[OSM-talk] Status of Map Features

[David Groom]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dominic Hargreaves" <dom at earth.li>
To: <talk at openstreetmap.org>
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 1:03 PM
Subject: [OSM-talk] Status of Map Features


> On Fri, Oct 06, 2006 at 12:07:12PM +0100, Nick Whitelegg wrote:
>
>> That said, the key/value system is not
>> set in stone; for instance, highway=unsurfaced is not on Map Features and
>> I use it for gravel tracks in forests, etc.... and osmarender understands
>> it.
>
> This is something that has been bugging me.
>
> Firstly let me be clear that I do not object per se to ad-hoc
> definitions being used, but if we are going to have a standard at all
> (which I definitely think we should!) then it needs to be improved.
> Now, onto the rambling.
>
> I really think that Map Features needs to be better managed. I was using
> highway=minor quite happily until I noticed that it had disappeared. I
> could not find any rationale for this and like others was rather
> confused about why it had gone. I tried contacting the user who made the
> change on the wiki[0] but didn't get anywhere.
>
> I also notice that Map Features has been translated into several other
> languages. This is of course in theory a good thing, but it looks like
> the translations aren't being managed at all well; they are not at all
> in sync. I think we should consider removing the translations until we
> have some more structured way of presenting this information in more than
> one language to prevent having misleading, outdated translations around.
>
> It's also not clear what the policy for Map Features being edited is.
> The preamble does not say "you must not add/change/remove without first
> discussing on Proposed Features" and even if it did, without being
> enforced somehow it's not practical.
>
> My proposal is that editing Map Features be restricted to a core of a
> few editors who take discussion from Proposed Features in order to
> formulate a clearly defined "official" document. They would then make
> this document have version numbers ("releases") with changelogs, so
> it's easy for everyone (editors, people writing/modifying rendering
> software etc) to keep track of updates easily. It may even be better to
> have this not on the wiki, but in a static HTML file somewhere managed
> in subversion. Yes, I volunteer for this task.
>
> Does any of this strike a chord with anyone? Having a wiki is all very
> well but looking at the page history for map features I see a very large
> number of edits, many of which have no comment added, so that's not
> enough to be able to effectively keep track of the page.

I agree, I did add a note to the Map features page back in August that it 
would be a good idea to put new features onto the proposed features page 
first.

However it is important to note that a large number of the recent edits on 
that page are not adding in new map features, but are adding additional 
commentary to existing map features.


>
> Cheers,
>
> Dominic.
>
> [0] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/User_talk:Sandothegrate
>
> -- 
> Dominic Hargreaves | http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/
> PGP key 5178E2A5 from the.earth.li (keyserver,web,email)
>