[OSM-talk] Map features discussion & voting
Frederik Ramm
frederik at remote.org
Mon Jun 11 09:53:40 BST 2007
Hi,
> Unfortunately I think the process is massively failing right now.
> Lots of the emails Alex has sent indicate decisions on the basis of
> three or four "votes" - three or four people in a mapping community
> of over 700, on the basis of very little discussion. I really think
> there ought to be a bare minimum, like 15 votes with a 75%
> majority, before something can be accepted.
Depends on what these votes actually mean. Since anyone is free to
tag whatever he or she wants, and anyone is free to write or modify
renderers to draw exactly what he or she wants, the "Mapping
Features" page is not all that important. It offers guidance to new
mappers, but if someone wants to use "village_green" then by all
means he can do it.
These votes are not about what is allowed or forbidden in mapping,
nor about what will be rendered and what not. If we cannot reach a
consensus on some items, then this only means that we have a number
of mappers dealing differently with the same thing. Which complicates
matters, but if it makes the community happy, then that's paramount.
At some point we will probably have to switch over to a system with a
fixed set of allowable tags, or object types, or whatever, but then
we'll also have to modify editors and the API to make sure that
everything in our data set is "correct" as per these rules. We do
not have such a strict system currently, so frankly I view the voting
process (and especially the discussions around them) as more of a
brainstorming than a decision-making thing.
Bye
Frederik
--
Frederik Ramm ## eMail frederik at remote.org ## N49°00.09' E008°23.33'
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