[OSM-talk] Flickr Now Supports OSM Tags
Dave F.
davefox at madasafish.com
Thu Oct 1 12:55:44 BST 2009
Frederik Ramm wrote:
> 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.
>
Not *everything* just the things that people feel need changing
Fear is not a good reason for the status quo.
> 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).
>
People would still think they would be contributing even with certain
restraining guidelines.
> 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
I find it very disappointing you feel there is a them & us situation.
> , users can be forgiven to demand
Whoa, there. Who's demanding? Please, don't make things up.
> 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.
>
This is starting to sound like quasi religious mumbo-jumbo:
'if you do this, the sky will fall on your head'
> 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 there were certain restrictions you'd have to spend less time.
> 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.
>
Isn't that just putting an artificial middle man into the equation?
Wouldn't it be better to have an organised, original data?
> 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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