[Tagging] is the wiki descriptive or prescriptive?

[Christoph Hormann]

On Wednesday 17 November 2021, Minh Nguyen wrote:
> > The way you formulate your question: "Is the wiki descriptive or
> > prescriptive?" is already part of the problem.  My answer to that
> > question would be:  The wiki is neither because there is no
> > consensus on what it *should* be.
>
> I'd contend that it's an unholy mix of both. What is OSM if not
> inconsistent?

The reason why OSM as a geodatabase works despite all the 
inconsistencies in practical mapping is because we share the common 
goal and paradigm of verifiability and local knowledge.  This is what 
holds the project together across language and culture boundaries.

And we don't have anything comparable on the wiki.  As i pointed out 
there is no consensus on the overall aim of the tagging documentation.

There are two valuable lessons to be learned from that:

a) The problems on the wiki give you a glimpse into what kind of 
problems you could expect on a much larger scale in OSM as a whole if 
you'd abolish or weaken the basic principles of the project (local 
verifiability).
b) If you'd create a tagging documentation platform that from the start 
establishes a similarly clear and universal paradigm as we have for 
mapping in OSM that might avoid the fundamental problem of the wiki to 
some extent.  Evidently that would be much more feasible for a 
descriptive than for a prescriptive documentation (with the latter 
being inherently tied to cultural commonalities between the 
contributors).

-- 
Christoph Hormann
https://www.imagico.de/