[Talk-GB] Tagging of British canals.

[Marc Gemis]

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 7:15 PM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net>
wrote:

> Don't be fooled by the siren voices of the wiki. What's in the database is
> valid because it's formed by consensus. What's on the wiki too often isn't.
> Any fool can invent their own scheme, write "this is how you do it" on the
> wiki, and most of them do. Wiki users have rationalised their behaviour by
> promoting a voting scheme, but as this can lead to major changes being
> approved by just a handful of people, it doesn't have any particular
> legitimacy.
>

Some thoughts (certainly no critique on your way of working).

The wiki is IMHO the only place where different (country) communities talk
to one another. What is the value of a great tagging schema for e.g.
canals, when it is only discussed on talk-gb ?
When communities (country or city centric) reach a consensus on a certain
way of tagging but do not communicate this to the rest of the world, they
make the same mistake as the "wiki"-people you criticise. "A handful of
people reached a consensus".
Right now the wiki (and perhaps the tagging mailing list) seems to be only
place where different communities meet and communicate.

The danger is that data consumers have to read all the different mailing
lists to see how a certain feature is tagged in a particular country or
region (Dresden cycleway tagging comes to my mind, or the exit-to which is
popular in the USA).
Even with a wiki, some country specific things might get interpreted
incorrectly, eg. the UK-specific "designation" or "landuse=village green"
tags.

I totally agree with you that communication with other mappers is key, but
it does not end at the border of a country.

I also refer to a talk on SOTM EU 2014 by Kirill Bondarenko: OSM: World Map
or Set of Local Maps? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2gYKOYLgd8
which is about the same problem.

And the presentation of Frederik Ramm on the usage of mailing lists, where
the same topic (highway classification) pops up in every country.(sorry
can't find the link).
And how sometimes the same topic pops up in different fora and mailing
lists (e.g. osm notes problems, tagging of unsurfaced roads, child-care
tagging).

I'll admit that there are some barriers to overcome: language,
understanding of the country-specific law, habits, etc. as well as time
that people want to spend on discussing a topic.

So, please continue to document on the wiki, even when you add a line "For
UK purposes only", so people elsewhere can at least learn how you do it.

regards,

m
p.s. sorry for the incoherent list of thoughts and the bad English. I still
hope you get some ideas from it.
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