect to find in it, so > historical data is wrong data. That'll remain true as long as osm lacks a > good way to store historical data that doesn't confuse the vast majority > of users who are looking for current data.
I don't think so. Wrong data happens to Bing Maps, to Google Maps and probably to any other map we can obtain, electronically or in a paper. Maps have dates attached to them - or should have, most of the time. The fact is that: if I browse around my city, looking for streets and brindges created in the last fews years, I will see mistakes (as I did before). But it's better to have there what existed, as it was before, than have just an emptyness in the area. Until someone fix it (hopefully) or at least mark it as old, potentially wrong (without deleting until an update is made!). In the context being discussed here, recent changes should also cause data deletion, but that's wrong, in my opinion. Data may be *replaced* with newer data, with everything that's needed. If people are doing something that is fiercely against the community idea of OpenStreetMap, that it could be deleted. But that really seem far from the truth. So that should be preserved, and its deletion, if decided to be made, should give a reasonable opportunity for the data contributors to backup that data - so their work is not lost, but may be used somewhere else. Further, I'm not one of the users that would be confused with that. I would find it unsual to see in a map. But being tagged and noted somehow, should not be a problem at all. And to say the users who would be confused with it are the "majority of them", is an vague argument you do just to give some apparent strength to your idea. And I repeat: I would not be confused with it, I don't think the majority of users would be. -- Balaco P. S.: this mailing list does not add a "Reply-to" header to mail messages, as I'm used to. So I initially sent the answer to just one person. This should be changed - may it not confuse the majority of users!? On Sun, Aug 23, 2015, at 12:06, moltonel wrote: > > > On 23 August 2015 01:27:54 GMT+01:00, Balaco Baco <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> > What we need is a > >> > database that already has all the data and simply identify when > >some > >> > small elements of it cease to be current. > >> > >> In OSM we do that by deleting the small elements ;) > > > >I'm sorry. But this is just a stupid thing to do. To have no data and > >to > >have the most recently obtained data are two very different things. > > The most recently obtained data is that the objects are no longer here. > The 'no data' case matches no osm policy that i know, existing or > proposed. > > >With the first one you just end with something that isn't worth to ever > >try consulting because it may not have what you're looking for, so > >better not expend time with it. > > Wrong data is worse than absent data. Osm has so far only contained > current data, so that's what 99.99% of consumers expect to find in it, so > historical data is wrong data. That'll remain true as long as osm lacks a > good way to store historical data that doesn't confuse the vast majority > of users who are looking for current data. > > -- > Vincent Dp -- http://www.fastmail.com - The professional email service _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
