[Tagging] Tagging Voting system- time for reform?

[moltonel 3x Combo]

On 24/01/2015, Dave Swarthout <daveswarthout at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Nobody votes because it's a borderline pointless endeavor."

I'd like to defend the voting system a bit. In my opinion it's working
fine. The only issue is that people have wrong expectations as to what
voting provides.

As has already been pointed out, there's no such thing as an OSM
authority that can say "this is the only correct way to map" (and
neither should there be). And the voters are a self-selected,
non-representative, biased population.

So what is voting good for ? I see it as just part of the discussion.
It's easyer for people to "vote" than to post lenghty arguments on a
mailing list or forum. Is proposition Foo generally accepted ? Look at
taginfo, look at voting, view some current osm data. They're all
important hints which will help you form an opinion. Maybe proposition
Bar has been largely voted against, but I still really prefer it to
the alternative and it seems like *some* people agree with me, so I
take the votes into account but still make my own informed decision.

The "make up your own tag in concertation with others" philosophy is
deeply ingrained in OSM. Voting is just one of many layers on top of
it. Reforming voting won't change the deeper nature of OSM.