[Tagging] is the wiki descriptive or prescriptive?

[Christoph Hormann]

On Wednesday 17 November 2021, s8evq wrote:
> > 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.
>
> You can't say that. There is no consensus on that. There are a number
> of people holding a different view and who, for example, would like
> to import more than is currently allowed.

No, the presence of people among the mappers active in OSM who reject 
the fundamental paradigm of the project does not mean there is a lack 
of consensus.  That would be like saying just because there is 
vandalism happening in OSM there is no consensus that vandalism is not 
acceptable in OSM.

And the issues many people frequently have with imports are not due to a 
fundamental conflict with the paradigm of local verifiability.  They 
are predominantly due to quality issues with the concrete imports and 
the adverse effects these can have on the development of local mapping 
communities.

Anyway this direction of the discussion is somewhat off-topic here - i 
used the fundamental paradigm of mapping in OSM to illustrate that we 
don't have a similar guiding principle on the wiki, not to have a 
separate discussion on the principles of mapping.

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