I agree with you in principle, but there is an implied contradiction in this... Everybody serious wants and needs verifiable original sources. It's as simple as that. No one wants anything else, as far as I know.
Why the "everybody serious" qualifier if "no one" wants anything else? The reality is that you've put your finger on it with the "everybody serious" qualifier. I agree 100%. Unfortunately, "everybody serious" is not "everybody." The other issue is that within the population of "everybody serious" you have very many people who are very serious and diligent and who want to do right but who do not have the technical skills to know when they are getting verifiable original data and when not. It is not so easy to tell verifiable original sources in a sea of data that often is posing as original data but which is copied from somewhere else. The desire is simple, I agree, but getting that desire satisfied can be far from simple. No one wants anything else, as far as I know.
Strongly disagree. 1) Very many people want pretty data that works "good enough" for their purpose. If it works most of the time but is wrong in details that are unlikely to matter, well, that's OK. 2) Data from original sources is often awful and must be re-cast into useful data. I'm one of those people, by the way, so it's not like I'm trying to criticize others while posing as perfect. I'll drive all the way across Europe using OSM data for street routing when I know perfectly well it is often wrong in key details. But it is "good enough" for those stretches in between phone coverage when you can use Google to navigate. Google, also, is not "original source" but it is well-curated. And last but not least, why could not communal sharing of data we all download from original sources not be a process which increases access to original sources as opposed to decreasing it? People often turn to unverifiable data of dubious origin just because it is easier and quicker to get than going to the source. Also, there is this effect: 2) Data from original sources is often awful and must be re-cast into useful data. SRTM is a good example. If you want data from the original source in a useful form, get ready to send a hard disk to USGS with return postage so they can load it up with a 600+ GB data set and in a couple of weeks return it to you. Otherwise, you have to download SRTM data in tiny chunks and then merge them together into more useful form. That's not much of a processing step, but it does introduce very many opportunities for departures from the original source. In another example, many people in the OSM community are totally dependent upon extractions into shapefiles that a relative handful of third parties produce. That's not original source data and it's not at all verifiable, but it is an irreplaceable foundation for what they do. Very few people can work with OSM data in its original, source form. I'm just saying, there's probably a middle ground where having very rapid access to data from trustworthy mirrors or from trustworthy curators and value-added users is probably something many people would like.
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