[Tagging] Extended Conditions - response to votes

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Fri Jul 6 00:12:55 BST 2012


Hi,

On 06.07.2012 00:09, Eckhart Wörner wrote:
> Well, if this proposal fails I would say everybody who voted against
> it has to come up with a better one (where "better" is based on some
> actual arguments)

In my eyes this proposal is a typical 
designed-on-the-desk-of-a-database-person idea.

Of course, if somebody asks me to come up with a technical solution that 
could be used to model all (or even 99.9% of all) combinations of access 
restrictions possible, in a machine readable way, then I'd have to 
invent something like it.

But I think these kinds of complex tagging schemas only satisfy a few 
über mappers who are delighted to be able to model something complex. 
They won't be adopted by a large enough group of people to even remotely 
rely on these tags being present and correct.

I suggest the following course of action:

1. Use the proposed tag in a limited area somewhere.

2. Create an application that acutally makes good use of the proposed 
tag, something where people go: "Wow, great, this bicycle routing engine 
on my iphone gives me different routes depending on whether the 
pedestrian area is open for traffic or not, that's something I have *so* 
been waiting for!"

3. Then, based on the strength of "this cool real-world application will 
work better if these access rules are properly mapped so let's all agree 
on the best way to do it", get the discussion going.

With this procedure, there's a remote chance that people will indeed use 
the tag because they get tangible results. Even then it will be 
difficult because we already demand a lot of our mappers. Frankly, I'm 
sick of hearing "oh we'll just make a nice template in the editor for 
this" because those templates already give every mapper the impression 
that a simple street with a name is not enough anymore - a new mapper 
stupid enough to open the JOSM preset for a residential road is already 
asked whether the road is lit, how many lanes it has, what the surface 
and the maximum speed were, how wide the road was (in metres), whether 
there was an incline... this has all grown from the "oh let's just make 
a nice template then mappers can enter this stuff" idea but the result 
is that every mapper is left feeling inadequate because he cannot 
remember if there were street lights in the street he surveyed.

I'm a big fan of the "show application, introduce tags" idea. Everything 
else is just "wouldn't it be nice if..." tag wanking that gets us nowhere.

As long as there are no real-world applications for this kind of 
detailed access mapping one can simply use the "note" tag and add stuff 
in natural language. That's my proposal for now ;)

Bye
Frederik

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





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