<div dir="auto">I value the discussions on this mailing list, and the resulting outcome. The voting system provides timing and focus, and mainly indicates that an international discussion has been held. Mappers, data users and tool builders can choose to trust this process, or read the arguments, or ignore the lot. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">As a rule, I tend to follow the OSM mapper's community in my country, rather than blindly applying approvals. This goes for new tagging, adapted tagging, adapted interpretation of tagging, and deprecations. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I also tend to ignore most tagging warnings in JOSM and other editors, and I seldom use presets or auto-corrections.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">As for the wiki documentation, that's a total mess^H^Hlting pot of languages, conflicting information, old and new, gems and rubbish, description and prescription, and competing schemes. Again, the local community gives me much better answers and examples. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Which makes this discussion, about how compelling the rules are, rather pointless. Doesn't matter which dog wins, because the bones are eaten elsewhere. </div><div dir="auto">Still, a 50-0 approval after an international discussion does weigh in. Even more so, if it comes with an implementation plan, including prior commitment by data users and tool builders. It will probably, though not always, gain support from the local community.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Fr Gr Peter Elderson</div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">Op do 3 feb. 2022 om 14:14 schreef Andy Townsend <<a href="mailto:ajt1047@gmail.com">ajt1047@gmail.com</a>><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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<div>On 03/02/2022 11:22,
<a href="mailto:mail@marcos-martinez.net" target="_blank">mail@marcos-martinez.net</a> wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite">
<p>Where does it say people can't vote for a deprecation and that
their vote is useless and without consequence? There have been
33 people who are in favor. I see you and Simon are opposing.
Are you both the representatives of the community above others?
If not and you are referring to some noble and basic OSM rule
that needs to be followed, I kindly request you to direct me to
a place where the rule is stated and who approved it/on which
consensus it was elaborated?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Firstly, it's perhaps worth mentioning that its silly having an
argument over amenity=embassy because there's only one of those
left <a href="https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1fKw" target="_blank">https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/1fKw</a> , and that appears to be
mistagged.</p>
<p>However, the general point is important, and it's important to
separate OSMF from OSM here. OSMF's mission statement is here:</p>
<p><a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Mission_Statement" target="_blank">https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Mission_Statement</a></p>
<p>It has as its first sentence "The OpenStreetMap Foundation is an
international, not-for-profit, democratic organisation with the
tasks of <b>supporting the OSM project</b>, running and
protecting the OSM database, and making it available to all. " (my
emphasis).</p>
<p>The OSMF is an organisation that you can join and has a
democratically elected board that you can stand for. It has a
number of appointed working groups who report to the board. If
you believe that the OSMF's approach should be more "hands on"
than the current "supporting" role then please stand for the board
and make that case.</p>
<p>There are a bunch of other policies -
<a href="https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Policies_and_other_Documents" target="_blank">https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Policies_and_other_Documents</a> -
but you'll notice that there's no "tagging policy" among those.<br>
</p>
<p>How people map things and which tags they use is handled by a
general community consensus and a bit of common sense on all
sides. Over the years an aversion to deprecation has grown up due
to the surprises that it can cause for people who work with OSM
data - not just editor developers, but data consumers of all
stripes. There are times where deprecation makes sense (e.g.
"highway=ford" on ways doesn't let you say what sort of highway it
is, beyond being a ford) but many times when it does not. If a
new form of tagging makes sense mappers (guided by the editors
that they use) will adopt it and as it appears in the OSM
database, data consumers will support it.</p>
<p>You say that 33 people voted in favour of this "deprecation" (and
there are around 660 people who will see this message directly via
this mailing list), but those are tiny "even less than a rounding
error" numbers compared to
<a href="https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats#Contributor_statistics_reports" target="_blank">https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Stats#Contributor_statistics_reports</a>
.</p>
<p>It's important that we discuss how we tag things as a project,
and the tagging mailing list and the wiki both form part of that.
What we don't currently have (at API, board or working group
level) is a way of enforcing the views of 33 people over the 300k
(active contributors last year). What you appear to be wanting is
a way of not only telling lots of other people that they're "doing
it wrong" but actively enforcing your views over them.
Historically OSMF members have tended to vote for board members
who were in favour of a "supporting" role rather than a "telling
people how to map" one - if you read through the candidate
manifestos from last and previous years you'll see a number of
people suggesting a more "hands on" role for the foundation, but
OSMF members have tended not to vote for them.</p>
<p>It's perhaps also worth remembering that OSM, with its hands-off
"any tags you like" approach has succeeded where other initiatives
from around the same time (e.g. Wikimapia) have been less
successful. Elsewhere, Wikipedia succeeded where Nupedia failed;
in the world of computing the "Expert Systems" approach (all the
rage when I started working on systems doing what would now be
called "Machine Learning" at the back end of the 1980s) has
similarly been eclipsed. If you want to change one of the core
principles of OSM (consensus rather top-down imposed tagging)
you're going to need to make some really good arguments to
persuade people. So far you've tried this (at least) on Telegram
and tried this here, but have received significant pushback in
both places.<br>
</p>
<p>It's been said before, but bears repeating, that OpenStreetMap is
_not_ a computer science project. Someone emerging from college
will surely look at the OSM tagging that has evolved over the
years and suggest how it ought to have been designed back in the
2000s. However, unless they have access to a time machine they
don't have to opportunity to go back and make that change. Any
changes now need to consider the "installed base" of data,
mappers, data consumers etc. Many or most of these people are
volunteers. As a data consumer, exactly why should I spend my own
free time playing catch up with the latest wiki vote until a new
way of tagging is broadly supported by OSM mappers?</p>
<p>Best Regards,</p>
<p>Andy (a member of the Data Working Group, but written in a
personal capacity)</p>
<p>PS: I've resisted replying until now, as I suspect that many
other people have, because unfortunately
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini's_law</a> applies - it's
possible for people to make the same arguments against the status
quo again and again in slightly different ways without actually
addressing reasons advanced why something might be a bad idea. To
answer _every one_ of these would be a waste of time that could be
better spent doing something useful, like mapping. Some people,
unfortunately, seem to be "only here for the argument". As the
saying goes "Never wrestle with a pig. you both get dirty and the
pig likes it".<br>
</p>
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</blockquote></div></div>-- <br><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Vr gr Peter Elderson</div>