[OSM-talk] SteveC should decide

[Matt Amos]

russ and i had a useful chat on IRC late last night and i think we've
cleared up the misunderstanding that lies at the root of this thread.
(russ - please correct me if i've misreported anything here).
apologies to anyone who's getting really tired of this thread.
hopefully we're at or near the end now.

On 10/4/09, Russ Nelson <nelson at crynwr.com> wrote:
>  > you asked why people are thinking that you're in favour of people
>  > being told what to do. your answer appears to confirm that, yes;
>  > you're in favour of people being told what to do.
>
> It appears to me as if your "being told what to do" should be
> interpreted as coercion, but I've repeatedly said that leadership in a
> voluntary organization is not coercion.  How many times do I have to
> tell you that it's NOT POSSIBLE TO COERCE VOLUNTEERS????  Why do I
> have to shout to be heard?

the misunderstanding here came from different interpretations of the
word "decide". my reading of it was the meaning "final, authoritative
judgement", but russ' intended meaning was different, something more
like "give advice, and have it listened-to" (my words). for this
definition of "decide" i'm in complete agreement with russ; steve
should be able to give advice and have it listened to.

russ had some good guidelines for appropriately resolving tagging
debates (slightly paraphrased):
1) if it's an issue where the community hasn't been able to decide,
they might need a decision/advice.
2) if one of the schemas preserves enough information to be
transformed into the others at some future date, use that one.
3) it's better to keep mapping and tagging than argue about tagging.

there was some discussion of whether voting is a good way of resolving
anything. but that's a whole other debate, which i'd rather leave for
another day ;-)

cheers,

matt