[OSM-talk] How do we specify relative importance of features across all types of features?

[Stephan Plepelits]

Hi Folks!

I'm the one who originally created the proposal.

On Wed, Jun 03, 2009 at 10:52:33PM +0800, Eugene Alvin Villar wrote:
> Hmmm... I guess the main problem that people have is that a tag like
> "importance" (or its synonyms) is inherently subjective and a subjective
> tag is
Yeah, I see that point, but many things in the OSM are quite subjective (as
you say yourself, the level of a road, or is it a halt or a station? is
this a touristic spot or not?)

At the moment renderers have the problem, that the information in OSM is
very huge, and maps look cluttered. The importance-key (which is more or
less derived from features on the ground) could help. Maybe we should give
more examples what you can use the key for:

Place of Worships:
Cathedral      amenity=place_of_worship importance=regional/national
Church         amenity=place_of_worship importance=urban
Chapel         amenity=place_of_worship importance=suburban

> For what it's worth, I viewed the purpose of the importance tag in the context
> of a general-purpose map which OSM is by default (though it can and does
> support specialist maps like the Cycle Map). I guess such importance/
> popularity/prominence data can conceivably be compiled as a separate database
> to be maintained by those who are interested in it instead of being included
> into OSM.
Brrr ... seperate databases ... I don't see a reason why we would need a
seperate database for this (I think this would be really hard to maintain
and nobody would use it).

greetings,
        Stephan
-- 
Seid unbequem, seid Sand, nicht Öl im Getriebe der Welt! - Günther Eich
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| Stephan Plepelits,                                                  |
| Technische Universität Wien   -    Studium Informatik & Raumplanung |
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| skunk at xover.htu.tuwien.ac.at       -       My Blog: http://plepe.at |
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