[OSM-talk] Prolification of the amenity tag

Wed Nov 29 15:42:23 GMT 2006

On Wednesday 29 November 2006 15:42, bvh wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 29, 2006 at 01:00:16PM +0100, Joerg Ostertag (OSM 
Munich/Germany) wrote:
> > I don't think you can state this so easily. If you know an information is
> > wrong and you don't tag it like this that's bad. But if you tell otheres
> > that this information was right on a specific date everyone can judge by
> > himself if this information might still be valid. So even old information
> > can be valuable. Lets start with an example: I drove arround the US some
> > years ago. I had my Garmin-GPS with me and every night i started to take
> > out the phone an call every Hotel in the nearby area to find a decent
> > place for the night. Yes the data on some of the hotel was outdated. But
> > verifying this was pretty easy(one phone call) but the rest of the
> > information was very very helpfull to me. So I you know the reliability
> > and age of such informations you can judge and check very easy.
>
> Age of features information is not easily presented on a map
> and is currently not available for the common user of openstreetmap.
> So there is no practical way to do what you want.

This is a good point. SInce some of the needed data is already in the 
database "last_modified=...". And the data can also be seen in the 
planet.osm. Maybe we should add another tag for these things 
like "last_verified=...". So we'd have to add a differentiation to all the 
POI Icons which states that this data might be outdated. One Idea would be to 
make the icon greyish  or to make it dashed as soon as the last_verified tag 
is too old. But for this we'd have to add another rule to each feature to 
tell how long this data normally stays up to date.

> > > * more features means a bigger hurdle in participation for everyone
> > > involved
> >
> > Why? I would say more information will be more knowledge for everyone
> > using this data. I think you have to focus on things which seem important
> > to you. I
>
> Yes. And the more possibilities the project gives you, the more
> difficult this choice is and the more likely it is that you
> focus on the wrong things.

I think the focus is deeply dependent on the point of view. I think there is 
at least one focus on the underlying street-segments for almost everyone. But 
the change of focus already start at the point where you start creating ways 
and have to tag them. For me this part has not this high of a priority as for 
many others. I think it is important in the long term, but for me this is 
currently not my main focus. And this might be one of the reasons I'm trying 
to understand why others do have a completely different focus. 
For you and others to understand why my focus is different; I might have to 
explain: I'm primarily coming from the navigation side. So my basic idea is 
to give my (GpsDrive)users a map where they can see where they can drive and 
how they can reach there destination. 
So for me I divided this goal into different stages.
I first wanted to be able to see street-segments where streets are. This way I 
get a view of all the possible streets in an area. In the first phase it's 
not important for me to see which type each of these streets is. 
The second phase would be to classify the streets into two or three main 
categories (highway, main-street, others). I then can start with routes 
finding if i assume this rough classification. If I have a start lat/lon and 
an end lat/lon I can start trying to get routing to work. For someone driving 
from Frankfurt to Istanbul the street names in between are normally not 
really relevant, but knowing which street can be driven how fast is 
important. So for this purpose this Phase is sufficient.
Now comes the next Phase; searching a source and target coordinate. For this 
you have to start having names of areas. But for this in the first run even a 
naming of all the cities would help a lot. So naming tities and town is only 
important in this Phase.
If all of the above is working, I'm thinking about naming each single street. 
So this would be another Phase.
And if I got this I'd like to know where which HouseNumber is. So this is 
another step in the priority list.
Now or meanwhile i do all the above, i can start with some additional 
Information, like traffic jam possibility, average speed on special 
segments, ...
This is probably not all of the story, but I think this gives an Idea where 
the focus on my side is.  

So much so far. Maybe later more.

-- 
Jörg (Germany, Munich)

http://www.ostertag.name/
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