[OSM-talk] Tag proposal/approval system is too heavyweight

[Steve Hill]

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008, Gervase Markham wrote:

> The database can tell us what _is_, but _is_ does not imply _ought_. We
> can either decide that OSM has no view on _ought_ (and just have a
> free-for-all), or we can take advantage of the accumulated mapping
> expertise of OSM participants and have a set of best-practice "ought"s.

To some extent, a good method of cleaning up "wrong" tags is needed.  For 
some values of "wrong" this is easier than others.

Your example of a "highway"/"highwey" typo can be fixed with a global 
search and replace if some kind of system can be put in place to allow 
these kinds of global changes to be made.

Similarly, changes which depricate an old tag/value (or set of 
tags/values) and replace them with new tags/values could sometimes be 
automated.

Things get more complicated when old tags need to be replaced with more 
specific ones - for example, replacing "route=piste" or something with the 
proposed piste tags can't really be automated since the proposed tags are 
far more specific (what sort of piste is it?  downhill? nordic? etc.)

Allowing users to tag areas of the map as their responsibilities would be 
very helpful here - I could say "I'm responsible for everything between 
latA,lonA - latB,lonB" (and there could be multiple people responsible for 
a given area) and then a web page could automatically list things within 
that area that need fixing up.  Sort of like the lint layer, but presented 
on a web page as more of a to-do type list.  A lot of the things that need 
fixing up can probably be done from a contributor's local knowledge so 
wouldn't even be a lot of effort for them.

I do think it is fairly important to keep the database clean and avoid 
ancient depricated tags from hanging around for too long if they can be 
replaced with something better.

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

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence