[OSM-talk] Can wikidata links help fight name inflation?

[Andy Mabbett]

On 27 May 2015 at 22:13, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

>    we're seeing more and more "name:xx" tags on OSM objects.

> The place node for London has 154 name tags as we speak

FYI, the equivalent Wikidata item is:

   https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84

You can see its names in various languages by clicking the "Labels
list" tab (then note slidebar)

> It is difficult to judge when such foreign names have a right to be
> there, and when they're just inventions or name translations or
> transliterations.

Transliteratons are still useful to non-native speakers.

> If a place has a wikidata tag, could/should we then simply defer to
> Wikidata for names in other languages?

Yes/ probably.

> We are a database of geodata and not one of international cultural
> heritage; even if London has a name in over 2000 languages, is OSM
> really the place to record these 2000 names? Would it not be better to
> record the wikidata link for London, and then (perhaps in co-operation
> with people at Wikidata) provide means for people doing map rendering to
> join OSM data with a separately-loaded translation table from Wikidata?

A demonstrator, using Wikidata labels, is:

   http://googleknowledge.github.io/qlabel/demo/map/

(choose "select language"). Coders might enjoy viewing the source code.

> We could then limit ourselves to using a "name" tag for the locally used
> name, or continue to allow a "name:xx" but only if these languages were
> actually used by the local population; throw in an int_name if you want
> (but some may say that's already an unfair privilege for users of
> English and the Latin alphabet). Anything else - i.e. names used for a
> place in other languages than the local ones - would be off-topic for
> OSM and should be recorded in Wikidata.

Exactly.

> Do you think Wikidata could play that role, and take the burden off of
> us? Or is Wikidata not mature enough for that yet, or even unsuitable?

While it continues to develop, it is already mature enough, suitable
and available for this purpose

-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk