[OSM-talk] WMF: "Interactive maps, now in your language"

[Paul Norman]

On 2018-06-29 3:38 AM, Max wrote:
> That is inflating the OSM database with something that Wikidata has 
> solved already in a much better way. Why would someone from wikimedia 
> recommend to create a less mentainable version of their database?
>

Wikidata has 412978 "thoroughfare" items. OSM has 121 million highway 
ways. These don't correspond 1:1 with each other, and it'd be 
interesting to get an exact comparison, but OSM even records more 
distinct street names than Wikidata records total streets. Companies 
like Mapbox have been trying to improve coverage with paid contractors 
filling out spreadsheets of names, but that comes with its own problems, 
and clearly hasn't made Wikidata a substitute for OSM when it comes to 
geographic names.

On a technical level, processing Wikidata data to work with map data is 
harder than processing OSM data, and lacks the standardized practices 
and documentation.

Lastly, when it comes to names in OSM as opposed to translations or 
transliterations, we should want them improved in OSM. This is, after 
all, an OSM mailing list.