[OSM-talk] Relations not always brilliant

[Steve Hill]

On Mon, 7 Apr 2008, Andy Allan wrote:

> If I peer into my crystal ball, I can see physical attributes (width,
> surface, lanes) being on ways, and non-physical attributes
> (references, routes, even street names) moving to relations. Ways will
> end up being a connected series of nodes, ending where the properties
> change. That's just my hunch.

I'd agree with that.

> But there's no hurry. We're short on developers, and documentation
> writers, and have a huge community to think about. There's no point in
> forcing the pace on this issue - our efforts would be better focussed
> on forcing the pace on actual mapping - there's still a staggering
> amount of streets to be mapped (even just considering Europe),
> regardless of how we tag them.

Indeed - this is why I'm very dubious about putting too much stock into 
relations until things like the editors and documentation have caught up a 
bit more.  Far better to get the data into the database in a simplistic 
form and make it better later rather than confusing people too much 
(confused people will make more mistakes, reducing the quality of the 
data).

  - Steve
    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org   http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence