[OSM-talk] SteveC should decide

[Russ Nelson]

Jonas Häggqvist writes:
 >  > This is just wrong.  If SteveC says that "mountain=green" means that
 >  > first there is a mountain, and that "mountain=blue" means there is no
 >  > mountain, then damnit, we should do it that way.

Let me try again, in a single paragraph that's harder to take out of
context:

So, when we have true/false, yes/no, and 0/1, then damnit, we should
look to SteveC to pick one of them as arbitrarily as if he was picking
between mountain=green and mountain=blue.  It doesn't really matter
which is used as long as ONLY ONE is used.  And the same can be said
for a lot of other tagging decisions.  It could be mountain=green
or mountain=viridian ... as long as everyone uses them consistently to
mean the same thing.

Yes, I realize that some people want editors to edit and not worry
about correctness or consistency.  I want to change those people's
minds.

The alternative to consistency is to acknowledge that OSM is in fact
inconsistently tagged, and to impose a proprietary layer on top of OSM
which fixes it.  If we have to do that, then why are we bothering to
make an open street map?  If you have to pay somebody to get
consistent data, why not just license TeleAtlas?

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