[OSM-talk] Adding architect names to buildings

[Matthias Julius]

Jonathan Bennett <openstreetmap at jonno.cix.co.uk> writes:

> Matthias Julius wrote:
>> What is the definition of a category here?
>>
>> I would call a category something like "buildings that are 29 strories
>> tall".  An architect I would call an (abstract) object that can have
>> other attributes as well like a birthdate, an email address and so
>> on.  (Whether all this belongs into OSM is another debate).
>>   
>
> It may well be an abstract object, but it's not a geographical one so it 
> doesn't belong in OSM. Relations are a way of linking one geographical 
> feature to another for some geographical reason -- part of the same 
> long-distance route, or opposite banks of a waterway for example. In 
> this case there's no geographical link between two buildings from the 
> same architect -- you could just as easily say that all buildings 
> belonging to one company should be part of a relation, but that too 
> would essentially be categorisation.

This is all true and after rereading
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relations/Relations_are_not_Categories
I agree that the architect issue is a category in that definition.

I just prefer to explicitly link objects together over duplication of
data.

Matthias