[OSM-talk] Burning Man (was: revert changesets??)

Andy Allan gravitystorm at gmail.com
Fri Dec 18 18:48:35 GMT 2009


On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 6:16 PM, John Smith <deltafoxtrot256 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/12/19 Andy Allan <gravitystorm at gmail.com>:
>> I prefer the principle of least surprise when working with OSM data.
>> The most basic analysis of the data should have the least gotchas
>> possible. So we should avoid tagging things as "This is a foo. (By the
>> way, no it's not)" and "This is a baz. (Psst, it was a baz three years
>> ago, but not any more)" - especially when there are many different
>> caveats we can put on the information.
>
> I'd love to bury my head in the sand and pretend things are always
> simple assumptions too, but unfortunately the world has vastly
> different ideas and you can either accept them or not, but it's
> clearly obvious some people want to map these types of temporary
> things, and even past things like the Pompai example.

Yes, I never said they shouldn't be mapped. What I am suggesting is
that things which do not exist can be mapped, but since the mapping of
things that do not exist is a niche passtime then appropriate measures
should be taken not to confuse people working with mainstream data. If
you are suggesting that highway=residential should also be used to
describe things that aren't actually residential roads (but used to
be), then I suggest that you are going out of your way to make life
difficult for everyone, yet to no advantage of the few.

Those who are interested in historical maps will need to know about
the "4th dimension" and whatever tags are involved. Those who aren't,
shouldn't need to.

Cheers,
Andy




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