2013/7/3 Serge Wroclawski <emac...@gmail.com> > > OSM data is a key/value store. What people decide to put in those > key/value pairs is up to them. >
yes, up to the point that they are using duplicate values for well established keys. As we can only put one value for a key, the well established one should be used when it comes to tagging something for what there is already a convention. > What I've found, over years of participating, is that: > > 1. This list is a small subset of OSMers. It doesn't represent many of > the supermappers, and it doesn't include editor authors or renderer > people either. > > In other words, it's a small, self-selected group of people who are > spending a lot of time talking, or arguing, in an echo chamber. > every one is invited to take part in tagging discussions. If you decide not to do so, you shouldn't complain afterwards that your ideas aren't integrated. > 2. This list's idea of "good tags" differs from the OSM community at large. > don't agree. Most OSMers dislike complex schemes, and will avoid relations when > they can. But relations are quite common here. actually my experience is that relations aren't very common here. Most mappers have understood that something that can be expressed without a relation should be done so. > The same goes for colon > tags, which are heavily proposed (such as in the "diet" proposal) but > not often used by the public except in very limited circumstances > (addr). > colon tags have the advantage of creating kind of a namespace that helps distinguishing and avoiding misinterpretations and the disadvantage that you have to type more text (not a real problem with autocompletion, but yes, it is a disadvantage). > 3. This list often ignores usage > > If two proposals are up for discussion, there seems to be little or no > weight placed on existing usage vs this list's idea of "correctness". > Personally I don't share this observation (I think usage numbers play a role in the discussions here), but you'll also have to see "usage" numbers in the context of how many of these features potentially exist in the real world, and how many are already mapped. If there a 2 tags for the exact same thing and one is used 10000 times, the other 23 times, it seems clear (as long as there aren't serious problems with these 10000 tags), but when one tag is used 120 times and the other 40 times (for a feature that occurs "often") it is a good idea to look at the semantics and implications of both ways of doing it, without giving too much importance to the actual (small) use numbers. Another problem with usage numbers is, that one single import can distort heavily the statistics, so looking at how many different people have used a tag also makes sense. > There is value in having a place to discuss issues of a tagging > question, or problem, but I fear that this list isn't it. > do you know a good alternative? In my experience tags are often developed on a national level (on national mailing lists) and when there is some agreement the proposal will be pushed to [tagging] to get comments from the international community. > If people on this list wanted to do more community work that wasn't > mapping, there would be tremendous value in going in to the wiki, > finding the tags that are in use but not documented well, and > expanding, or translating those pages. > how could they do the expansion? How would they know what definition a mapper had in mind when using a specific tag that is not or not sufficiently documented? How could they even know what is a sufficient definition? OK for translations, but unilateral amendments? cheers, Martin
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