<div dir="ltr">Hi Charles,<div><br></div><div>Have you looked at iD's preset-based feature editing UI? It's very close to what you describe:</div><div><br></div><div>- <a href="https://github.com/openstreetmap/iD/blob/master/data/presets/README.md">Machine readable ontology</a></div>
<div>- Search-based UI</div><div>- No detailed knowledge of tagging schemes necessary</div><div>- Customized UI for specific fields</div><div><br></div><div>We haven't yet gotten to the level of detail necessary to support query terms as specific as "bagel", nor to cover the immense complexity of the opening_hours format, but contributions are welcome.</div>
<div><br></div><div>A related project is the <a href="https://github.com/osmlab/name-suggestion-index">Name Suggestion Index</a>, which provides automatic tags for search terms like "Walmart" or "Raiffeisenbank".</div>
<div><br></div><div>John</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 11:17 AM, <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:osm@charles.derkarl.org" target="_blank">osm@charles.derkarl.org</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
I'm going to just point out the elephant in the room here. I don't think any<br>
normal user cares about the license at all. I think the actual reason its hard<br>
to get new mappers, especially those that are not nerdy and obsessive like<br>
myself is that *the ontology sucks*. There, I said it, so you don't have to.<br>
<br>
It's actually a few things related to how the ontology sucks:<br>
<br>
1. The tagging of things bears little resemblance to things in the real world:<br>
a. A lot of common things just don't have standard tags: examples: tax<br>
preparers like H&R Block, investment brokers like Charles Schwab, medical<br>
marijuana despensers here in California, recreational MJ shops in Colorado. I<br>
could go on.<br>
b. the whole shop/amenity debate<br>
c. common things that have really stupid tags, like barber shops<br>
<br>
2. To be a useful mapper, one needs to memorize these arbitrary tags. It<br>
wouldn't be so hard if it weren't arbitrary (a salon is a shop? and it's<br>
called a hairdresser‽). But even if it weren't arbitrary, it'd still be hard<br>
to remember because things have synonyms, and no shop is called a chemist in<br>
the US.<br>
<br>
Corrolary: A bagel shop is a bagel shop, no muggle cares that a bagel shop is<br>
fast_food amenity that sells the bagel cuisine.<br>
<br>
3. I went to a shop recently that sells espresso drinks, and gelato, but<br>
markets itself as a chocolate maker. (Specifically: Snake & Butterfly, Campbell,<br>
CA). There is absolutely no sane way to tag this in OSM today.<br>
<br>
4. The wiki is a terrible platform for documenting the ontology because it's<br>
not machine readable and it's just a slow way to get information.<br>
<br>
I don't just mean to moan, though. What I'd like to do is propose a machine-<br>
readable ontology that we could provide to JOSM, Vespucci, etc, that would<br>
allow newbies to edit the map. I imagine a dictionary and associated tags. A<br>
user could type in "bagel" and all the reasonable properties show up, along<br>
with a description of what they're entering:<br>
<br>
(A shop that sells primarily bagels, baked goods and breakfast foods)<br>
(not what you're looking for? try <bakery> or <diner>)<br>
name: [ textbox ]<br>
opening hours: (a *UI* to enter times of week)<br>
vegetarian ( ) friendly ( ) unfriendly ( ) exclusively<br>
house number: [ textbox]<br>
etc<br>
<br>
And by filling these properties in, the software would automatically convert it<br>
to the OSM ontology. All the client software would need to do is be able to<br>
parse our ontology file to provide all of this. And provide a sane UI, at last,<br>
for entering opening_hours.<br>
<br>
Charles<br>
<br>
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</blockquote></div><br></div>