Hi there!

Re aerial imagery source. It should be a community consensus to use the ESRI aerial imagery (not "ESRI Clarity beta"!) since it is often the latest (I think now is July 2025), and it is OK-ish clear to correctly see the features. This changeset was made with this ESRI imagery.

Re altitude distortion. Yes, your view is correct, and I also know about this.

Re quoted dubious calibration. Yes, it was also made by me (woah).

My objective in this changeset is to look at the imagery and describe the latest observed "new roads" from imagery. However, doing so requires alignment with satellite imagery, which existing roads do not align well. Some creative work is done to balance between aligning with satellite imagery and retaining reasonable curves with existing data.

Ultimately, if we really need actual GPS tools to correctly provide the coordinates (tools which I do not have), then I believe we may be requiring too much a barrier for OSM editing. And, as much as Sisyphus is concerned, GPS coordinates can self-drift by itself, and imagery can also self-drift by itself, so requiring absolute accuracy is too nihilistic.

IMO, a bigger context is that, there is a guideline that discourages using Bing imagery (see https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Hong_Kong#%E7%8F%BE%E6%99%82%E8%A6%86%E8%93%8B%E7%8E%87_Current_coverage ), and when I see the roads distorting too much from imagery, I cannot help but think "perhaps this was first made with Bing", and then go edit them. There is a real chance the initial shape is just too bad, and my improvements are legitimate.

But for real, if you think the changeset was too bad, you can go improve upon it. Chances are I won't notice subsequent edits, and there will be no edit wars.