[OSM-talk] Map features discussion & voting

[Frederik Ramm]

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'