Tom,
Thanks for the plug … I too have pretty much given up on OSM. For years we all worked hard to produce a useful map of Thailand… my main reason was to use it as a valid and worthwhile tool for the GPS where the Garmin/ESRI map was not only expensive, but out of date. It also did not show tracks we used regularly.
When mapping, I used a combination of skill, judgement, local knowledge, and a desire to improve the map with a bias to making it useful for navigation. I replotted junctions where confusing, I highlighted major roads through villages to differentiate from residential, I corrected the precision where the Garmin would flash “off route, recalculate”, I straightened major highways by reducing nodes … in short, did what was necessary to improve the map…
Then came the FB team, with all the rah rah … Yes, they appeared to ask us for help but often ignored things. And when I took them to task on specific edits, never got an specific answer. It became clear they really were more interested in checking out their abilities to add roads in an automated fashion … of course, they stated all roads would be checked by a human, but in reality, this was one of the team sat at a desk in the USA… nobody from here. They pretended to ask for help… but its a bit like asking someone how to drive a car. Sure, they can tell you, but it takes a lot of experience to get it right, and as Tom stated, their aims seemed more about volume than correctness.
And then came the continual mistakes, the poor tagging, the “roads” through fields, the private drives tagged as residential … I rode these, and what a mess it got me into. Yes, Tom, the map we created with human thought, had now been rendered useless by one big automated dump.
And then I got the impression that while we had thousands of wrong tags courtesy of FB, my edits became scrutinised over some pretty minor issues. Hardly encouraging from people who should know better.
So Tom, you get my support, and like you, I’m basically out too. The DWG have an unenviable task of deciding what to do with the FB import, but unless we can direct them, nothing will change. I say we remove the tag from EVERY road they added … leave the nodes … and as Thai users, we can then put it right. But I know I’m the only one that feels that way … so I’m afraid, its goodbye OSM from me too. Take a look at http://hdyc.neis-one.org/?Russ%20McD and you can see how differently my 2018 is.
Russ.