[OSM-talk] Breaking up is hard to do (was New Logo in the Wiki)

[Steve Coast]

I dispute point 1, if anything the project is German-centric if you look 
at the depth and quantity of data?



On 5/4/2011 9:41 AM, Serge Wroclawski wrote:
> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 2:07 AM, Frederik Ramm<frederik at remote.org>  wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 05/04/11 03:23, Serge Wroclawski wrote:
>>> Dave, if you have a suggestion that would let us communicate in real
>>> time (not over weeks via email) then please share this with the group.
>> The alternative to communicating in real-time is fundamentally changing your
>> organisational structure to reduce international decision-making to an
>> absolute bare minimum by devolution.
>>
>> For example, move to a kind of distributed software/database architecture,
>> incorporate OpenStreetMap Australia, let them collect their own funds,
>> operate their own database, make their own decisions, have their own logo,
>> have their own project main page, have their own strategy working group,
>> have their own license, and so on.
> I've thought about this myself; would it be better to have separate,
> smaller instances of OSM, the way Wikipedia does.
>
> In the end I concluded not, but I thought I'd lay out the argument,
> just for discussion sake.
>
> Arguments for Breaking OSM up:
>
> 1. Removes project language barrier
>
> OSM is nearly entirely Anglo-centric. We have a large number of German
> speakers, but the project, as its core, is English. This creates a
> barrier to entry for many folks.
>
> 2. Allows for more adoption of local-centric tagging.
>
> If one country has road classifications that make sense, it can use
> them, and not need to adopt OSM standards.
>
> 3. It allows for local features
>
> Some features only exist in certain places, and so it makes sense for
> those local features to be in a local tagging set, but not another.
>
> 4. It eliminates part of the issue we have around times/timezones.
>
> Unless you live in Russia, your country has a small number of
> timezones, and so organizing meetings and events is not as
> challenging.
>
>
> Ultimately, though, I think this is the wrong approach, and here's why:
>
> 1. Translation software exists.
>
> Tags don't need to be displayed to the end user unless they want to
> see them, just as few people see raw column names when they edit a
> form on a web site.
>
> As editors become increasingly sophisticated, the issues around
> translation will reduce over time.
>
> 2. OSM is its own de-faco standards body.
>
> By needing to classifications from various countries, I find the OSM
> {tax|folks}onomy to overall be very robust. Since we have to deal with
> so many variations, we tend to create classifications that work at a
> very granular level, but because we're human beings mapping on the
> ground, the classifications tend to be useful for other human beings
> in a way that's largely intuitive.
>
> I don't think we'd have that kind of clean tagging across the board
> unless we had the necessity.
>
> 3. Local features are interesting, and the discussions we have on
> meaning is educational
>
> I like to bring up this discussion when talking about OSM tagging to
> strangers. Someone on the list wanted to create a tag for US "Notary
> Publics", often just called "Notaries".
>
> Someone in France spoke up and said "I agree, we should have a tag for
> lawyers and notaries".
>
> This brought up a very interesting discussion on the differences
> between the legal systems of the US, France, the UK, and Australia.
>
> Each of these countries had a slightly different meaning for the word
> notary, along with a different role that a notary plays.
>
> By discussing this difference up front, all of us received some
> education on legal systems, but were also then forced to define our
> terms, which bring us back to our robust tagging system.
>
> 5. If we don't unify the tags up front, we have to unify them later.
>
> Our users have gotten used to maps that "just work" across the world.
> If they get broken up, someone will later have to re-assemble them,
> and they're bound to do it badly because of the lack of the robust
> discussions that happen.
>
> 6. Wikipedia's break is not purely country-based
>
> Let's not forget that Wikipedia needs to break itself up because of
> linguistic issues, as well as some cultural ones.
>
> We have done very well unifiying our datasets.
>
> 7. No turf wars
>
> Right now, I'm as largely comfortable mapping wherever I am. With
> separate instances, I could easily be setting myself up for all kinds
> of issues, from the technical (getting a different set of credentials)
> to tagging, to mores of "You aren't to map this area because our local
> rules say it belongs to BigMeanUser."
>
> 8. OSM can be more robust than the nations themselves.
>
> It's hard to realize sometimes, but in the last year, look at how much
> political unrest has occurred in the Middle East. And I'm old enough
> to remember all the new maps that needed to be created after the
> Soviet Union fell. OSM may end up being more long lasting than the
> nations it maps. So let's not tie ourselves to them.
>
>
> Anyway it's just a thought exercise, and I'm fairly sure Frederik was
> joking (I don't get German humor).
>
> - Serge
>
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