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

[Daniel Koć]

W dniu 28.05.2015 10:50, Martin Koppenhoefer napisał(a):

> My conclusion: I'd rather prefer to keep names in different languages
> inside OSM, because it makes it clear to which object they refer,
> while it is less clear from wikidata. Also because the structure of
> osm and wikidata is not the same, it will lead to problems (either
> we'll be/risk making links that are not precisely 1:1 or we'll have to
> change the structure to meet (either in wikidata or in OSM)).
> Placenames are geographic information that do belong into OSM IMHO.

I was sure that in every two (or more) projects there will be some 
differences and that's why I said about "forking" Wikidata - that way we 
would gain (wild guess) >95% of existing objects from the start and we 
would still be able to have local ("delta" or "differential") version 
for remaining few percent.

It's tempting to have control over everything we use, but the NIH ( 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_invented_here ) syndrome is 
counterproductive in the longer run. And while OSM is big enough now, it 
will be much bigger in next years (still many parts of the world outside 
the West are poorly mapped!) and using already mature, rich, 
free-licensed and community-controlled resources would likely help us 
with that.

Every big project will have to deal with inconsistencies or ambiguities 
and there's no escape - not because we're careless, but the world is 
complicated. So better to prepare for real global mapping than to be 
afraid of the risks. It's too late! We're not just a London-centered 
"street" map anymore, so let's face the global class of problems.

> I agree that tag lists of hundreds of names in different languages
> aren't very handy to look through, but IMHO we should resolve this in
> the GUI (display name translations in the editors "closed" so you have
> to click on an arrow to unfold the list, or sth like this, and/or let
> the user set a list of languages he want't to see the names in and
> hide the rest under a single line like "i18n names, 182 tags", etc.)

I prefer GUI for linking the name of the proper Wikidata entry with the 
possibility of:
- forking the object name into our "diff" database
- merging local and Wikidata data if/once they're ready to do it.

-- 
"The train is always on time / The trick is to be ready to put your bags 
down" [A. Cohen]