[Talk-us] Adopt-a-highway representation in OSM

[Serge Wroclawski]

On Tue, Jan 1, 2013 at 8:33 PM,  <dies38061 at mypacks.net> wrote:
> Thanks for your comments, Serge.  I'm confused by your reference to changeset metadata as that is not easily accessible to future editors of the same ways.

Changeset tags are accessible to editors just as easily accessible as
regular tags are. They're stored alongside the object, and provide
more information about the changes. This issue of changeset metadata
has been discussed many times, and source tags on objects (and
especially metadata about source tags) are generally not used and are
deprecated.

Source tags on changesets make a lot of sense, on the other hand.

If you want to think about it in another way, all object tags are
about the object. The information about how the information about the
object got into OSM is contained in the changeset, and thus the
changeset tags.

> source:amenity:date refers to the date on which the survey was done, which just happens to coincide with the date of entering the data.  The survey could just as easily have been done 6 months ago, in which case, the source:amenity:date might be 2012-06-01, for example.

You can add that to the changeset tags, if you want. It's really not
related to the object, but the edit (see above).

>>I don't know what this source_ref:amenity means, but from the context,
>>it seems part of your description of sourcing, which should be part of
>>the changeset, which is how we handle metadata.
>
> Without association of a description of the source with the tag, there is no way for editors to know where the information came from.

Hopefully your question about this has been answered now.

> They should not have to dig into the changeset metadata to find out that the amenity information came from a roadside sign.

Knowing how data was sourced is only important for historical reasons.
Users and editors don't care about source at this level, and we've
depreciated source tags on objects for a reason.

> For one of the ways, we're at Edit #4.  Say we get to Edit #20 and someone wants to find out where the amenity information came from; it would be a major sifting activity through changesets to uncover that information.

It's a single call to the API, or if you're in Josm, Ctrl-H, or if
you're on the web, click the history page for the object, etc.
Checking editing history is something OSM editors are used to doing.

But if you still have questions, please join the tagging list, since
this is a tagging discussion.

> Amenity as in the adopt-a-highway outcome is a cleaner roadway.

Please join the tagging list and discuss.

- Serge