This is a "problem" that is being exaggerated, in my view. There are very small percentage of historic "things" in the OSM database that really do not exist anymore in the sense that they are truly invisible.
There are plenty of historical "things" in OSM of which large parts still exist today, like the Colosseum in Rome or the Great Wall of China, just to name two big ones. But many of the smaller bits you still see today are part of historical artefacts, the remaining parts of which have disappeared, and then there are those in.between cases where bits are still indirectly "visible" on the ground. One extreme example that springs to mind is The Ridgeway <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ridgeway> on the Berkshire Downs in Southern England, believed to be Europe's oldest long-distance road. Even if it's exact course has been lost over the millennia it is today a major tourist attraction for hikers and MTB fans as the prehistoric monuments are aligned on its course like the pearls on a necklace. Most of it is today a National Trail, but bits are missing, and no longer visible in the landscape, mainly due to human intervention. I have not checked on OSM how it is mapped - I know it from walking it in pre-OSM times. Fast forward in history.. There was a railway form Ostiglia on the Rover Po to Treviso in Veneto <https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrovia_Treviso-Ostiglia>, Italy, built in the early 20th century and abandoned in 1987. No rails remain, but nearly all station buildings and other ancillary buildings and many bridges are still there (or have been restored). More than half of it has been converted so far into a foot-cycle route, one of the busiest in the country. The entire course is still visible in the landscape, easily spotted from satellite imagery. This <https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2375471> is the OSM bicycle route relation of the (existing) foot-cycleway and this is the site relation of the original railway <https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1860446> course and (most of) the buildings and some other artefacts. Planning work is under way to complete the entire foot-cycle route from Treviso to Ostiglia. I will obtain the planing material with the aim of inserting it in OSM as proposed cycling route. Another frequent situation is city walls that have been incorporated in more recent buildings. Yet another example in my own city, Padova. We have three Roman bridges two of which are completely interred, a third one is interred, but partially excavated, Also the canal (formerly a river) theay are spanning, has ben interred completely, but its course is perfectly visible and the road it has been converted to is aptly named "Riviera dei Ponti Romani". I think that in all these cases we are talking about more or less important attractions which need the historic context. And if an OSM mapper has inserted that context information, in the extreme case in the form of razed railway tags on a hedge, or similar trivial objects, this information is a valid contribution to OSM, and I would consider removing it as vandalism. Thanks for having read to the end. Volker On Thu, 28 May 2020 at 06:12, Skyler Hawthorne <o...@dead10ck.com> wrote: > On May 25, 2020 15:35:44 Jack Armstrong <jacknst...@sprynet.com> wrote: > >> I agree with Mateusz Konieczny. If there is some vestige of the object >> remaining, then mapping it in some way seems reasonable. But, if the >> railway, building, highway, etc., are completely removed and there are >> absolutely no visible remains of what was once there, it can be removed. >> >> I don't see the need to map something that does not actually exist. >> >> - Jack Armstrong >> chachafish >> > > I agree. OSM is not a historical object database. If it doesn't exist, it > shouldn't be in the data. > -- > Skyler > _______________________________________________ > Tagging mailing list > Tagging@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging >
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