[OSM-talk] Tagging climbing routes and scrambles

[Andy Robinson (blackadder)]

Steve Hill [mailto:steve at nexusuk.org] wrote:
>Sent: 23 April 2008 11:52 AM
>To: Andy Robinson (blackadder)
>Cc: 'OJ W'; 'OSM Talk'
>Subject: RE: [OSM-talk] Tagging climbing routes and scrambles
>
>On Wed, 23 Apr 2008, Andy Robinson (blackadder) wrote:
>
>> I'll guess we will agree to disagree then. If it works for you ane the
>other
>> climbers amongst the contributors then of course you can do what works
>for
>> you :-)
>
>I don't think any other climbers have voiced an interest in tagging routes
>yet, so I suspect it is just me for now. :)
>
>> We would be back where we started 3 years go. "type" is no different from
>> "class", the previous method of tagging which didn't scale easily.
>
>Indeed.
>
>What were the reasons for it not scaling well?  I did have a poke around
>Google but couldn't really find anything on the rationale behind dropping
>the class system (notably, relations seem to go back to the idea of having
>a "type" tag too...)
>

Because it was difficult for the "layman freeform tagger contributor" to
decide what the root "class" should be, for instance is it class=waterway or
class=river. And then going beyond that how to construct more class type
tags for other attributes of a feature. Moving to a simple descriptive
tagging method (e.g. Map Features) enabled OSM to move forward in getting
data into the system much more quickly.

I don't have any aversion to a "type" tag if you can define what "type"
actually means. The problem is that it can mean lots of things and hence why
it seems to be more efficient to have descriptive keys and values.

Just going back to namespaces (trying not to nag you), the use of namespaces
is very useful in certain contexts, where true separation within a dataset
is desirable. Using it to separate language/locale difference for the same
key has been the one that's been most used to date. We also talked eons ago
about reserving usernames as namespaces so that each contributor could add
their own personal tags. Similarly it's been muted at various times for
different tagging schemas (which haven't as yet materialised). A bit of that
was/has been done but it's not turned out to be a real wish from the
community, at least not at this stage of the game, although I can see the
potential for using a routing specific namespace to help move that area
along. 

Using a string of namespaces in front of each and every tag (the key getting
longer and longer as the data gets more complex) doesn't really in my view
give the same flexibility that I think is needed for OSM. I think that's why
we haven't seen much use of namespaces to date, although as I said,
carefully used they can and should help improve the context in some
instances.

Cheers

Andy

>  - Steve
>    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org
>http://www.nexusuk.org/
>
>      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence