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

[Jóhannes Birgir Jensson]

I find it odd that inaction, incapability or incompetence of local sign 
installers is a worry for a database of geographical facts, which OSM is.

Some roads are hundreds of miles long, at what interval does it need to 
be signed for it to be considered signed. Beginning and end? Every 100 km?
Some streets have signs that are now obscured by trees and bushes.

"On the ground" rule is a rule of thumb, not the entirety of factual 
truth. People similarly being lax in making sure their homes conform to 
local rules about address visibility (huge pet peeve of mine since being 
a paper boy in the 1980s) should not hinder us in giving their homes the 
proper address in our database of facts.

If you wish to use on the ground as the only rule then we can just 
forget about the whole thing - defeated by inaction of people that 
should be putting up signs and maintaining them.

As for the name inflation, there is no such thing. Illegal imports maybe 
but name inflation as a problem does not exist. Any talk of "too much 
data" by adding an extra name field to a node is defeated soundly by any 
3d mapping entity. I've looked at some of the 3D stuff done and it blows 
my mind how detailed and cool it is, then when I peek at the code behind 
it I admit defeat in trying to understand it at a glance as it is an 
intricate series of relations upon relations. A simpler example is Stade 
de France, fantastic stadium - was there myself at 1998 World Cup.

Data bloat can happen, Wikidata is too fragile, we need our own store of 
data (POI extra details, names, translations etc) that can exchange 
material with Wikidata but is under full OSMF control - and not 
controlled by notability deletionists. In 5 years time would we be 
arguing about bloat in OSMData as someone suddenly purges some section 
from it?

/rambling

--Jói / Stalfur

Þann 30.5.2015 12:22, skrifaði Martin Koppenhoefer:
>
>> Am 29.05.2015 um 13:58 schrieb moltonel 3x Combo <moltonel at gmail.com>:
>>
>> That's really neat. How do you know wether a street is signposted or
>> not ? I don't know of any tag that gives that info.
>
> there are ~600 visible_name
> 37000 unsigned_ref
> 518 unsigned
> 400 signed
> 161 name:signed
> 124 name:sign
> 86 ref:signed
> 48 unsigned_name
> 47 ref:unsigned
> 16 name:signposted
>
> I haven't checked on which kind of objects or which do not refer to highways or names
> Very likely I also missed some variants
>
> It seems that for names nobody cares to say whether they are signposted or not (or maybe only when the sign is different from the actual name), while for ref it seems common practice(?) to use unsigned_ref