[Talk-GB] City names translation

[SomeoneElse]

On 05/08/2014 07:58, Pavlo Dudka wrote:
> Not, it is not a job for external services. It is much better to use 
> single service(OSM) rather than multiple(OSM+Wikidata).

Personally, I'd argue that OSM isn't a "service" so much as a "large 
lump of data".  It has "services", but these are designed for mappers 
rather than for general use.  You can, of course, create your own 
services based on OSM data (and many people do).

> OpenStreetMap supports multiple names - let's use it. If you don't 
> like someone use some tags - just ignore those tags.

OSM actually has a more general problem with names.  For example, 
various people have (with the best of intentions) tried to fill in 
"names" where in reality there are none.

For example, this road:

http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/143924826/history

doesn't have a name (as far as the highway authority is concerned). A 
previous mapper thought that it ought to have a name, and came up with 
"Doveridge Bypass".  Following discussion on talk-gb, other local users 
of the road came forward and said that they didn't believe that it had a 
name either.

It's important that anything added to OSM is verifiable by other 
on-the-ground mappers (and is either from on-the-ground survey or from a 
source with an appropriate licence, of course).  No-one's arguing that 
real, used-by-human-beings, exists-on-a-sign, names should be excluded - 
but there needs to be a check to ensure that "made up" names (like 
"Doveridge Bypass") are excluded, as their inclusion devalues the 
information within OSM that does actually exist and is verifiable.

Cheers,

Andy