[OHM] Should we map former endonyms?

[Lester Caine]

Martin Koppenhoefer wrote:
>> >There is already much 'history' in OSM that simply can't be accessed easily and that volume is growing daily:(
>
> +1, but it is mostly not clear from the current data (and history) whether these changes have been made because the former data was wrong or incomplete, or because of a change in reality.

This is true, and since the 'delete' process does not provide any means of 
identifying the reason for a delete it's not easy to fix? Simple changes to a 
item with a required start_date would at least allow the 'start' of a management 
process. Removing the start_date element would tag a physical 'delete', while an 
piece of information with several elements each with a start and end date would 
provide a valid history to go with that element, with the entries with empty 
end_dates being the current ground situation. There will be an exponential rise 
in data since a simple object could have a large number of additional tags each 
with it's own history, but currently that information is simply buried in the 
change log without any clear indication if it is valid or not :(

Managing a small part of this type of material for council sites I have 
developed methods which automatically update historic tags and 'delete' is only 
available at the engineering level. Each individual item of data is tagged even 
if it was incorrectly entered. It just gets a tag that allows you to ignore it 
when appropriate. Some of you may even remember when 'delete' was just a flag 
and nothing was lost until one also 'packed' the records :)

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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