[OSM-talk] Notability (was OpenPlantMap)

[Peter Miller]

> Peter Miller wrote:
> 
> > I agree. I think we need to adopt a Wikipedia concept of 'notability'.
> For
> > example... A wood is notable, a large established solitary tree in a
> park
> > might be notable, but a nettle is not. Is a rare plant notable? I would
> > suggest it is not notable in OSM itself.
> 
> I'm afraid I see the notability criteria as one of Wikipedia's biggest
> problems so I would hate to see OSM go the same way.  I've seen too many
> genuinely useful articles get blown away because someone decided they
> covered non-notable subjects, to the point that I gave up editing
> Wikipedia.
> 
> The point is: why should anyone care about notability so long as the
> data is useful, accurate and maintained?
> 
> Wikipedia's deletion policies are deeply flawed: There are a group of
> users who make it their mission to delete articles.  When they nominate
> an article for deletion, most of the people who vote either wrote the
> article, or one of the group who's sole mission is to delete stuff - no
> one else cares enough about the deletion procedure to take part.  So the
> majority of the time, well written articles get deleted purely because
> of the massive bias in the quorum who vote on deletions.  I sincerely
> hope OSM doesn't decide to go down a similar route.
>

I have also fallen foul of the deletion police at Wikipedia who seem to
particularly focus on new articles and the process means the original author
often knows nothing about it until the article has gone and then it is hard
to work out where it went and why. I have had tedious battles with Wikipedia
police and know that others have given up over it. However, imho Wikipedia
does need a notability policy given its tendency to turn up on the first
page of google and ability to generate 'google juice' for referenced web
pages giving people a huge incentive to add information about minor people,
projects and events that they support.

Let's explore the relevance of notability to OSM. I have bumped into
notability arguments twice with OSM, once when I asked about flight paths
and was told they didn't belong in OSM because they would be confusing and
belonged somewhere else, and again regarding a proposed road for which I
entered the route (a trunk road in the middle of a very expensive
controversial public enquiry that the government is determined to build but
which might not get built).

Let's try some particular cases and see if they should be in or out.

Flight paths


Regarding plants and notability..

- Heritage trees (ones with preservation orders in the UK)
- Any plants/trees in public places including annuals
- Plants/trees in private gardens that are accessible to the public
- Plants/trees in private gardens that are not accessible to the public


And then with regard to things that might exist in the future but don't at
present..

- A road scheme 'under construction'
- A major road scheme being promoted by the authorities 
- A road scheme that was a priority of the authorities but now isn't
- A road scheme that is being promoted by a minority group.


Things that only sometimes exist..

The layout of tracks and stages for a festival that happens once a year
(Glastonbury, Burning Man etc)

Personally I support a 'layering' approach where minor interest information
is available in the DB but not part of the main roads planet file, but is
accessible as a special interest file. Possibly people will start creating
cuts of the data to suit different users. Possibly the tools will need to be
able to filter out certain features that are not relevant to their focus (ie
flight paths if mapping a town, or plants if mapping flight paths).

Over time I suspect that people will create versions of OSM for special
interests such as historical views of places, possible futures for places
and information of interest to only a small group


Peter 

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