[Tagging] [OSM-talk] emergency=*

Brian Quinion openstreetmap at brian.quinion.co.uk
Sat Jul 31 12:18:00 BST 2010


On Fri, Jul 30, 2010 at 4:26 PM, Ross Scanlon <info at 4x4falcon.com> wrote:

> Total time 6 minutes
> Hundreds of hours, yeah right.

What you have given is an absolute minimum time for someone who
already understands to actually edit the files.  You've skipped
research, testing and deployment.

> The program I've been talking about uses osm2pgsql and mapnik so I'm well aware of them.
> If your smart you could probably add the emergency data without having to totally rerun osm2pgsql.

Smart takes time to think about / time to code.  You don't seem to
have included any time for it in your 6 minutes.

Also as you say you are well aware of osm2pgsql and mapnik, you might
even say expert.  So your 6 minutes is the time for an expert to make
the changes - most people are not experts.

Let me give you an alternate time-line at the other end of the scale:

Receive and read bug report that map symbol for police no longer appears (2 min)
Research why it no longer appears (20 minutes of reading wiki and mailing lists)
Research on how to add emergency to the database (20 more minutes of
reading the wiki)
Deicide on process to fix bug (10 minute meeting between developer and
server admin)
Produce patch to fix issue (we'll go with your 6 min)
Re-import database - this person doesn't understand osm well enough to
do something 'clever' (20 min monitoring over a few days)
Test (2 min)
Work out why it doesn't appear (5 min - your patch is actually very
slightly wrong btw, can you spot your mistake?)
Test (2 min)
Deploy to live server (another 20 min monitoring)
Retest (2 min)
Close bug (2 min)

Total time: as near to 2 hours as makes no difference.


Let's say the average is an hour - I think it's fair some people will
do it in 10 minutes, some will will spend 2 hours trying to work out
what to change and another hour on IRC asking for help!

Let's say there are 100 people using mapnik / osm in the world - I'm
sure it's more than that :)

1 * 100 = 100 hours just on mapnik.


However the above is just for fun - lets replace my original statement
with 'a lot of time' and move on...
--
 Brian



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