[OSM-talk] National borders in the British Islands

[Dave Stubbs]

On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 4:43 PM, elvin ibbotson
<elvin.ibbotson at poco.org.uk> wrote:
>
> From: Sebastian Spaeth <Sebastian at SSpaeth.de>
> Date: 30 May 2008 14:16:59 BDT
> Cc: talk at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] National borders in the British Islands
>
> elvin ibbotson wrote:
>
> As I understand it the numbers are not the problem, it
> arises from people not knowing which is the right number to use (eg.
> England/Scotland border admin_level 2 or 4?). This is why I think
> numbers are useful in the data but users should not have to know what
> numbers to use. Rather they should be presented with choices using words
> they understand which then put the right numbers in the database.
>
> The problem is not at all about whether you let user choose a number or
> from a list of wordings. The issue at hand here is whether Wales country
> border is of the same type as Austria's is.
>
> It's true this was the original issue, and (as I have already said) I would
> rank the Welsh and Scottish borders at the same level as US states, but my
> contributions have been about the way the admin_level is presented to the
> user.
>
> This is what wars are fought over and you cannot solve the issue by
> either numbers or by having people select from a list "municipal" or
> "country" border.
>
> Yes, I'm sure they would rather pick from such a menu. Mapping to the
> relevant boundary and admin_level tags should be trivial as the wiki
> page manages it. I'm sure implementations are welcome.
>
> The issue is not at all whether there's a nice drop down list or not.
> People work already using descriptions on the wiki.
>
> I for one do not want to have to be flicking backwards and forwards between
> wiki pages looking up the correct tagging convention when I am trying to
> edit the map. I much prefer simply choosing from the options Potlatch or
> JOSM present to me. Unfortunately, all to often, you need to consult the
> wiki and I believe this is likely to put a lot of new users off. I was told
> only a very small proportion of people who register as users are actually
> active in building the map. This could be one of the reasons why. The
> key=value tag approach is great for extending OSM into specialist fields or
> adding metadata but the core properties have to be standardised. That is why
> we have the guides on the wiki and arguments over the uses of these tags. I
> just think there could be improvements to the way the core tags are handled
> in the database and editor software, is all :-)

The only part of this where you are causing controversy is where you
talk about the database. The idea of editors providing better tagging
support is a good one that would be welcomed by many people, and a
fairly standardised core tag set is generally what we currently have
(if a bit crap in places, and not necessarily well supported by the
editors atm).

As for the mappers to users ratio, well, historically it's running at
about 1 in 10. That's based on the rolling month edit stats that the
server produces every day... there are probably more semi-active
mappers who aren't contributing every month.
I don't think that's actually too bad considering. It would be
interesting to see why the other 9/10 people haven't continued, but
we'd probably have to spam them with a survey to find out. I'd
wouldn't be surprised if the learning curve was a big factor.

Dave