[OSM-talk] mapping outside Europe
Martin Constantino–Bodin
martin.bodin at ens-lyon.org
Tue Jan 7 16:23:13 UTC 2020
> apart from the issue "international objects receive a tag 'name' with
> an English value", there are other ways in which you see how we're
> letting USA-UK patronize the rest.
>
> the latest example in my experience would be the 'sac_scale' tagging.
> it comes from the SAC-CAS classification, of the Schweizer
> Alpen-Club/Club Alpino Svizzero/Club Alpin Suisse/Club Alpin Svizzer,
> yet OSM held the discussion in English, and it not only chose
> `sac_scale` for the tag name, it also decided not to use the Swiss
> codes T1..T6 (language independent), but the English version of the
> human readable explanation for the codes: T1
> (hiking/escursione/randonnée/Wandern) .. T6 (difficult alpine
> hiking/escursione alpina difficile/randonnée alpine
> difficile/schwieriges Alpinwandern).
>
> a more important issue (I would call it "mapping outside Europe",
> hence the subject) is for me each and every (photo)graphic explanation
> of the tagging values. take `highway`
> (https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:highway). text are fine,
> really, but the associated pictures seem all taken in Europe, or North
> America, they have more chances to confuse the mapper based in Africa
> or South America, than helping them.
>
> in Panama many roads are classified as 'camino de verano', they look
> like highway:track, but are really highway:unclassified with an extra
> indication for the months where they are expected to be passable.
> maybe can be solved in the wiki by changing the link to the picture
> into a link to several pictures, but I'm afraid that we need to
> address this in the standard renderer as well: users also expect some
> of the information to be reflected in the rendering, explaining why so
> many mappers still use highway:track despite one repeating "don't map
> for the renderer".
>
> in Morocco (and I guess elsewhere too) we have small towns with
> undeveloped areas, crossed by paths with residential function, or
> large cities with extremely narrow alleys, again with residential
> function. these have been solved by different mappers in different
> ways, leading to very inconsistent mapping, in particular where there
> isn't a local, assertive, mappers' community. (Morocco and Panama are
> two such cases, Colombia is much better in this aspect.)
Wow. That’s quite impressive examples. I fully agree that this
Europe-centrism might lead to issues in the future. I remembered being
quite confused when I first read the documentation for crossing ways, as
they are all following UK’s naming system (which I’ve never heard
before). They are well-documented, so I guess that it’s fine. But I
understand what you mean: the “name” tag issue may not be the most
relevant in this family of issues.
This might indicate that the people discussing in this mailing list are
from a very specific background, possibly caused by the language of the
mailing list itself.
At the same time, I have to admit that I don’t feel like there are that
much pictures on the documentation. I was for instance surprised that
there was no picture for the “minimap” tag in the wiki (I fixed this in
the meantime ☺). So it might be something that we can easily improve
step by step ☺
I’m not sure what to conclude here. I guess that being conscious of the
Europe-centrism issue during discussions might help? Or that we may need
to look for volunteers to complete the OSM wiki with additional pictures
from non-Europe/North America? I will look at the pictures I took back
to been I lived in Chile and Brazil… but as I wasn’t into OSM then, I
won’t have much useful 😔
Regards,
Martin.
More information about the talk
mailing list