[OSM-talk] Tool for users to add wikidata tags

[Christoph Hormann]

On Thursday 08 June 2017, Edward Betts wrote:
>
>   Please check each match carefully before uploading to
> OpenStreetMap. If in doubt, contact the local mapping community
> before adding Wikidata tags.

This will not help much though - every single mapper i have seen 
performing mechanical edits along these lines in the past years was 
sure their edits were factually correct and diligently checked - partly 
because of the fact that what is written on Wikipedia is often a 
significant part of the perceived trouth about the world.

This all would not be too bad - after all it is just one simple tag but 
the trouble is later other mappers will use that to fix discrepancies 
between OSM and Wikidata for example by 'correcting' names in OSM.

I am not against the idea of cross referencing these databases but it 
would be great if (a) this would be universally treated as 'related 
objects' rather than a one-to-one relationship and (b) at least like 
ten percent of the time and effort put into such work is invested in 
educating people about error sources and teaching people about reliably 
researching geographic facts.  Too often the impression i get is the 
aim is more producing and connecting data per se than actually 
recording reliable factual information.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/