[OSM-talk] The future of bugs in OSM

[Dair Grant]

Frederik Ramm wrote:

>> And if the user indicates that he just wants to add a PoI, redirect him to
>> http://ae.osmsurround.org/ so that he can add it directly to the database.
>> 
> That's the point I was trying to make - do not hog all the bugs in one central
> place and allow users to do only what you have coded; instead open this up so
> that anybody can hook their app into the user interface to offer
> functionality.

Is the bugs database really so different in character to the map database
though? Provided there was a planet-style dump of the bug database, anyone
wishing to build an external system could easily do so.

It's true that lat/lon/text wouldn't be sufficient for all bugs, but how
many would that model work for - 75% or more?

Most bugs are either for a specific location (name is wrong, street is
missing, etc), or a fairly well defined area (all the footpaths in this park
need doing, there's a place=hamlet|village|etc node but there's no ways
within 5km of it).

There are meta-bugs too (are imported political boundaries really in the
correct place, is a blank area of the map really blank or just unmapped?),
but how best to track them will depend on what they are (so you might as
well collect a few examples and look for patterns first).


Worst-case you could simply use a lat/lon/text entry as a link to some
external tracker until such time as its model could be supported (either
directly, or by better integration with external trackers - although I would
hope the former).

But however it works behind the scenes, it gives you one place that bug
reporting/visualisation can coalesce around - you go to www.* to see the
map, wiki.* to see the wiki, and bugs.* for bugs.


-dair
___________________________________________________
dair at refnum.com              http://www.refnum.com/