[OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[Tobias Knerr]

Frederik Ramm:
> (5) Never ever invent a tag that you don't have a concrete use for.

"Never plan ahead, always wait until there are thousands of existing
tags that make creating a better solution harder"?

Recently, I encountered a crossing where there were both traffic lights
and an island for pedestrians. This could easily be expressed if whoever
invented the tag had done some thought experiment along the lines of
"but if there is a crossing that has BOTH traffic lights AND islands?
Seems like I shouldn't put these into the same tag!"

Of course, I simply invented something to express this, but it means
that there are two ways of expressing "there's a pedestrian island at
this crossing" - while not much of a problem, that certainly isn't
"nice" from a modelling point of view.

> We already have too many computer people who get carried away by thought 
> experiements ("yes but if the spot where the road and railway intersect 
> also happens to be a station and have a traffic light and a river 
> flowing underneath, what are you going to do THEN????????").

Maybe we should use common sense to distinguish between plausible
possibilities and irrelevant hypothetical constructs?

Tobias Knerr