[OSM-talk] Tagging OSM objects with UUIDs

[John Smith]

On 7 June 2010 23:39, Anthony <osm at inbox.org> wrote:
> Well, I'm sure even the most ardent "map only what's on the ground"
> proponents will make exceptions for things which are legally required.  As

If attribution is legally required the attribution tag should be used,
not the source tag, the source tag is for indicating the source of the
information.

> for source tags that *aren't* legally required, I'd actually argue myself
> that as metatags they should be on the changeset, not the element.

This is getting pretty far off topic, even if this thread started it,
but some people think that is sufficient although I disagree since
people may be mapping from multiple sources of information at the same
time, eg they might get the name from wikipedia and the location from
aerial imagery and the turning restriction from a survey, but that
information may not be the same for all object edited...

> Either way, I could see someone going around removing uuid=* tags from
> places where they couldn't find the QR code in the store window.

UUIDs aren't just so you can slap a QR code in some shop window, that
is merely one use case, it's so different databases can explicitly
identify an object, it might be some park someone photographer wants
to link their photos to in Flickr. Also just because something isn't
on the ground shouldn't mean it should be deleted just because someone
is overly zealot about only having things in the database that are on
the ground, otherwise we might as well start deleting half the state
and country borders that have nothing on the ground.

> I'd suggest that we should have a single website=* or uuid=* link to an
> all-inclusive wiki (can't use Wikipedia as that single website because of
> their notability rules), and that all other linking to any other websites
> should be done by adding an external link from that wiki page.

Why does it have to be a wiki? While a wiki might be usable as a point
to document tags, it's not perfect, it takes a lot of work cross
referencing information which is just duplicating work already in the
OSM database, but I won't go into that here and is really for another
thread as well. While documenting tags requires free form text for the
description, wiki's are mostly for human use, not machines however for
machines to use a reference source the information usually has to be
very explicit.

If you want to interlink databases, eg wikipedia, you would simply
extend upon the work I've done for UUID to OSM object lookup table,
you'd add one more table and then use the UUID as the key field and
link other object IDs from other databases to it.

> I'd prefer that.  But if the "let's try to get consensus for a new tag"
> process fails, there's always "shove it into an already accepted tag"
> option.  (At which point it'd probably be website:uuid=*, or even
> website:uuid:building/operator/etc=*)

I don't think that's a terribly good idea, this information isn't
suppose to render on any maps so sub-typing isn't advantageous, also
UUIDs are object references, they aren't supposed to be website
referrers, that is simply one use case, but not the main use case.