[Geodata] wiki-nature geodata aggregators

[David William Bitner]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 9:25 AM, Arnulf Christl <
arnulf.christl at wheregroup.com> wrote:

>
> > I'll also add that just because a geodata set has a stamp or
> > "authority", and some apparent quality assurance process, does not
> > mean that the resulting data is any better, or the process any more
> > full proof, than the many eyes approach of OSM.
>
> True. At the same time for some it does make a difference whether an
> authority of some kind stamps information or not. OSGeo may well (be)
> develop(ed) into a kind of authority because it is not ...
>

Often times when liability is concerned sometimes -- often more wrongly than
right -- it is necessary to use an "official" version of something merely
for the reason that you can then pass-the-buck if there are problems.  Along
the same lines, when you are doing work that could end up in a courtroom or
more simply end up getting questioned or audited or .... it is necessary to
build off something that is at least a snapshot such that those who are
questioning/auditing/whatevering you can go back and recreate your work from
the same version of the data that you had used.

As with source code, versioning, having snapshots, sometimes having a branch
away from trunk that gets released (think a snapshot of OSM at a certain
time that has been deemed by a local authority as acceptable for planning
work and tagged as such) can be very valuable things that can help to bridge
the gap between the "wilds" of crowd sourcing and the need for control of
"official" datasets.  Along with this,  as an entity considers tagging a
blessed version for whatever purpose, as the trunk continues to change,
having good "diff" tools becomes important for the authorities such that
they can monitor what is changing and can respond accordingly (accepting the
edits, going back in and saying "no, we surveyed this with super new fangled
gadget and know that it is right" etc).
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