<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt"><div>Well said Andrew.<br><br>I'll also add that just because a geodata set has a stamp or "authority", and some apparent <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1248637916_0">quality assurance</span> process, <br>does not mean that the resulting data is any better, or the process any more full proof, than the many eyes approach of OSM.<br>The "man behind the curtain" of authoritative geodata is that the processes are actually less comprehensive (a certain NMA<br>that shall remain nameless does not even track which individual surveyor & cartographer were responsible for which bits<br>of data) and often of lower quality. And that's with tremendous amount of more money and time than OSM has had!<br><br>Not to say that there's nothing
OSM can learn from traditional map makers .. we're not that full of ourselves!<br>But certainly there's widespread
acknowledgement that "they" can learn from "us" as well. The efforts that Andrew<br>mentions, to feedback crowdsourced data into official sources, are some of the most interesting problems in our field<br>right now.<br><br>-Mikel<br></div><br><font face="Tahoma" size="2"><hr size="1"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Andrew Turner <<span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1248637916_1">ajturner@gmail.com</span>><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">To:</span></b> Martin Spott <<span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1248637916_2">Martin.Spott@mgras.net</span>><br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Cc:</span></b> <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1248637916_3">geodata@lists.osgeo.org</span><br><b><span style="font-weight:
bold;">Sent:</span></b> Saturday, July 25, 2009 10:03:41 AM<br><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">Subject:</span></b> Re: [Geodata] wiki-nature geodata aggregators<br></font><br>
On Sat, Jul 25, 2009 at 11:57 AM, Martin Spott<<a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:Martin.Spott@mgras.net" target="_blank" href="mailto:Martin.Spott@mgras.net">Martin.Spott@mgras.net</a>> wrote:<br>> Jo Walsh wrote:<br>><br>>> "It would be nice" to see a data quality push - not in terms of<br>>> comparison to proprietary sources, but in terms of <span style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; cursor: pointer; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1248637916_4">peer review</span> and of<br>>> spreading, well, quality assurance, through the network back up to<br>>> original data providers. How to do this without bureaucratic overhead<br>>> (or while funding bureaucratic overhead)? Answers on a postcard...<br>><br>> No idea, as the conceptual 'design' behind all these data providers<br>>
requires their sources to be "authoritative" in some way - a criteria<br>> that is unlikely to be met by any effort which relies primarily on<br>> crowdsourcing :-)<br><br>I disagree. You're seeing OSM and GeoNames powering the data systems<br>of more companies and
organizations. They are leveraging scale,<br>development and communities that none of these individual groups could<br>begin to enable themselves.<br><br>There have been efforts to incorporate data back into original sources<br>- a problem that has social, legal, and technical hurdles. Yet the<br>onus can be on the receiving organization to incorporate this<br>potentially very valuable data instead of putting that burden on the<br>larger community itself to attempt to cater to each group.<br><br>What I think we'll see more of are organizations just embracing these<br>projects and data sources as their primary source itself and<br>enhancing. The problem here is the licensing for databases like OSM is<br>"viral", so any changes would have to be opened back up - so the goal<br>here would be to convince government and other agencies that their<br>value doesn't lie in their hoarding the data, but curating and<br>ensuring it's coverage and accuracy in their
specific areas of<br>interest. This removes the technical burden of them developing tools<br>(their not tool shops) or pulling together various domains and<br>connecting with regions outside their own area. The added benefit is<br>it engages them directly with the community that also cares in using<br>the data through these aggregation hubs.<br><br>Andrew<br><br>><br>> Cheers,<br>> Martin.<br>> --<br>> <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1248637916_5">Unix</span> _IS_ user friendly - it's just selective about who its friends are !<br>> --------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>> _______________________________________________<br>> Geodata mailing list<br>> <a rel="nofollow" ymailto="mailto:Geodata@lists.osgeo.org" target="_blank" href="mailto:Geodata@lists.osgeo.org">Geodata@lists.osgeo.org</a><br><span>> <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank"
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