[Tagging] The wiki (was "Re: That stupid 'quarter' tag has been approved")

SomeoneElse lists at mail.atownsend.org.uk
Tue May 29 12:27:08 BST 2012


Steve Bennett wrote:
> On Mon, May 28, 2012 at 2:41 PM, Russ Nelson<nelson at crynwr.com>  wrote:
>> So? The wiki is the place for documenting how YOU map, not how other
>> people SHOULD map. The only thing you SHOULDN'T do in the wiki is
>> change the description of how other people map.
+1 (in the sense of the wiki shouldn't say "most people do X" when 
actually "most people do Y")

> C'mon. Clearly that's not true. The primary purpose of the wiki is to
> establish standards that everyone maps by.

Well, it's to "document" standards, not to "create" them.  If that's 
what you meant by "establish" then +1 to you too.

The biggest problem the wiki has is that in some quarters editing it 
seems to have become an end in itself rather than a necessary evil to 
make sure that we're all singing off the same hymnsheet.  "Documenting" 
obscuring procedures that almost no-one follows helps no-one, as does 
"approving" tags when only a few people could be bothered to "vote".

There's also a regular problem with "extrapolating from the local" - 
some wiki editors state something that may be true in their local area, 
but simply isn't worldwide.  Unless a comment of that sort is caveated 
with e.g. "In the Duchy of Grand Fenwick..." it's often confusing.

Where the wiki works well it's on pages like this one:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/National_Byway

It got to be in its current state because someone (Monxton) rearranged a 
previous sprawling mess after discussion on talk-gb about how best to 
structure it - it hasn't been "invented, imposed and ignored" as a 
number of other pages have been.

Cheers,
Andy






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