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

Alex Barth alex at mapbox.com
Wed May 27 22:03:30 UTC 2015


OpenStreetMap is the spatial representation of the world - wouldn't it make
sense then to also store the translations for locations in OpenStreetMap?

If there are storage or editor UI issues, would it be worthwhile solving
them to enable translation?


On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 5:57 PM, Eugene Alvin Villar <seav80 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> I agree that OSM is not the proper place to record every possible
> translation of every place name. And I think that Wikidata should be that
> proper place and just leave the few name:xx tags in place for the major
> languages that are spoken in that place, and only if the name is not a
> straight-up transliteration.
>
> A possible problem is that currently, Wikidata notability policy[1] means
> that Wikidata will only contain items for "notable"
> objects/entities/concepts. (But note that Wikidata is much, much more
> inclusive than Wikipedia—Wikidata will contain vastly more items than
> Wikipedia has articles.) This means that not all buildings, streets, and
> other objects that we have in OSM will have corresponding Wikidata items.
>
> [1] https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Notability
>
>
> On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 5:13 AM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>>    we're seeing more and more "name:xx" tags on OSM objects.
>>
>> Not only are speakers of widely used languages adding their language
>> tags all over the world; but rising interest in OSM also brings us to
>> the attention of language lovers and speakers of minority languages. The
>> less established a language is, the more committed its few proponents to
>> have "their" language respected and recorded.
>>
>> The place node for London has 154 name tags as we speak, but there are
>> several thousand languages in use on the planet, so there's still room
>> for enhancement.
>>
>> Not only well-known tourist magnets carry foreign names; some dedicated
>> language mappers have gone over and beyond the call of duty and added,
>> for example, name:ru tags even to small villages:
>>
>>  http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/name%3Aru#map
>>
>> (This is a matter currently under investigation by Data Working Group
>> and it is relatively certain that not all 582,653 name:ru tags will
>> remain.)
>>
>> 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. I guess we'll have to make rules on that somehow, but
>> at the same time I dread doing it, and I wonder:
>>
>> If a place has a wikidata tag, could/should we then simply defer to
>> Wikidata for names in other languages?
>>
>> 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?
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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?
>>
>> Bye
>> Frederik
>>
>> --
>> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>>
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>
>
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