[OSM-dev] Reverts from the woodpeck_repair account

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 01/02/2013 02:31 PM, Paweł Paprota wrote:
> For me such reverts just introduce unneeded clutter in the history
> database - thousands of new versions in the history.

Yes, that's sad, and I'd surely prefer not having to do such reverts in 
the first place.

But what do you suggest? If someone makes a mass edit without discussing 
it with anybody, in blatant violation of our guidelines, simply shrug 
and ignore it?

In OSM, a lot happens by example. If you want to do something, you look 
at how someone else did it and you do the same. If we were to simply 
ignore mass edits like this then everyone would assume they're ok.

There's a huge warning on top of this page: 
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Deprecated_features

And it isn't there for fun.

> And the end result
> will be that this revert will then again be slowly reverted by
> individual mappers replacing deprecated tags...

The concept of "deprecated tags" is not widely used in OSM and I'm not a 
friend of the word because it suggests too much authority.

The problem is that it takes just 15 or 20 people to "deprecate" a tag. 
Many tags in the aforementioned list of "Deprecated features" are 
actively used by mappers, and often the "deprecated tag" is more widely 
supported than the new tag that 15 or 20 people would like to see 
introduced.

For a mass change of tags in the database, it is not enough to have 15 
or 20 people on a wiki page somewhere who think that it is a good idea; 
you can work towards such a change but it would require a much broader 
consensus than the few people who are interested in tagging discussions 
on the wiki.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"