[OSM-talk] namespaces

[Jonathan Bennett]

Frederik Ramm wrote:
  > Namespaces are

AOL to everything Frederik says, and I'll add this:

Namespaces are a technical thing that's needed at the back end (or 
hierarchical tags, but that would be just as confusing). What we also 
need is editing software that hides the complexity of namespaces from 
the user. JOSM and Potlatch both present the user with a flat list of 
key/value pairs, which is great for people like me who get a perverse 
pleasure from typing in complex strings, but not for users, both 
existing and potential, who are more interested in maintaining the 
dataset than the technology we use to do it.

J.