[OSM-talk] Flickr Now Supports OSM Tags
Frederik Ramm
frederik at remote.org
Thu Oct 1 08:21:03 BST 2009
Hi,
Eugene Alvin Villar wrote:
> What's so hard about standardizing on the boolean values given
> appropriate changes to editor presets, good wiki documentation, and a
> deprecation period for other boolean values?
It's a kind of slippery slope situation. There is fear that once it has
been proven that standardisation works for true/false values, there will
be demands to standardise everything else as well.
This would be positive for the users of our data in the short term
because it means they would not have to interpret the data; however it
would remove dynamism from the project and require mappers who want to
invent something new to apply to the standardisation committee first,
and we feel that this would be a severe detriment to further
participation on the mapper side. OSM flourishes partly because mappers
feel that they can help shape the project, and contribute what they
think is important, rather than just being mechanical turks (without the
payment).
In the long term, standardisation would kill the project, and thus not
be desirable even for our users. - Coming from the outside and not
having the knowledge about OSM that we have, users can be forgiven to
demand things that would ultimately destroy OSM, but it is our duty to
educate them and to explain to them that they can either take OSM as it
is, with some interpretation required, or they can demand that OSM
change but that would, in the long run, probably mean no OSM at all.
I run a small company that, among other things, sells standardised
derivates of OSM data. I spend a lot of time trying to stay ahead of the
game, analyse what tags people use and for what, and try and convert
these into consistent and reliable values. If OSM changes from
"landuse=forest" to "russ_nelson_sees=trees" because that's what mappers
what to use, then I can adapt and my customers don't have to, and
neither does the OSM community have to twist and turn just because some
users want consistent tagging.
In my eyes, this is the way to deal with standardisation - do not force
it upon the mappers, but instead create a "filter layer". In my case
this is a commercial operation, but I have been suggesting for ages that
instead of writing bots to streamline OSM data, why don't people write
generic filters/standardising engines that take the "chaotic" OSM data
as of today and produce well-ordered standardised output for people "out
there" who cannot be bothered to keep up with OSM's tagging anarchy? It
would not be too hard.
And I'm not saying this because of my business (until now, keeping up
with changes and doing the standardisation takes more work than I get
paid for it so I would benefit from OSM itself being standardised); I
truly believe that the way things work in OSM, with "standards" being
un-enforceable and people constantly deviating from them (even if there
is a certain base consensus on many things) is the only way it *can*
work without degrading into some kind of Google Map Maker that does not
look for project members, but for worker ants.
Bye
Frederik
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