[OSM-talk] Applicability of wiki tagging and votes: may, should or must

[Mateusz Konieczny]

On Thu, 28 Jan 2016 20:31:04 +0100
Matthijs Melissen <info at matthijsmelissen.nl> wrote:

> On 28 January 2016 at 20:16, David Marchal <penegal at live.fr> wrote:
> > On a GitHub issue
> > (https://github.com/gravitystorm/openstreetmap-carto/issues/2027#issuecomment-174443685),
> > I've been told that Wiki tagging votes are only advisory and that
> > the community is only invited, neither required nor recommended, to
> > follow them. As I understand this comment, the community MAY follow
> > the Wiki tagging or votes, it does not SHOULD nor MUST follow them.
> > I was under the impression that the community at least SHOULD apply
> > the votes results, MUST looking unenforceable due to the free
> > tagging principle. Am I wrong on that? What is the applicability of
> > the Wiki content?
> 
> I don't think this has ever been formally decided.
> 
> Personally I am of the opinion that the editor software, and to a
> lesser extent the main data consumer software such as
> openstreetmap-carto, has way to much power over tagging standards. I
> would be in favour of giving more power to the community, and I think
> editor/data consumer software should be encouraged to follow the
> standards agreed by the community.
> 
> Often the counterargument is given that only a handful of people vote
> on proposals, but I don't think that's a good argument. Everybody
> *can* join in the discussion and the votes if they want to. Apparently
> the people who don't are not interested, or perhaps they trust the
> regular crowd to make decisions for them. Having the power only in the
> hands of the few people that control the major editors and renderers
> is no good idea, in my opinion. I therefore think that we as a
> community should ask that everybody involved SHOULD follow the voting
> results.

Whenever it is possible and reasonable I prefer to follow wiki
recommendations.

Whenever I notice that wiki and what I consider reasonable to mismatch I
am trying to remove this mismatch (either by editing wiki or by
changing my opinion).

Whenever I encounter mismatch between wiki & tagging or software I
attempt to fix it - by creating issues/PRs or editing OSM data or
by changing wiki.

Complaining that wiki is wrong is not useful - it is wiki, change it. In
some cases opinions are divided and wiki should contain description of
that controversy.

Wiki + taginfo are documentation of tagging schemes - and people
refusing/forgetting to document their tagging schemes should not be
surprised that data consumers follow either wiki documentation or
their own ideas.