[Talk-us] Difficult USA mapper(s)

Russ Nelson nelson at crynwr.com
Wed Oct 31 23:52:20 GMT 2012


Richard Weait writes:
 > I would prefer to discuss this in general, and in the open.

Okay. In general, then, I have said that I believe the proper way to
edit is to not disturb anything that anybody else does[1]. That should
be rule #1, yet DUM[2] (Difficult USA Mapper) seems to feel that e[3]
can change other people's tags any way e wants without consulting with
them.

So, as a generalized example of a specific instance that I have in
mind, I added some tags to some ways which reflected data that anybody
could verify from multiple sources with a little bit of research. I
didn't put a source= tag because the source was from USGS topo data --
unquestionably public domain, backed up positionally with USGS ortho
photos. Sometimes the data came from research, other times from site
visits. A reasonably safe, uncontroversial edit.

DUM felt it necessary to change the key of the tag to a different key,
thus violating rule #1 by *changing* rather than *adding* a new tag
with e's new key and the value I put into the tag. To make matters
worse, this key is one that e invented and seems to be the sole user
of.

DUM has made this change to hundreds of ways that I know of, and
probably thousands or more across the country, and without any
consultation with others as far as I can find. That would be okay
except that e violated rule #1, the Prime Directive.

By the way, I am not one of the complaintants, but I will be happy to
enter a complaint about this specific edit, which has detracted from
the value of the map for me (at least, and I speculate others).

[1] I add to that: document how you tagged, don't change documentation
written by someone else, and then tag according to the documentation.
[2] Hey, I didn't make the name up!
[3] Neutral gender. Hey, it *could* be wonderchook, you never know.

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