On Sat, 17 Aug 2019 at 13:28, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdre...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > you have mentioned the owner’s wishes already yesterday, but I wasn’t > aware we had a requirement that the owners must tolerate having their > property mapped. We don't (that I know of). > So far I thought the only strict requirement was that the thing is > verifiably there. Indeed. If it's publicly verifiable, I map it. If I learn about a business from information which is not publicly verifiable then I ask the owner for permission. Because if the owner refuses that permission then another mapper may be unable to verify it. Also out of courtesy. > Unlike real people, businesses don’t have privacy and should not be able > to dictate what we can map and what not. > But they do control if they make that information public. My next-door-neighbour might be running some sort of business from home, but if she is then she's keeping it secret from me. I can't map what I don't know about. One Facebook-advertised beautician stated that she operated in a cabin on a named farm. I could identify the farm, but I couldn't figure out which outbuilding was hers so I couldn't map it with any precision. So I asked her for clarification and she said she didn't want to be mapped. I could visit her to get beautified (with all the effect of tying a ribbon on dog poop) and then I'd know and could map her whether she wanted it or not (but still might not do so if I thought she was operating on the black economy and there was a risk of it getting her prosecuted). I went past a farm, once. As well as the name of the farm, there was a sign saying "XYZ Holiday Cottages." I could spot the farmhouse (more of a mansion) from aerial imagery, but I could see many outbuildings that I was unable to identify the purpose of. Their web site had a pseudo-map identifying each holiday cottage - just about every outbuilding had been converted to a holiday cottage. Pseudo-map because it was an artistic rendition of a perspective shot taken from a drone. So I contacted them about mapping their cottages, asked about what the copyright on the map permitted, and told them if copyright prevented it we could still play "spot the ball" to identify them. They responded that not only did they want the holiday cottages unmapped they wanted the name of the farm removed. I refused to remove the farm name (it's "ABC Farm" in the hamlet ABC which has that farm and a couple of houses). If a fellow mapper ever stays at one of those cottages, they'll all get mapped. But I can't do it from the info I am allowed to use. For one business I learned the street name and house name: "The Old Surgery." Trouble is, there is no building with that name on that street. There is a surgery that closed a couple of months ago, but the name on the gatepost is still "Ashleigh Surgery" and there are no obvious signs it's in use. There are TWO other buildings on that street that were previously used by that same practice in years past: one is now the Citizen's Advice Bureau and has been for many years. I've never been able to pin down which of two houses was previously the other incarnation of the surgery, but both of them display names which are not "The Old Surgery." I'm guessing the business is in the recently-closed surgery, but I'm not certain. I contacted the owner who said he doesn't want to be mapped. I won't map my guess and probably wouldn't map the place even if I found out which of the three possibilities it is, unless that information were public. If a business does not make its location public then mapping it isn't required or generally useful, but I'm happy to do so as a courtesy if the owner wishes. If the location isn't public and the owner doesn't wish it mapped than I won't do so because of copyright and/or verifiability, but also to be courteous and because it's not going to benefit many people anyway. YMMV, but that is (currently) how I choose to do it. -- Paul
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