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

[Steve Hill]

On Thu, 27 Mar 2008, Gervase Markham wrote:

> On the other hand, feedback of the form "I don't like this proposal
> because it doesn't cover situation X, but I can neither provide a
> real-life example of X in the map, nor can I design a scheme which deals
> with it" is not helpful.

In the long term, this might be helpful - known problems with the proposal 
can be noted in the wiki for future reference.  This doesn't mean the 
proposal shouldn't go ahead and be approved, but it does mean that the 
problems with it are documented and can be fixed at a later date if 
someone figures out how to do it and/or if it actually starts becoming a 
problem.

I'm convinced that, where possible, we need to do a global update of the 
database when tags get depricated to try and reduce the amount of 
depricated stuff that could be replaced with a better solution.  (And I 
fully accept that some stuff _can't_ be automatically fixed up to newly 
approved tagging scheme - in these cases there needs to be a good way 
to alert people responsible for mapping an area that there are some tags 
that should be manually fixed up).

The problem I see with having a long-term mix of depricated and new tags 
is that the rendering rules get progressively more complex since they have 
to deal with both tagging schemes in order to have a complete map.

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

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence