[OSM-talk] Notability (was OpenPlantMap)

[Steve Hill]

Peter Miller wrote:
> 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.

My attitude to this is, why is it a problem?  So what if people add 
information about minor people, projects or events that they support so 
long as the information is accurate and maintained?  Yes, it shows up on 
Google, but if the information is accurate isn't this a Good Thing?

> 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,

Whilst I agree they may be confusing, I think this is fundamentally a 
problem with the editors (which don't let you exclude certain features 
from view) rather than a need to keep the data out of the database.

> 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).

There are tags for proposed roads, so I'm not sure why this would be a 
problem.  So long as the database is updated when the road is either 
actually built or the government's project is canned, this seems ok to me.

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

All of these things seem fine to me, so long as they are appropriately 
tagged and kept up to date.

But as mentioned above, I am in favor of the editors being able to 
exclude features which are of limited interest (and doing this by 
default so new mappers don't get confused by the mass of data they are 
presented with)

> 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.

Well, this is more a question of how to process the data for public 
consumption than what data should be in the database.  I do agree that 
filtering some of the data off into separate files rather than making 
everyone get it in the planet file might be a Good Thing.

> 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

By "versions of OSM" do you mean just the web interface, or forks of the 
database itself?  I'd consider forking the database to be a terrible 
idea since keeping all the different versions in sync would be a real 
problem.  As for creating new "special interest" renderings, I agree 
entirely and this is already happening (cycle map, piste map, whitewater 
map, etc).

-- 

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

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence