[OSM-talk] Role of the Wiki

[Roland Olbricht]

Hi,

> In general, is there a method to when the wiki is or is not relevant?

Yes, please have a look at
http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/

If a tag appears there in quite large numbers, it is relevant. Otherwise it is 
not relevant. Whatever the wiki tells you is rather irrelevant.
 
> What's the role of the wiki as a source of information in the OSM community?

You need to be careful. Beside the people who do real mapping and often have 
left an initially useful description in the wiki, a lot of people care for 
their pet wiki page, with mixed results. Thus, the wiki is often far from 
reality, both leaving open real world problems and devoting broad space to 
things that simply never happen in reality.

In general: the wiki is only descriptive, but often it sounds normative.

It is a good idea to
- use tags or tag keys that have been used quite often
http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/
- search the wiki for keywords of the thing to tag
- read the relevant pages and take them as advice, not as a law
- if the pages don't make sense to you or don't match, ask at
http://help.openstreetmap.org
- add an additional, new tag if the often used tags don't describe the 
situation appropriately

> I'm hoping it's relevant as OSM continues to grow - reading through old
> email archives isn't super efficient (or clarifying).

The general outline is
- discussion happens on the mailing list
- decision taking is ultimately done by the inidividual mapper
- documentation happens at the wiki
 
Cheers,

Roland