[Tagging] Facts and opinions

[Kevin Kenny]

On Wed, Jan 9, 2019 at 1:28 PM Mateusz Konieczny
<matkoniecz at tutanota.com> wrote:
(sorry, the headers are making me lose attribution here..)
someone:
> It would be nice to be able to store that info - it would allow search for nearest shop
> selling motorbike tyres that would be automatic and take less than second
> rather than manual and take minutes (or hours if many close shop=tyres are not selling them)
someone else:
> & where do we stop with extreme details?
Mateusz:
> At level where mappers are unwilling to maintain up to date information.

One reason that I'd tend to be wary about this level of detail about
businesses is that if it isn't widespread, it isn't useful. As soon as
it is widespread, the result is likely to be that OSM becomes a huge
repository for commercial spam of questionable quality and veracity. I
don't want to see a world where the businesses that are mapped in
detail are those that can afford to hire SEO firms and have armies of
sweatshop mappers trying to make sure they own the best keywords. (In
my more fevered imaginings, I can also see them vandalizing their
competitors' mapping, putting in totally bogus sells=* in order to get
you into the store to buy something else, and similar fraudulent
tactics.)

Business directories, chambers of commerce, and ad agencies, among
others, exist to support (and often to moderate) that sort of thing.
We don't need to take on the job.

(That said, I don't dictate to others what they may and may not map,
except that mapping things that aren't there is not acceptable.)