[Talk-us] What does the community want from a US local chapter?

[Peter Dobratz]

Yes, OSMF US shouldn't mandate a certain tagging scheme, but they
could certainly help to facilitate a consensus among the community.

Peter

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 1:03 PM, Martijn van Exel <m at rtijn.org> wrote:
> I believe that the core tasks of the US Chapter should be 1) to
> support and help grow the community, and 2) engage with existing and
> potential professional users to stimulate awareness and adoption.
> Defining the map itself should not be among them, this is and should
> always be a community effort, even though it is sometimes a cumbersome
> process. If you're saying that the Chapter could do something to
> support reaching a consensus or define the issue more clearly, such as
> facilitating a working group or a wiki clean-up, I could not agree
> more. But I don't see the Chapter going in and defining a definitive
> (is there even such a thing?) tagging scheme for roads. That would
> have the Chapter claim a mandate that it was never given and would
> only serve to divide the community rather than strengthening it.
>
> Martijn
>
> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Peter Dobratz <peter at dobratz.us> wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 10:25 AM, Richard Weait <richard at weait.com> wrote:
>>> 1) What would you like to see the US local chapter do?
>>
>> Come up with a consistent way to tag roads for the country.  Somehow
>> get a consensus from current mappers about how tag
>> US/state/county/whatever highways.  Update this page
>>
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_roads_tagging
>>
>> and then remove "There is conflicting information on this topic at
>> several places."
>>
>> Specifically, on the Way:
>> ref=???
>> highway=???
>> name=???
>>
>> Add Way to Relation
>> type=route
>> route=road
>> name=???
>> network=???
>> state_id=???
>> ref=???
>> modifier=???
>> direction=???
>>
>> For exit Node:
>> highway=motorway_junction
>> name=???
>> ref=???
>> exit_to=???
>>
>> Once we know how to map what we have, then we can document in the wiki
>> specifically how every numbered road should be documented.
>>
>>> 2) Why should this be done by the local chapter, and not by individual mappers?
>>
>> Every individual mapper can have their own idea about how these things
>> should be tagged.  As it is right now, mappers look at the conflicting
>> information on the wiki and then make an educated decision, only to
>> have someone come in later and change the tags on the roads, often
>> leaving the map in an inconsistent state.
>>
>> I think there may even already be a committee setup to tackle this very issue:
>> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Foundation/Local_Chapters/United_States/Working_Groups/US_Tagging
>>
>>> 3) Why should this be done by the local chapter and not by the OSMF?
>>
>> Though there may be some global consistency with road tagging,
>> standards need to be established for each country.  Road tagging is
>> often influenced by US states making designations and signing each
>> road accordingly.  These signs do not necessarily have an
>> international equivalent.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Talk-us mailing list
>> Talk-us at openstreetmap.org
>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
>>
>
>
>
> --
> martijn van exel
> geospatial omnivore
> 1109 1st ave #2
> salt lake city, ut 84103
> 801-550-5815
> http://oegeo.wordpress.com
>