Bad imports

From OpenStreetMap Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

This page can be used to keep track and comment on questionable and bad imports. To raise concern about certain imports, and discuss it with the community. Note that not all bad imports should follow this procedure. If the imported data causes a risk to OSM (f.e. because it's clearly copied from a non-freely licensed source), imports can be reverted immediately.

Imports can be bad in several ways, and can also be fixed in several ways:

  • Bad data. Data that doesn't follow OSM conventions can often be converted to more useful data (e.g., renaming a tag hnumber to addr:housenumber=*). If the data source itself is of low quality, it can be very hard to fix and require a complete revert.
  • Bad documentation. Every import should be documented and discussed before import. If that didn't happen, discussion here can ease the pain, but if there's documentation missing, it must be written
  • Unusable license. If the license of the data remains unclear or unusable after a discussion period, the entire import should be reverted completely.

Procedure to handle a bad import

  • Make a new wiki page to describe the bad import, and add a link to it under the list of bad imports.
  • Notify the user(s) involved in the import via a changeset discussion, and link them to that wiki page for further discussion
  • Also link to the changeset discussion from the wiki page, to show you have contacted the user(s)
  • Notify the imports list and DWG with a link to that wiki page. The DWG can decide to revert the import immediately if the data is too harmful for the OSM database. Otherwise a discussion can take place.
  • It's obvious that the user doing the import should stop the import immediatly, and actively help in the discussion. If the user doesn't stop, this can be treated as vandalism instead, and the user(s) should be blocked by the DWG.

List of bad imports

Name Country (place) Status Discussion start date
Enugu POI import Nigeria (Enugu) discussion 2016-01-24
Enugu streets import Nigeria (Enugu) discussion 2016-01-24

Archived import discussions

Name Country (place) Status Discussion start date Resolution
Cameroun Ouest region landuse import Cameroun (Bafoussam) discussion 2016-01-24 Landuse deleted
Cameroun Ouest region buildings import Cameroun (Bafoussam) discussion 2016-01-24 Not a bad import