[OSM-newbies] Searching email list archives

[Craig Wallace]

On 24/11/2010 12:43, Richard Moss wrote:

>
> Is there a way to do a search of the archives of an email list? I
> have
> a question which I'm guessing will have been discussed before, probably
> in the Tagging list, but opening each month separately and scrolling
> through the subject lines could be a bit tedious.
>
> The question, in case anybody has a good answer, is what to do when
> you come across an instance where there is a node taggeed, and then
> someone (else, possibly) has drawn an area to represent the same feature
> and tagged it accordingly. I came across two examples recently, one was
> a village, and the other, a childrens' playground. Both looked a bit
> silly at certain zoom levels in Mapnik, where the village name or
> playground icon is duplicated. Is there a consensus?
>
> So how do I serach the archives?

You can use Google. ie just search for "site:lists.openstreetmap.org", 
plus whatever you want to search for. Then it will only find things from 
that domain.

Or there are other archives at Gmame or Nabble. They also allow you to 
search the OSM lists:
http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/OpenStreetMap-f660402.html
http://dir.gmane.org/index.php?prefix=gmane.comp.gis.openstreetmap

For your question, I would suggest this: 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Good_practice
It says:
<quote>
One feature, one OSM-object
Don't place nodes in (equally labelled) areas just to see some icon 
appear on the map. The renderers will display icons on areas as well and 
there's no need to have every parking-lot, soccer-ground etc. twice in 
the database.
</quote>

So the node for the object should be deleted, just make sure all of the 
appropriate tags have been copied to the area first.

For places like villages, it might be useful to have a node (as well as 
an area) to mark where the village centre is, and suggest where the 
label should be shown. But I don't know if there's any agreed tagging 
for this.

Craig