Be sure to see how it compares with GPS traces. If there are numerous GPS traces in line with either the imagery or the ways then you know which is most likely correct.

You can always trace using the roof of the building and then shift it to align with the foot-print. Assuming of course that the roof and the base are the same shape/size.

If you've got the data, add it. Don't worry about the rendering -- it's only the rendering.

Either they're just accidentally not connected or, like you say, they're there as notes to survey the connection properly. Either way, they should indeed connect to each other so if you've surveyed them yourself you should connect them.

Also, you should check out http://help.openstreetmap.org/ for questions like these. It's a relatively new site but is already proving to be excellent for these types of things.

There's also http://help.openstreetmap.org for asking questions (not to say you shouldn't blog about your adventures though).

That looks like a bug in the renderer to me. It's worth reporting it in Trac (http://trac.openstreetmap.org/). In the meantime, however you can probably fix it by breaking up the circular track by splitting the way at one of the nodes.

I too am unsure where the high quality building outlines came from. There's certainly no decent enough satellite imagery and the OOC maps are all from before the campus was built. It's a little suspicious and I fear that they may have been copied from a copyrighted source.

@daveemtb: Fake Liam123 is parody of Liam123 who is UK user who has been vandalising parts of the map for a while now. See discussion on talk-gb.

Oh Liam, what are you like?! Such a naughty boy.

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Looking at the satellite imagery, there's no gates or anything. They're unlikely to stop you, especially if you do what JohnSmith says :)

It is possible that in some parts of the world, some authorities will release their own street data to OSM. However, there's nothing to say that their data is any better than yours and given the effort you say you've put in I'd suspect that yours is better. Also bear in mind that the governments data will probably only include streets and nothing like cycle paths, foot paths, woodland, POIs etc.

Either way, if it does come down to someone wanting to import the government's data (if it's possible) then you can simply ask them to not import it for your city/area. No-one's going to overwrite your work without consulting you and others who did the work.

Regards,
Matt Williams

@Minh Nguyen: That sort of sounds like the Lakewalker plugin in JOSM (I think). However, with most of these houses the resolution isn't good enough for a computer algorithm to resolve. Fortunately humans are good at pattern matching :)

Crowd sourcing > Cloud computing

Thanks :)

I've seen your edits - particularly with the fields. Good work.

The problem with houses is that you've kinda got to know the area on account of the Yahoo! imagery being quite fuzzy.

Matt

SPAM

This is a problem which has been known to occur from time to time. Currently the easiest way to fix it is with Merkaartor or JOSM since both provide greater control over your selection stack. I'd suggest you try fixing it with one of those or ask someone else to do it at a time when you're not editing those same ways (t avoid edit conflicts). Basically, you need to delete one of the ways.

The database for the namefinder search engine on the main page hasn't been updated since January due to lack of time by the maintainer. I'm not quite sure what the current state of the whole system is (I believe that the developer is still intending to work on it and also that Cloudmade are also working on their own search engine).

Oh the laughs we had when we first heard of SExtractor :)

Just a little bit north and east of Barry (towards Cardiff) there should be Yahoo! imagery for tracing from. That should help you get started in those areas. Good work so far though :)

I really like this. I can see a lot of potential for crowd-sourcing error checking.

Good work.