River modernization in Italy / Ammodernamento fluviale in Italia

La traduzione in italiano è alla fine.

Hello,

I’m writing post factum but I felt the need to inform you of the changes I made in Italy under the River Modernization Project.

The goal of this project is to improve the river data and unify the tagging scheme in order to simplify the data for the data consumers and simplify the tagging scheme for water related features. You can learn more about this project here.

I’ve checked most Italian regions, fixed a lot of the issues that were detected by the JOSM validator like crossing ways, duplicated nodes and improved geometry (where the imagery was clear enough). I’ve found a lot of duplicated rivers in the Sardinia region, which I’ve fixed but I haven’t uploaded the changeset. You can check my changesets here. The only regions that are left currently are Sardinia, Lombardia and Piemonte. I’m planning to finish them in the coming days, if you don’t have anything against it.

Traduzione in italiano a cura di Google Translate. Potrebbe non essere una traduzione corretta al 100%.

Ciao,

Scrivo post factum ma non ho la necessità di informarvi dei cambiamenti che ho fatto in Italia nell’ambito del River Modernization Project.

L’obiettivo di questo progetto è migliorare i dati del fiume e unificare lo schema di etichettatura al fine di semplificare i dati per i consumatori di dati e semplificare lo schema di etichettatura per gli elementi relativi all’acqua. Puoi saperne di più su questo progetto qui.

Ho controllato la maggior parte delle regioni italiane, risolto molti dei problemi rilevati dal validatore JOSM come incroci, nodi duplicati e geometria migliorata (dove le immagini erano abbastanza chiare). Ho trovato molti fiumi duplicati nella regione Sardegna, che ho corretto ma non ho caricato il changeset. Puoi controllare i miei changeset qui. Le uniche regioni rimaste attualmente sono Sardegna, Lombardia e Piemonte. Ho intenzione di finirli nei prossimi giorni, se non hai nulla in contrario.

Hi Dimitar155,

the project aims to adapt all rivers at worldwide level to a scheme of riverbank mapping which is alternative to the “legacy” but not-yet-deprecated waterway=riverbank. So basically you are changing something that is good even if not optimal for some.

I understand the aim to homogenize things for data consumers, but (as clearly stated in the project page) these kind of activities fall under the Automated Edit CoC.

As a matter of fact we are talking about your edits since a changeset of yours was spotted by an Italian OSM user in a moment in which you already fully “normalized” rivers in half of the italian regions.

I’m not 100% fine with that, but I hope at least that you will consider a more respectful approach toward local communities for any other project like this in the future.

On the edits side… in your changes you refer to “Esri World Imagery (Clarity) Beta” as imagery source.
If you are going to re-align the riverbank position please consider that, at least in the north of Italy, the “ESRI World Imagery” imagery is better since it’s more recent (even if not well orthoaligned).

IlBano

Hi IlBano,

Thanks for the feedback. I will say it again, I should have asked before starting this project in Italy, but I haven’t. I’m sorry about that, it wasn’t made on purpose. It may be a bit late, but I think that late is better than never. I will keep in mind the things that you told me about the imagery. Also I would like to hear if there is anyone that is against finishing that project in Italy. If there aren’t any negative replies on this topic in the next 7 days, starting from the date of this message, I will assume that there is no one against it.

Dimitar155

For what its worth, I do not particularly care whether waterway=riverbank or natural=water with water=river is used, hence I see the former as slightly better, because it is more concise. If we have a single established tag to express something, why would we replace it with a combination that requires 2 tags to say the same? I might also be willing to accept such retagging, but not if it is done in a “hidden” way, i.e. without following the guidelines and announcing and discussing it beforehand, with the local community, and in a case like this probably also globally.

I see also a benefit from having all water areas tagged as natural=water and having waterway limited to linear ways, so there are arguments for both ways of tagging. Admittedly I never liked the semantics of naming the whole water area of a river “riverbank”. Another interpretation could be to have waterway for flowing water (watercourses) and natural=water for standing water (in this case, the edit would be counterproductive)

On a sidenote, the Italian translation of your first post is misleading because the first sentence says the opposite of what it says in English.

I know that I haven’t followed the rules and I’m sorry about this. The purpose of this project is not only to replace tags, but also to improve the waterways by fixing various issues like overlapping areas, duplicated nodes, duplicated ways, crossing ways and others. The tag replacement is a side task for me.

Cambiamenti massicci senza discussioni sulla mailing list, molto più seguita rispetto a questo forum?
E pure in lingua non italiana è brutto e poco decoroso nei confronti dei mappatori italiani.
Chiederei di interrompere immediatamente questo genere di modifiche a Dimitar155.
Ammettendo di avere sbagliato va bene. Ma dire che continuerai su questa falsariga non è corretto.

Ivo, Jrachi

I see that the topic was viewed by a lot of people but only two people shared their opinions. It would be nice if more people shared their opinions.

I have counted 3. Come to talk-it where more people are active

Thanks for the feedback Jrachi. I see that the community doesn’t want these edits. I’m not going to do any more edits in Italy unless someone specifically requests such edits in the corresponding changeset.