[OSM-talk] Proposed new status for tags in the wiki: "import" for undiscussed tags that were only used by an import

stevea steveaOSM at softworkers.com
Thu Mar 19 05:52:49 UTC 2020


Even the "let's not misunderstand" posts might even contain slight misunderstandings.  As Roland mentions tiger:cfcc tags, there is an argument (and documented wiki) that suggests they might still yield some underlying structure of the TIGER rail import in the USA which can provide useful data (in constructing route=railway relations, for example) still today, even as they have become somewhat smeared since their import.  It is virtually impossible to recognize all such subtitles of all such structured data that is now in OSM.  To say "this import seems to have 'grey' (old, misunderstood, seems to be 'noise in place') data, we should structurally treat it like x, y and z" REALLY must have some deep treatment about what these data were, are and might be before some wholesale data manipulation occurs.

I'm not saying some of these (clean up our data sub-projects) aren't good ideas, just that we MUST look at the whole iceberg rather than only its tip.  Usually, what appears to be is only the tip and the iceberg is bigger than one might realize.

SteveA

> On Mar 18, 2020, at 10:37 PM, Roland Olbricht <roland.olbricht at gmx.de> wrote:
> ..."stale": Tags that came with an import, are not, and can not be used by
> general mappers, and are not expected to be updated. "tiger:cfcc" is
> currently the most numerous. The low number of values of "tiger:cfcc"
> makes it unlikely that it is carrying any meaning.
> 
> Another final question is whether it makes sense to refine the system at
> all. Much of the information of the tagging classes is available via
> taginfo, and some more can be automatically computed from the database,
> although it is it done today. Having this is as explicit information
> instead is the either redundant (if in line with actual database
> content) or misleading (if in contradiction to the actual database content).

This is a true, excellent point:


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