[OSM-talk] How to map cemetery ?

[David Earl]

On 10/09/2009 11:07, Roy Wallace wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 7:02 PM, David Earl <david at frankieandshadow.com> wrote:
>>> Having two different ways to tag a particular entity is not the best
>>> solution when building a database, IMHO.
>> Indeed, but when we have an anarchic rather than specified tagging system,
>> this is the least of our problems!
> 
> If you don't care, fine. But please don't suggest things that you
> admit aren't good solutions.

I'm not suggesting it - that's the way it already is.

I care much more about stability than the prettiness of how the tags are 
named. There's two similar names for something, so that's life, live 
with it.

And I think the discussion of committees to decide or better voting is a 
hiding to nothing so long as a sizeable proportion of the community 
doesn't believe in it, as they'll just carry on doing what they've 
always done. They've stopped even contributing to these discussions, 
they just get on with it.

If we want OSM to be adopted at the data level, we have to stop changing 
tags because people think they look prettier. It's like MS changing the 
file format for Word with no compatibility support - a sure fire way to 
lose customers. Backward compatibility hasn't been too much of an issue 
within a closed community of consumer tools, but that's changing and if 
we don't take backward compatibility seriously, we'll end up staying 
just a closed community.

And before someone says "but that means you can never change anything" 
I'm not saying that, merely that it needs a much less casual approach to 
changing things, especially for aesthetic reasons which this essentially 
is, than dealing with new ones which can be dealt with more freely.

David