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

[Dominic Hargreaves]

On Thu, Dec 06, 2007 at 12:33:06AM +1300, Rob Reid wrote:

> 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.

Just happened to spot this message in a thread (indeed, mailing list)
I'm not following very closely these days so apologies if I miss any
context.

What you describe is something I'd definitely like to see happen. i've
gone a small way towards this by linking in OSM maps with the Open Guide
to Oxford (OpenGuides is a collection of local information wikis with
location metadata) as can be seen in this example page:

http://oxford.openguides.org/wiki/?Pie_Minister

I'd really like for OpenGuides and OSM to work together closely in some
way; we already export our rich metadata in geoRSS, which people could
if they wanted import into an OSM layer, but aside from that, I think
some work needs to be done to instrument the layering of multiple data
sets within a single OSM view - I'm afraid I'm too far away from the
current state of the OSM art to be able to say much more on the subject.

What would be ideal would be a system of referrals which mean that
oxford.openguides.org (for example) could provide an OSM layer which
declared itself to be based on the base "official" OSM layer (and allow
people to edit the base layer if appropriate).

There has always been some overlap in what's been stored in OSM and what
is stored (or could be stored) in other databases. For example, the OSM
Oxford region has quite a few pubs listed, but I see that as only being
an inheritance from the OS map format which traditionally lists some
pubs (especially in rural areas) as being key resources for their map
users (people hiking/cycling etc, when it comes to eg the Landranger/OL
series).

However the Oxford OpenGuide has far more pubs listed, and there is far
more information about each one.

Another thing to think about is the speed of change; I see the Oxford
OpenGuide as being a rapidly changing publication (even if it doesn't
move as rapidly as I'd like it) but OSM is a far more steadily evolving
data source, which should be primarily concerned with recording physical
attributes and ways, rather than business and services which vary from
month to month.

Again, I'm sorry that I can't be more involved in being proactive in
this field at the moment as I'm out of the OSM loop, but I hope that
some of my rambling gives some ideas that can be used.

Cheers,

Dominic.

-- 
Dominic Hargreaves | http://www.larted.org.uk/~dom/
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