[talk-au] Topic B: inconsistencies, idiosynchrosies and vagueness

[Herbert.Remi]

A special thank you for the links yesterday. I have read them. "Australian Tagging Guidelines" and "Good practice" are worth knowing and I am very grateful for our forefathers that put so much effort into writing these documents. It worth noting, however, when you compared the two that they are riddled with inconsistencies, idiosyncrasies and vagueness. It is worth remembering this when we experience another of those "I am right, you are wrong" conversations.
Reading "Australian Tagging Guidelines," I thought of Geffory Rush from Pirates of the Carribean, "they are more guidelines than rules." Unapproved tracktypes for 4WD (inventing tags, don't exist but perhaps they should) and small towns called cities so they appear the map (mapping for the renderer), and the principle of "we map what is there" but then don't map what is private (often difficult to verify too). The descriptions are full of contradictions and vagueness. The "Lifecycle prefix" wikitext needs more work, particularly examples of use to get consistency in its application. As much of it is not rendered (Mapnik), mapping it could be considered as a low priority.
Harry Wood's blog "community smoothness" addresses vagueness in language and how everybody has a different opinion of what a text means. That is not new of course and with certainty, everybody has an opinion about what the right way is. It is human nature, when it comes to our own beliefs, every evidence supporting it is embraced and every evidence against excluded.
Finally, it is easy to forget that the Wiki is written in dozens of different languages and there will be inconsistencies between Wiki entries in different languages. I can verify that for two. English and German wiki pages descriptions are not surprisingly culture-specific (see also the chemist/pharmacy/drug store discussion for AU/UK/US comparison).
Despite our best efforts inconsistencies, idiosyncrasies and vagueness will reign in the OSM anarchy.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-au/attachments/20190920/fc4e4263/attachment.html>