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<body class='hmmessage'><div dir='ltr'>Well I disagree almost entirely with what you said there.<br><br>I welcome people doing changes like this.<br><br>Consistent data is useful and typos and mistakes are common place. Unifying these so they are machine readable so they are useful is, in fact, useful.<br><br>Your suggestion that you should message everyone worldwide (what in every language?!) for what is often a typo or understanding of existing tags is not practical.<br><br>In fact we need more mechanical edits and not less.<br><br>The "rules" for mechanical edit are frankly ridiculous. Have you read them.<br><br>Lets take an example someone wants to correct highway=residenal to highway=residential<br>Say there are 10 of these worldwide. a couple in europe, south america, asia, etc<br><br>You have to create a wiki page for this, send mails to the user groups, obtain 90% approval (what does that mean at least 9 people reply ok without any no votes), obtain people from around world likely in the area where the edits before you can do this change.<br><br>a) that is ridiculously stupid.<br>b) it takes a ridiculous amount of time.<br>c) people just ignore it and do it anyway. They do it all the time. I expect one of the only reason you actually noticed this is the large edit boxes in the history.<br><br>Unless the guidelines change to be more realistic for mechanical edits I don't see this changing. May I suggest someone update the guidelines/rules who actually does do these mechanical edits otherwise, frankly, they are unlikely to be realistic for actually fixing the database (yep I do think it is fixing).<br><br>As for your reasons they shouldn't do it they are misguided. People are unlikely to stop making mistakes/typos. This has little/nothing to do with the substation/sub_station issue that I read far too much about. Correcting the spelling of a type of shop to the correct one so that it is correct (it is relevant) and will appear on the map in future is useful (given the changes from catchall to whitelists for future osm carto shop rendering this needed more)<br><br>Oh as I am ranting about tagging some people are using OSM as they own private database adding tags just for them. Don't think I haven't noticed <username>:*blah* = *blah* tags. Maybe that is behaviour you are really wanting to protect by your stance.<br><br><br><div>> Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2014 02:47:58 +0100<br>> From: lists@mail.atownsend.org.uk<br>> To: talk@openstreetmap.org<br>> Subject: [OSM-talk] Worldwide non-surveyed tag edits<br>> <br>> An OSM user seems to be on a mission to replace a large number of the <br>> low usage tags in OSM - mostly in Europe, but also elsewhere:<br>> <br>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Markus59/history<br>> (hit "load more" a few times and you'll see the extent of it).<br>> <br>> Let's leave aside for now the issue that in some cases tags are being <br>> replaced with others that simply do not mean the same thing:<br>> <br>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/changeset/22839601<br>> (that example has been reverted; I'm sure that other similar ones will <br>> have been too)<br>> <br>> I'm talking here about less problematical changes - things like this:<br>> <br>> http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/243539765/history<br>> (car_repair=MOTs to car_repair=MOT)<br>> <br>> Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the latter is the "more <br>> correct" (or at least more common in OSM); what then is the problem with <br>> changing it automatically?<br>> <br>> <br>> Well:<br>> <br>> 1) People may well be expecting the previous form in OSM data that <br>> they're using to make maps with. Whether it's "right" or "wrong" is <br>> irrelevant; if data no longer appears in selections from extracts of OSM <br>> data it looks like it's been deleted (this is similar to what happened <br>> with the "substation/sub_station" JOSM farce and the standard map <br>> stylesheet - data disappeared from maps for no good reason).<br>> <br>> 2) Mappers creating the "incorrect" data will continue to do so until <br>> they're told otherwise.<br>> <br>> 3) There's an explicit policy designed to prevent edits being done in <br>> this way:<br>> <br>> http://wiki.osm.org/wiki/Mechanical_Edit_Policy<br>> <br>> precisely to avoid problems (1) and (2).<br>> <br>> <br>> So does this mean that tags in OSM can never change? Of course not - <br>> mappers who are using "rare" tags to tag exactly the same thing as a <br>> more common tag simply don't know that the more common tag exists (I've <br>> done exactly that myself with "outside_seating" and <br>> "barrier=horse_stile"). If data consumers know that tag X is to be <br>> replaced with tag Y, they know to change what they extract. Someone who <br>> suggests, as per the Mechanical Edit Policy, that car_repair=MOT and <br>> car_repair=MOTs be united in one tag (or other similar change) is not <br>> going to be met with any resistance - provided that data consumers have <br>> fair warning, of course.<br>> <br>> <br>> I've previously tried to contact the user concerned, but I think that <br>> it's fair to say that communication did not occur. They tried to <br>> instruct me in the meaning of the English word "cobblers" based on their <br>> understanding from a German web-based dictionary; I ended up quoting <br>> Brewer's back at them. More seriously, my suggestion that there should <br>> be discussion before worldwide tag edits and that the particular changes <br>> that I'd contacted them about were just plain invalid fell on deaf ears.<br>> <br>> <br>> Cheers,<br>> <br>> Andy<br>> <br>> <br>> _______________________________________________<br>> talk mailing list<br>> talk@openstreetmap.org<br>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk<br></div> </div></body>
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