[OSM-talk] Validator Plugin (landuse=forrest+highway=xy)

[Andy Allan]

On Nov 23, 2007 12:38 PM, Richard Fairhurst <richard at systemed.net> wrote:

> Maybe we should start a documentation mailing list and agree between
> us how we're going to sort this mess out.

I think it's about 6 months since the last time we created a whole
load of "new" pages on the wiki, and nobody got round to moving
content over from the old ones. It's probably about time to duplicate
everything again :-)

A long while ago, I started to try to reduce duplication and make
*high quality* documentation. See
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Mapping_techniques -
Illustrated, consistent style, even down to copying the "main article"
templates from wikipedia in a best-practice kind of way. I went round
the wiki, drawing together all the different snippets of information
on these topics and pulled them into consistent fleshed-out articles
(though I must admit this collection of pages was pretty good to start
with).

Unfortunately, every time someone comes along to "sort out the wiki"
they change the front page, or make a new newbies guide, and write
lots of stuff that's on there already. Just fish around for how much
stuff has been written by people on the mapping techniques topics
since without reference to what's there already. So I gave up, and
moved on to other things (like the cycle map).

Happy to volunteer to help sort things out though, so long as we're
pulling in the same direction. Or maybe I'll quietly potter round
trying to improve articles where I find them.

I would say this though - the single best approach to "sorting out the
wiki" will be to start with individual pages, improving each one at a
time, and for the page you're working on to try to find similar pages
where duplications or overlaps can be removed. Let the improvements
bubble up from below, rather than imposing a(nother) top-down plan.

Cheers,
Andy