[Tagging] Quality and the Openstreetmap value chain

[Jean-Marc Liotier]

On 5/12/20 11:42 AM, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> I love the fact that we are now 50 messages into discussing, for the second
> time, a change that would be made ostensibly for the benefit of data
> consumers, and yet no one has asked any actual data consumers.

Yes. Users are the ultimate measure of quality, yet they are most often 
absent from our discussions. Our history explains why: in the beginning, 
we had a blank map, which we set upon filling with whatever we could, to 
get the stone soup started. There were no consumers at all - so 
naturally our universe was supply-side entirely: the availability of 
data inspired usage, which came second. Nowadays, Openstreetmap is used 
- let's take advantage of that to improve ! Looking at the world and 
thinking about how we should model it should be done with an 
understanding of how users want it. This is difficult when we have few 
users around and very little feedback from downstream. So, if one has 
opportunities to bring that to our knowledge, please do: it is valuable 
information to the Openstreetmap project, information without which we 
cannot allocate our efforts optimally.