[OSM-talk] Semi-automated edits - postal code database

[Tobias Knerr]

On 04.10.2012 14:53, Ed Loach wrote:
> But how many of the 15 million are the results of imports taking the
> easy way of using addr:street? Taginfo lists combinations and we
> have 2.3 million that also have osak: tags, 0.8 million that also
> have kms: tags, then lesser combinations such as uir_adr:ADRESA_KOD,
> usar_addr:edit_date, mvdgis:cod_nombre, chicago:building_id and
> surrey:addrid and that's only got me to page 5 of 519 of the
> combinations.

It is true that probably a lot of these are imports. But this might be
true for both tagging styles, and you also have to account for the JOSM
plugins where the authors decided to automatically create relations.
They don't necessarily set tags like that, so they are harder to filter out.

> Then you have all the people who have used addr:street instead of
> the relation because it seems the more popular option, perhaps only
> because of those imports.

Then you have all the people who believe that "relations are easier to
use for computers" - after all, why would anyone use that confusing
concept otherwise? -, and therefore suffer through them because they
mistakenly believe that it makes their data "better".
Or they think that addr:street is outdated because relations as a whole
are newer than other elements. (I've encountered both of these beliefs.)

Imo, addr:street is more straightforward to understand, makes the common
beginner task of entering or fixing an address much more accessible and
is therefore preferable over relations. The number of uses is hard to
measure, but doesn't really affect these basic arguments anyway.

To me, it's associatedStreet which seems out of place in OSM tagging,
and that's not just because it uses camelCase for some reason. ;)

Tobias