[OSM-talk-be] boundary names and my program

[Ben Laenen]

On Thursday 29 November 2012 15:58:13 Ivo De Broeck wrote:
> I feel with you, you are not the only person is disappointed in the working
> of OSM in Belgium. In my opinion a few people have here own rules
> (examples: don't use names, put this info in a note, use JOSM, etc) and
> neglecking hundreds of driven volunteers.

Well, I guess I can plead guilty for some of that. It's an unfortunate effect 
of being in it for so many years and following up on so many issues in the 
community that you take some things for granted. Several strict rules have 
been formed in the community in all the years prior and when it's proposed to 
discard some of them, one is less eager to enter into a discussion rather than 
saying: "no, that shouldn't be done".

"Use note, not name." That's one example of the "don't tag for the mapper" 
rule. Almost as important as the "don't tag for renderer" rule. I agree that I 
have difficulty in discussing an issue like this. It's one of those rules that 
are just "there"... This may indeed sound a lot like telling other people what 
to do. For me it's like someone suggesting that 1 plus 1 equals 3 instead of 
2, something you can't really argue other than saying it isn't. It's hard to 
handle, but in this case for example I haven't done anything to enforce this 
rule, other than restating the rule over and over again. Several people are 
mapping boundaries with names, good for them, good for OSM. I may not agree to 
that way of tagging, but so be it. I won't get after them and change 
everything they've done behind their back as some kind of tagging police.

"Use JOSM" is an example of the numerous frustrations accumulated during the 
past years. Having seen so many errors made just because of the way Potlatch 
works, this is a logical result. To be able to use JOSM, you have to get a bit 
more knowledgeable about mapping for OSM, so people using it automatically 
tend to be less error-prone. But bad things can be done within JOSM of course. 
I still discourage usage of Potlatch, but it has its qualities and use cases, 
and I'm sure we have a lot of mappers who wouldn't be with us if it weren't 
available. So if you want to use Potlatch, all the best to you, but please use 
it wisely, and never blindly add things Potlatch suggests by its interface. 
And don't tell something is true because Potlatch says it is. And that rule 
goes to every editor out there, including JOSM.

 
> In my opinion the problem is that there is no complete wiki and it seams
> that some people can make their own rules.

The latter being the result of the former. The former being the result of the 
latter. Chicken and egg. People make their rules because there don't (seem to) 
exist any. Rules aren't written down because since everybody has their own 
rules, there aren't really any rules. Discussions about it then go into a "my 
way of tagging is right", and again I plead guilty. But the controversial 
rules that I made are written down on the wiki in my user space to let other 
people know that it's my rules.

Case in point, the extended access tags. It was never discussed on this 
mailing list but it can be found in several other places. I actually did 
create my own set of tags for this. Well, then the problem arises quite soon: 
by making your own rules you somehow had to learn quite a bit about the 
subject, and I'm pretty pedantic about being able to tag everything in a way 
that the exact traffic rules can be generated from the tags, and I could  
immediately see flaws when another proposal is created. I had some tough 
discussions in the course of solving this issue. Long story short: I ended up 
supporting a proposal that I didn't have any part in creating, and am now 
tagging according to those rules.

Relating to everything in this thread: I can indeed become quite difficult to 
persuade. But this is more a way of "provoking" good solutions. I'm not too 
proud to let go of my own ideas and adopt other peoples' viewpoints. If this 
somehow comes over as imposing my will onto others and if I sound a bit 
arrogant as a result of this, then I do apologize.


> Exemple : there was a majority for using "hiking" instead of "foot"
> (Potlach preset hiking instead of foot). Its not on the wiki and all
> "hiking's" were changed to "foot's". If we continue like that i am sure we
> will lose a lot of people.

For what it's worth, I did change some from hiking to foot, but that was 
before the discussion took place, and never systematically. If I happened to 
encounter one I'd change it if I had to edit it. Of course, many were tagged 
with foot since I mapped them myself, and the wiki page about the conventions 
(which I wrote myself...) always had "foot" as the used tag. After the 
discussion I haven't touched those.


> I hope you will still continue your work on OSM and hope that one day,
> people will "listen" to arguments and that "specialists" will put their
> energy in making the wiki (after voting) instead of never ending
> discussions.

Well, I do hope no-one is put down by the endless discussions myself and I 
hope those that are have some way of discarding these threads... I still find 
them more valuable than a simple wiki vote though. It's about exchanging 
ideas, not just giving "likes" à la Facebook.

In conclusion: I hope I made my viewpoint a bit clearer with this message, if 
I left a bad impression on some people in some discussions. I'm a bit stubborn 
on some issues, but I'm a very friendly person really :-)

Greetings
Ben