[OSM-talk] Philosophy about Autorouting for Cyclists and new key class:bicycle

Tue May 4 02:15:28 BST 2010


On 04.05.2010 01:41, Ulf Lamping wrote:
> Am 03.05.2010 21:12, schrieb Felix Hartmann:
>    
>> My actual position on this is, I will write a wiki page, with a note to
>> say bug off people against unofficial routes (because for mountainbiking
>> they will in a matter of days be largely more than signposted routes),
>> we will tag them route:unofficial:mtb=name and eveyone should give their
>> favourite routes a hefty go. People are much more interested in nice
>> routes than in difficulty, but according to tagwatch more than 25.000
>> ways have mtb:scale information, compared with maybe 50 mtb routes.
>>
>> If in OSM we really want to get in more mountainbikers, we have to start
>> with unofficial routes. I will think about it for the night, and put up
>> a wiki page tomorrow, put some notices on this on the big forums
>> (hopefully they will get ~5000 pageviews, put them in my feedburner
>> newsletter (1200 recipients) and as of next Friday render unofficial routes.
>>
>> Once we have more than 500 unofficial routes (I'ld say this takes no
>> more than 14 days), I will take out official routes form my maps, except
>> if they are labelled with additional information to make sure they are
>> not a trekking bike route labelled as mtb route.
>>
>> If someone starts kicking them out, we could take out their submissions
>> using a bot if they really feel like starting an edit war. It won't be
>> much worse than in the Russian military discussion, will it?
>>
>> I don't give a damn what Andy or some other people say. For me the only
>> rule in OSM and that counts, is that as long as you're not destructing
>> the work of others (like say you put in paragliding routes that make
>> editing a pain for everyone else) or largely irrelevant data that
>> clutters the database so it becomes unusable, just let them do it (hey,
>> in Austria we likely still have 20% of data junk from plan.at, and I
>> don't even want to start about the crap data in the USA). The amount of
>> information is nothing compared to all the remarks by bots and editors
>> or on imports.
>>      
> Hi Felix!
>
> Reading a lot of what you write makes me feel pretty sad.
>
> These "some other people" you are talking about actually spend several
> years of their life - before your appearance here - to bring OSM to
> something you seem to value enough for your ideas.
>
>    
Arguing about how long someone is inside OSM, is an argument I cannot 
follow. Of course I have only been a member of OSM since 3 years, of 
wich the last 2 years I was more active than the first one. However 
putting prior achievement as a requirement for being allowed to voice 
opinion, is to me ultraconservative and hingering progress. If you ask 
me, who I think is the person who has done most for OSM, I would say 
Carsten Schwede aka Computerteddy and Steve Ratcliffe because without 
their work, OSM wouldn't be anywhere near as popular. If someones work 
brought a few thousand people to OSM then to me he is more important 
than someone who maybe mapped 10x as much. However this should be blody 
irrelevant.
> Is it really your intention to start a bot edit war if "they don't
> confirm to what I want"? Is this really your way to spread your idea and
> *convince* people that you have a good idea?
>
> What I'm missing here is - respect of other peoples work.
>    
I am perfectly respecting anyones work. All my proposals are about 
adding things that do not crash any existing structure. I'm just saying 
if someone started an edit war, one could respond with a bot war.
>
> There seems to be a wide concensus in OSM that we don't want to tag
> something like "this is my favourite route" - at least that's basically
> what I understood what you want to do.
>    
Well I and many others have understood this differently. I understood we 
should map everything that makes the maps better, and if it does without 
harming anyone, so lets rock. OSM will become more and more a place 
where the largest share of information (take History) is not interesting 
to the largest part of the users, and the ability for minorities to add 
their data into OSM is what brought big success. It is definitely not 
classification of data for motorcar users, nor quality of data, nor 
quantity of data, because in all three points we are far behind the 
competition. The point where OSM stands out, is the richness of 
attributes. Therfore I can't see the smallest valid reason, why someone 
should be against including "this is my favourite route". Even if every 
OSM participant adds relations for his favourite 1000 routes (which will 
not happen), the amount of data stays very small. There shall be no 
confusion with routes that exist in reality by using 
unofficial:route=mtb. The alternative is to simply not namespace it and 
go out and tag your favourite routes using keys just like it were 
signposted routes and you will cause harm. Just like people that put 
maxspeed=de:local instead of keeping maxspeed and adding 
soure:maxspeed:de=local will delete information. However from routes 
written in a booklet of a tourist office (such routes are already often 
present). replacing tourist office by tourist guide, is no far step. 
Then going on to replace tourist guide by internet blog of enthusiastic 
mtbiker, is no huge step either, and voila we have favourite routes.

I see the point in not having favourite information much more as we 
don't want people to tag subjectively. So if people start to tag 
highway=track instead of highway=path (and yes this happened a lot, and 
got endorsed by many british mappers on the yacf forum so that illegal 
ways for mountainbiking can be regarded as legal, then we start having 
problems. The principle that some people are misunderstanding here is, 
favourite values out of personal interest, vs truly classified favourite 
information.
> I'm not saying this is a concensus set in stone for the next hundred
> years, but convincing people by telling them "I will ask my 1000 MTB
> friends if you disagree" and "I will write a bot" is very certainly
> *not* the way to change peoples mind.
>
>    
Well see, I would be perfectly willing to have a democratic Wiki 
decision about whether we want favourite routes in OSM or not, and 
personally bind myself to the outcome (because I do know that in OSM 
community most mappers will not give a damn whether or not such 
information is present, but because the mtbike community in OSM can 
easily get down 1000 people to vote in favour (and yes, the requirement 
that only mappers who have been registered before this thread started 
may take part in the vote is no problem at all). So speaking about a 
consensus is wrong. You speak about tradition not consensus. Until now 
very few information directly marked as favourite got entered into OSM, 
however I personally have noted much abuse of reality due to exactly 
this tradition. And it is only tradition, because the majority OSM 
participants are indifferent to whether or not favourite routes are 
tagged or not. However if the consequence of discussion ends up, we 
don't allow favourite routes in OSM, you can be sure that the outcome is 
much worse then by saying, put your favourite relations inside OSM, but 
classifiy it in such a way that it cannot be mistaken with signposted 
routes. Best not only put unoffical, but hey, put the actual reality 
inside. So put route:touristic_guide=mtb or put route:personal=mtb or 
put route:popular=mtb and explain what is meant by each class. Because 
by doing this you bring OSM forward instead of conservation only.

Oh and if you think there is an agreement that only signposted routes 
shall be in OSM, then delete all route=ski from OSM in Austria using a 
bot. Cause there exist no signposted routes for skitouring in Austria, 
at most there will be a infoboard with a picture showing the route (and 
in that case we are most likely infringing copyright by adding the route 
to OSM). I however would also like to use OSM for skitouring and think 
there are many others who do so and the actual outcome of the discussion 
was not don't put that information, but only map the way for going up, 
while there was disagreement on whether or not how to go down should or 
shouldn't be entered. Here noone came up with the personal argument, but 
the main problem was, that while going up on a skitour, there often 
exist more or less defined and suitable ways, but going down everyone 
chooses different routes. Your consensus can't be very consented else 
many things in OSM wouldn't exist.
> Regards, ULFL
>
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