[OSM-talk] Giving everything a unique ID

[John Smith]

On 4 June 2010 00:38, Serge Wroclawski <emacsen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sorry to jump into this thread from hell, but you've touched on a
> question that's been unclear to me from the beginning of this
> discussion, which is "What does an permanent object mean?"

There are no permanent objects in OSM, some just last longer than others.

> So is the permanent object the node? Is the permanent object the POI?
> What if the POI moves? If I tag the public library as a POI node, then
> do a building trace, that's one POI- but what if the library moves (as
> my local library is planning on doing). Does that permanent object
> move with the library, or does it stay with the building?

That ended up the point of this thread, figuring a method to tag any
object, doesn't matter if it's a node or a way or an area or a
relation, and have a way to refer to that object, even if that object
changes from being a node to being an area. The actual object is less
important, in this context, than the unique ID number keeping tracking
of it.