[OSM-dev] The wiki defines the database

[Erik Johansson]

On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 3:24 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:
> but wherever we can [..] say "have it both ways", that's a victory for
> freedom in my opinion.

+1

But software drives tagging, and  "one true way" is easier for
applications to handle. Considering that parsing tags is something
each applications does on its own, I have to wonder if we can really
"have it both ways".


> Out of interest, I'd like to know where Wikipedia currently is
> for example; can I still create articles that don't use the
> structure or will there immediately be a flurry of people telling me what I
> did wrong,

Yes people improve your article in wikipedia. Usually it's style,
language, POV or wiki related. If I post a small article someone might
slap a small templated fact box on the right edge, and usually put it
in the right category and make my links go to the right disambiguated
page.

Try translating this to Openstreetmap, how often do one do that kind
of wikigardening[1]?
[1] http://www.wikipatterns.com/display/wikipatterns/WikiGnome


Richard said "they want highway=Toucan to be replaced by five other
tags, he!". Are you sure you as an editor creator want to be bothered
with this, wouldn't it be easier if the wiki took care of that?

One big difference between mediawiki and osm software is that you can
create and improve templates/categories that give you nice things to
put on your page. In OSM there is no crowdsourcing way to make things
render as you want, and no way to make the editing easier. Are simple
presets handled "more centralistic than necessary"?



--
R /Erik