[OSM-talk] Tag proposal/approval system is too heavyweight
Frederik Ramm
frederik at remote.org
Wed Mar 19 16:57:27 GMT 2008
Hi,
> Having an approved set of tags means that there is ideally 1, but
> certainly a small number of ways of tagging common features, rather
> than
> 15 or 50.
Even without a mechanism of "approval" people will eventually settle
down on a small number of ways of tagging common features. Not having
an approval system does not mean people stop talking.
To give an example, I was recently looking for a tag for "vineyard".
Browsed the wiki and found a longish discussion about the advantages
of "landuse=farm,produce=grapes" over "landuse=vineyard" or vice
versa. Settled for "landuse=vineyard" and even updated Osmarender to
render it properly. The feature is still not "approved" but I think
it is very unlikely that anyone will use something else than one of
the two ways mentioned.
So as long as there's at least some discussion that can be found
(either in the Wiki or on the lists), things will go nicely even
without formal proposals and approval. A plain simple "hey folks, how
do you tag <x>" plus the 10 mails that follow is enough. Either all
10 use the same anyway (or 9 of 10 do), then the issue is clear, or
if every single one of the 10 uses something else, but an approval/
voting process wouldn't lead far then.
+1 to replacing approval/voting by a good automated mechanism of
showing what's there. Agreed, the structuring needs to be solved but
this could be done by editing in the Wiki as a completely separate
process that does not aim to influence what tags are used, just
documents it.
Bye
Frederik
--
Frederik Ramm ## eMail frederik at remote.org ## N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
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