[Tagging] Map Labs mapping development? (was: Re: Tagging FOR the renderer)

[Daniel Koć]

W dniu 16.05.2015 5:01, André Pirard napisał(a):

>  But lately, under "Is what we're doing useful?", I reported a reply
> from Tom Hughes [1] seeming to say that THE map is not for the general
> public and refusing to set a help page for it (plus saying that the
> documentation we make amounts to being crap).  So, every tagger is

It's sad for me. Also that Andy Allan does not see how powerful is his 
informal position as an owner of a style for The Map. But I don't think 
it's a personal thing, indeed: rather that we all - as a project - just 
got too much into details and loose the view of a bigger picture.

Don't get me wrong - I think it's natural for established projects to 
start being more conservative and detailed, but at the same time there 
needs to be a way to reinvent itself every now and then. I don't think 
the addressing is the "next big thing" we should focus on now (in Poland 
it's quite mainstream these days), but at least I am very happy Steve 
Coast still thinks in terms of bigger picture. Somebody has to, if we 
want to stay relevant in the future, and leader/founder is supposed to 
do that.

But not just him alone! I hope some kind of OSM R&D think tank ("Map 
Labs" maybe? - just like Mozilla Labs) would emerge, so the people can 
propose, discuss and test new ideas somewhere, even if they may sound 
crazy, because every project needs a fresh air to evolve. It's sure 
thing that only a fraction of those ideas will be valuable, but we need 
also many other, even plain wrong ones, to help find the best ones and 
implement them in the OSM practice in the end.

>  I understand that what pmailkee suggests is basically similar to what
> I once suggested: lessen tagging for the renderer by finding means to
> make rendering simpler to implement so that every specific tiny
> feature is not a hassle to render and that the tagger finds "legal"
> ways to tag with rendering (making visible) the features HE holds
> dear. The proposed solutions may well not be the best ones but...

That's also what I think. I guess dropping some hard-to-decide features 
and allowing for using more general categories instead of inventing 
"cases" for every object is the way to go. I also actively learn to make 
more icons rendered on a default map. My attempts may be also misguided 
here and there, but it's very important for us to try.

Maybe that's not enough to make local changes and we should have 
"development" style rendered somewhere else, before pushing new features 
into general "stable" map? Is it possible to have such a testing 
sandbox? Would it be just a technical problem to set it or we need some 
more formal background, like maybe Foundation help and decisions?

-- 
"The train is always on time / The trick is to be ready to put your bags 
down" [A. Cohen]