[OSM-talk] Storing extensive notes on points of interest in OSM?

[Dave Stubbs]

On 04/12/2007, Nick Whitelegg <nick at hogweed.org> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> One thing I'd like to do on Freemap (and have already implemented the code to
> do) is to display information about a point of interest, such as a village,
> pub or peak, when the user clicks on it. You can get an idea of the sort of
> thing I mean by going to Freemap (http://www.free-map.org.uk) and clicking on
> a village or hill; at the moment, all that comes up is a panel on the left
> hand side which links to that POI's Wikipedia article (if any). However what
> I'd like to do is to display notes about that POI.
>
> Do people think this information (e.g. description of a pub, or a hill) should
> go in OSM itself (there'd probably have to be some other tag besides "note",
> as note is usually used for surveying notes) or should another database be
> set up, which links to OSM via OSM IDs?
>

If you want to heavily format the description and if it's possible to
go to several kb then I'd probably keep it out purely because editing
it would be a pain. It's more likely you'll get accidental corruption
etc.

On the other hand if it's just "This is a nice pub. Try the xyz ale.
Has a playground out back" then I'd put it in the db.

If you choose not to put it in the main db then I'd at least put the
link/your id in the db -- the osm id can change if people
delete/copy/recreate and you might find it hard to track things. A
better plan might be to add a tag along the lines of
freemap_notes=http://www.free-map.org.uk/notes/things

Something that simple is more likely to be preserved... and you might
find mappers editing the map following the links to your site :-)