For a while now someone has been enthusiastically adding things that they think that they can see in Nazca, Peru. An example is here, and earlier changesets have comments here. Whilst it’s well known that previous occupants of the area did make large geoglyphs, I’m not convinced that all these features added to OSM actually exist, and I’m not the only one who is sceptical.
Perhaps other people could try what I tried earlier - edit this area on the dev server (it’s independent of the live OSM server so you’ll need to sign up there) and try adding what you see, to see if it in any way matches this.
When I tried this a couple of years ago I was unable to replicate the added features. The adder did say they’d review what they’ve added (and immediately after that their additions did seem more plausible), but unfortunately now they just seem to be adding more implausible features.
I’ll mention that I’ve created this forum topic to the people who’ve commented recently too.
Do we have explicit and clear rules about what verifiability means, for objects on the ground and for those who are derived from other sources? For instance Wikipedia does not accept original works and prefers secondary sources; we could make it clear what kind of information is admissible as verifable on the ground, and what kind of other sources we need (e.g. a government body, academic works, whatever).
Here it would be very different to debate whether one sees a dog or a snake and to debate about the authority of sources.
Thanks for making this place for community discussion. There has been lots of development in geoglyphs located in several locations worldwide, not just in Peru. Some use image mappings like available in OSM including other sources. Many of the geoglyphs, as in question, are not simply arbitrary lines, but instead checked and recheck ground linework that open potential images. The complexity of some do bring questions but we have been attempts to verify them with field visits. The aspects of government, private and public sectors do cause land access. It is also well known that many political roadblocks including the remoteness and vastness of areas challenge also challenge leaving digital mapping source a viable solution. As new image maps improve, hopefully without much ground erosion, these current drawings are potential placeholders which try to avoid the illusions of pareidolias. While the definition is clear, questions may arise when shapes become a part of other shapes collectively may tend to be man-made.
I’m a bit concerned about OpenStreetMap being used for “potential placeholders”. A better approach would be to store that sort of thing outside of OSM (I suspect different people will “see” different things), and then compare the results of different people’s interpretations. If they agree, then add them to OSM.
I don’t quite understand you w.r.t. “tend to be man-made”. Is there proof or a scholastic/academic consensus that these structures have been deliberately created (i.e. they are man-made)? Just because the clouds look like faces or whatever, doesn’t mean that they are man-made. The human mind is very creative with pattern recognition.
I also don’t believe that they are all actually called “Cabeza”, “Ojo”, and “Boca”.
In general, if two people are shown the same object, they should be able to agree that the tagging is appropriate. Necessary sources must be included for that.
If agreement isn’t possible, there are ways to resolve that, but that’s basically what Verifiability - OpenStreetMap Wiki means in OSM. Wikipedia has a different aim, so is only of limited use for comparison. Extended discussion is better in a dedicated thread.
This is a blatant oversimplification. How do we verify administrative boundaries? bus lines? mountain names? ocean names? The wiki page about verifiability does not say that, and mappers have to invent their own verifiability rules for these cases. Sometimes the rules are easy to determine and they are consensual, sometimes not. If there is no better guidance available than this wiki page, it just makes it harder on us.
Thank you for contributing to this discussion thread.
I think in principle placeholders may also be appliable to other places on OSM. Maybe it is a potential demarcation of changing water levels? In retrospect of all these shapes, that I carefully outlined, is to give voice to human-kinds past. I just know it would be very hard to have 4, 5, 6 previously unseen shapes etched on any mountainside be illusionary. Therefore, in my case, the threat to erase all this work is very real.
A tool within OSM that drawn items could become commented, agreed, or save a background setting by different people could prove useful? The fact of the matter is this site is perfect for contributing all kinds of material.
In theory, there is uMap for that. It’s a different editor for OSM that does just that. You can link to the result in a forum thread and ask people to comment on them, let them share their thoughts and their knowledge about these shapes. They can even embed them in their own maps.
I say in theory as you’d have to figure out how to set a satellite image as background for your drawings. If you have a GPS trace, you might be able to use that instead.
Something like “uMap” sounds like an excellent idea for allowing people to draw what they see so that these can be compared, and if people agree that something really is there, added to OSM.
Adding things that one person can “see” but no-one else can do not belong in OpenStreetMap.
It is likely that “things that only you can see” WILL get deleted from OpenStreetMap. Things like https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1300140005 and the lines around it simply don’t pass the “verifiability” test. However, everything will still be present in OSM history, so that https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1UcY will still return the data that was added.