[OSM-talk] Node download limits / Database priority

[Nic Roets]

I recently tried to download a large part of the city I'm working on
so that I could fix the "motorway" running through it, but I was
forced to do it in pieces due to the limit on the number of nodes per
download.

But anyone (including anonymous users) are able to submit a request to
re-rendering of the entire city on
http://dev.openstreetmap.org/~ojw/Browse/?x=2369&y=2351&z=12
And if I understand correctly many large cities are frequently
rerendered for various tilesets, taking up significant database
resources.

Now I'd rather that my city be rendered only once I'm done editing
than waisting my editing time on splitting downloads.

===>
The solution I propose is that the database should somehow prioritize
download requests* by users according to their upload / download
ratio. In other words users who don't contribute much should be made
to wait for service while users who have uploaded a lot in the past
should received their next few MB of data almost instantaneously.

Then users will start to consider database time as precious, e.g.
users hosting rendering services may well decide that would from now
on only render from the slightly out of data planet file.

*: E.g. every time the database finishes a request, it finds the
request in the queue with highest
  priory = (total uploads by the user making the request /
               total downloads by user making the request) +
              (scaling factor * time spent in the queue)
and performs that request. This scheme may be open to arbitrage (e.g.
there may may be cases it will be in a users advantage to create a
multiple accounts for himself and choose the best one before each up-
or download), but it's better than nothing.