[OSM-talk] Wiki: chriscf vandalism

[Nop]

Hi!

Richard Fairhurst schrieb:
> (Nop's e-mail went to me rather than the list but I'm guessing that was 
> a mistake - and he probably expressed the other side best)
> 
> Well, this is the crux of it. I'm not convinced the form of democracy we 
> have in the tag voting is at all helpful.
> 
> The problem is that people vote on tags:
> 
> - without knowing anything about the subject
> - without ever having mapped the feature in question
> - without any intention of ever mapping the feature in question

We are agreed that the voting system needs improvement. I am especially 
annoyed about people who never contributed anything to the discussion 
and then just smugly vote "no" without giving a reason.

So a good vote needs a better system and considerably more attention. 
But just because people have not been paying attention when asked to 
contribute does not give them the right to overrule those who did.

> With smoothness that's gone out of the window. As far as I'm concerned, 
> with the approval of smoothness=very_horrible (come _on_!), all bets are 
> off. The voting system has just voted itself into irrelevance.

It's not quite that easy. I agree, that "very_horrible" is ridiculous - 
if you are a native speaker or proficient in english. If you have only a 
basic understanding of english and you are doing your best to contribute 
and express yourself, it is not. And last time I checked, OSM was 
supposed to be a global endeavour.
So I'd rather would have to ask the question: Why did none of the people 
  who see an obviously ridiculous value - including myself - step in and 
correct it? Should have been very simple, shouldn't it?

> I'm starting to wonder about a "Tags I Use" system. In other words, if I 
> think I have a smart way of tagging tracks (their surface, their 
> cyclability, conditions through the year, etc.), I document it - maybe 
> on the wiki (/User:Richard/Tags_I_Use), maybe someplace else. I explain 
> what I use, why. Other people do the same.
> 
> A miraculous aggregator then goes through all these pages, drawing in 
> some Tagwatch data, and reports "50 people are using surface=gravel, 10 
> people are using smoothness=very_horrible, 1 person is using 
> my_bike_suspension=knackered" - and links to people's documentation.
> 
> Then, for those who like to have everything in a central place, once the 
> tags have been used n times, they can go in Map Features.

Well, you are proposing a differnt kind of vote by usage of tags. An 
interesting thought, but probably no the solution. Some of the
shortcomings are:
- it can be even more easily abused to push silly tags. With some 
diligence or a little programming I can easily get a tagwatch count of 
 >100 for anything I like. And as this is only in the DB, nobody even 
sees it coming. I like a proposal page much better.
- It lacks a definition of meaning. Just because a tag is used a certain 
number of times, it does not mean that all people who used it, did mean 
the same. Just think about the at least 3 usages of "designated". A well 
formulated proposal is a more concise definition of meaning and has a 
well-kown place to look for this. I'll probably have a hard time to find 
your personal "my tags" page, even if I want to join your cause.
- It lacks a way to simply introduce a new tag. Not all proposals are 
ridiculous, many are well thought out, address a topic that has been 
missing so far and are compatible to the existing world. I see no reason 
why you shouldn't be able to propose and use them if there is no problem.

What the proposal process sorely lacks is the experience and attention 
of some veteran mappers, so it produces less random results. Why do they 
not care about it?

bye
	Nop