[OSM-talk] Should we map things that do not exist?

[Colin Smale]

On 2020-05-25 17:08, Mateusz Konieczny via talk wrote:

> May 25, 2020, 16:48 by colin.smale at xs4all.nl: 
> 
> On 2020-05-25 16:20, Jack Armstrong wrote: 
> 
> Why are railways given a special status? 
> 
> Nobody gives anything a status in OSM. Nothing is "approved" so nothing is "forbidden" either.

It is not really accurate - there is plenty of forbidden things (like
running 
imports without discussion, we have tags that are silently removed by 
editors like iD and JOSM). 
Doing imports without discussion more about the process, and less about
the details of the result. An import can be declared "bad" for many
reasons. 

If iD and JOSM remove certain tags when they are encountered, that is
different from removing whole objects. 

> We have voted on tags that are described as "approved". 
> 
> Even if "Nothing is "approved"" is true it does not mean that nothing is forbidden.

Can you name one tag that is "forbidden"? Does that mean a standing
instruction to all mappers to remove it whenever it is found, or a
license to do a seek-and-destroy across the whole database? Or does
"forbidden" not quite mean "may not appear in OSM"? "Frowned upon"
possibly. 

> Is there any case of a whole class of objects being removed from OSM on the grounds  
> that they "do not belong"? Who would burn their fingers on that? 
> Depends on what you mean by "whole class of objects".

Class, category, whatever... A subset of the objects in the OSM data
with common characteristics. 

> If we are looking to set a precedent for that it would probably be wiser to pick on a less controversial and emotive subject. 
> 
> We have precedent that entire classes and types of things are 
> out of scope.

Where is that written down? What classes and types of things have been
declared out of scope? Any record of a transparent process that led to
that?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/attachments/20200525/e38c28c8/attachment.htm>