[OSM-talk] SteveC should decide

Frederik Ramm frederik at remote.org
Sat Oct 3 02:36:31 BST 2009


Liz,

edodd at billiau.net wrote:
> This is likely to result in several insular communities. In particular I
> am considering that au mappers would write a tight set of guidelines for
> mapping and, as an example, we wouldn't have to worry about "residential
> vs unclassified in rural areas" for any other country - we would define
> our own strategy and stick to it.

In general, I think that this is a good thing. You know best how to deal 
with roads in .au; you know what *you* need to map to make the data 
useful for you - and not some tagging committee from England which tries 
to accommodate Argentinia as well. If I, as a tourist, should visit 
Australia, would I prefer a map made by a world-wide consortium who 
tries to streamline every national idiosyncracy into their scheme, or 
would I prefer a map made by locals? I think that's one of the great 
strengths of OSM that we have the local knowledge on our side.

I have often said, and do so again, that regional diversity is not 
necessarily a bad thing and certainly not something that needs to be 
eradicated for the sake of conformism - it can be dealt with on another 
layer (for example the "likeness" thing that Steve recently mentioned).

If there is a possible problem with my suggestion then that would not 
regional tagging differences, but various "schools" of tagging evolving 
and being used in one and the same area. But I think that would sort 
itself out come time and anyway, we're not even there yet.

> If Au does that, and the Argentinians make their own set of preferences,
> and other groups do the same, we will have a project with multiple forks.

No, just regional diversity. I would somewhat expect the Australian 
tourist, out of respect, to not apply their home tagging rules when they 
map in Argentinia, but have a look around and do as the locals do. (As 
most of us, I am sure, already do today!)

Bye
Frederik




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