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

[Rob Reid]

Nick Whitelegg wrote the following on 05/12/2007 12:53:
> 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?
>   
I'd worry that trying to do too much within a structure that has been 
designed with mapping in mind may result in not doing anything very well.
I'm all for people being able to store as much information as they are 
willing to collect or produce but it needs to be stored in a data 
structure that best suits its editing, storage and retrieval.
The users of OSM data need to be able to restrict or control the level 
of detail that they are given. For example if I am rendering a map tile 
for central London for display on the Slippy map I want to be able to 
fetch enough information to indicate where the pubs and historical sites 
are on the map but I don't want to have to downloading a complete pub 
guide and travel guide for every single POI i'm rendering.
So I think a separate database would be the best way to go, one that's 
designed to hold large amount of information about individual points 
rather than one that's designed to store small amounts of information 
about a massive number of points.
I have not really looked but do any of the existing pub guide or travel 
guide sites have similar licence, wiki like editing structure and ethos 
to OSM?  Maybe that could be a possible way to do it? Sort of like OSM 
can do with Wikipedia, they link OSM for a map to overlay their data on 
and we can link them for a detailed article. I'm sure if such a site 
exists then api's could be created to allow editors like JOSM to edit 
the POI information as well as the map data at the same time to ensure 
the links between the two sets of information stay current. If not such 
sites exist then one could be created under an OSM umbrella but with its 
own data structure optimised for what it needs to do.

Cheers

rcr