Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Kaare Rasmussen]

On 2016-07-13 11:03, Iván Sánchez Ortega wrote:
what3hands anybody? 


That would require surgery or snappy evolution, as most people (still) 
only have two hands.


/kaare

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Michael Kugelmann]

on 12.07.2016 at 18:13 Frank Villaro-Dixon wrote:
And that's fucking shit! 

Completely agree!
It is a proprietary system which is absolutely unlogical and 
non-deterministic looking from outside. Absolutely nothing that should 
be supported by a big FLOSS project like OSM! The only strong thing 
about W3W is their good marketing and PR.


We should even be careful not to give them a platform they migt use for 
PR/marketing by discussing about them.



Just my 2 cents,
Michael.



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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Iván Sánchez Ortega]

El Miércoles 13. julio 2016 13.06.45 Lester Caine escribió:
> On 13/07/16 11:44, Dave F wrote:
> > How about musical notation? We could sing our parcels to their
> > destinations. ;-)
> 
> Or even more radical ... just use numbers for time and location :)

Somebody had that idea already. http://what2numbers.org/

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 07/13/2016 12:37 PM, Colin Smale wrote:
> On 2016-07-13 12:24, Dave F wrote:
> 
>>
>> On 13/07/2016 11:10, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>>>
>>>   W3W is a coordinate system...
>>
>> I fail to see how it can even be described as that as there is no
>> coordination. The address of one block has no relation to adjacent ones.
>>  
> Agreed - it's not a coordinate system, it's an addressing system, i.e. a
> way of encapsulating a location in a convenient manifestation.

I think we might not be understanding each other. Dave says "coordinates
need coordination" which makes you conclude "see, if it's not a
coordinate system it must be an addressing system". I agree with neither.

Really, please don't buy the w3w propaganda in this respect. An
addressing system usually is hierarchical - country, then perhaps a
state or district or postcode, the a city, then perhaps a neighbourhood,
a street, a number, and perhaps an apartment or level number. There are
differences but you can usually tell from addresses where they are,
approximately, and if you can't pinpoint it right away you can follow
the hierarchy (go to the town then ask for the street etc.). You can
tell if two addresses are near each other. There may be brokers that
tell you where on earth an address is (geocoding systems) but they are
not a mandatory part of resolving the address.

There are so many things that humans associate with an address, and w3w
tries to piggyback on that by calling their coordinate system (or, if
you want, their map projection) an addressing system, but it's not, or
at least not more than the "addressing system" of lat/lon/ele is.

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Lester Caine]

On 13/07/16 11:44, Dave F wrote:
> On 13/07/2016 10:03, Iván Sánchez Ortega wrote:
>> If written/spoken language is the barrier, maybe we should try
>> something more cross-cultural, like signwriting language.
>> http://signbank.org/iswa/cat_1.html what3hands anybody? 
> 
> How about musical notation? We could sing our parcels to their
> destinations. ;-)

Or even more radical ... just use numbers for time and location :)

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Michael Collinson]

On 13/07/16 12:44, Dave F wrote:

On 13/07/2016 10:03, Iván Sánchez Ortega wrote:
If written/spoken language is the barrier, maybe we should try 
something more cross-cultural, like signwriting language. 
http://signbank.org/iswa/cat_1.html what3hands anybody? 


How about musical notation? We could sing our parcels to their 
destinations. ;-)


Dave F.


Hmm, it is so U+266D around here.

Mike

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Maarten Deen]

On 2016-07-13 11:35, Colin Smale wrote:

On 2016-07-13 10:23, Lester Caine wrote:


W3W and OLC both have the same problem. They are trying to fix
something
which is not really broken.


I disagree with this... They are not trying to replace / fix up
lat/lon, they are providing a lingua franca for people to use when
communicating. It's an alternate form of address, not an alternate
form of location. They are intended for use by humans - so being
short, memorable and reliable is an advantage. This is where W3W wins
it from OLC as accurately remembering three words is easier than
remembering a "random" sequence of symbols, and when you read it out
over the phone the chances of a misunderstanding producing an existing
but wrong result are minimal.


It can not be used by humans without aid because using it means you need 
electronic equipment to a) translate w3w to a location and b) find the 
location.

As opposed to regular addresses that can be found very easily by locals.
If you give me a streetname in my hometown, I can find it.
Certainly much easier than having to learn the about 500.000 unique W3W 
combinations that are in my (not so big) hometown.



Us westerners are spoilt with our wonderful postal addressing
systems... There are many, many areas in the world which don't have
street names or even house numbers. Telling someone where you live
means a whole chunk of descriptive text like "second red building on
the left".


But to get there, to translate the W3W address to a location, you need a 
GPS and a translation from W3W to coordinates anyway. I mean, how would 
you otherwise find casino.premiums.scream?
GPS'es are usually sophisticated enough to store waypoints. So the only 
fix W#W gives is that during communicating the location you do not have 
a pen and paper to write down the location.
It is useless for locals because they need a computer and a GPS, it is 
unnecessary for deliverypeople because they have a GPS and can use 
lat/lon that is written on letters or packages.


And in this example: is it casino.premiums.scream? Or 
casino.premium.scream? Or casino.premiums.cream?
And how does that sound when a non-english speaker pronounces it? And is 
transliteration to and from cyrillic (in the case of Mongolia) 
straightforward?


I am still not convinced that it solves anything.

Maarten

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Iván Sánchez Ortega]

El Miércoles 13. julio 2016 11.44.44 Dave F escribió:
> On 13/07/2016 10:03, Iván Sánchez Ortega wrote:
> > If written/spoken language is the barrier, maybe we should try
> > something more cross-cultural, like signwriting language.
> > http://signbank.org/iswa/cat_1.html what3hands anybody?
> 
> How about musical notation? We could sing our parcels to their
> destinations. ;-)

Stop giving me ideas! At this rate I'm gonna go broke just by the amount of 
domain names I'm buying!

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Iván Sánchez Ortega]

El Miércoles 13. julio 2016 12.37.32 Colin Smale escribió:
> > there is no coordination. The address of one block has no relation to
> > adjacent ones.
>
> Agreed - it's not a coordinate system, it's an addressing system, i.e. a
> way of encapsulating a location in a convenient manifestation.

Systems like What3Pokemon or What3Ikea are, in fact, coordinate systems, even 
if your naked eye cannot see the coordination/pattern. It takes just a bit of 
non-base-ten modular arithmetic to make your brain not see the pattern.

What3Fucks does display a pattern, because some math bits (amount of 
subdivisions vs corpus size) match each other nicely. It's trivial to design a 
geodetic grid with a recognizable pattern if one puts their mind to it.

BTW, the problem of calculating adjacent cells in a geodetic grid has been 
already researched in the past.


The issue of whether things like W3F or W3P are "convenient" is, as we all can 
see from previous discussion, (to be exceedingly polite) very arguable.


-- 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Dave F]

On 13/07/2016 10:03, Iván Sánchez Ortega wrote:
If written/spoken language is the barrier, maybe we should try 
something more cross-cultural, like signwriting language. 
http://signbank.org/iswa/cat_1.html what3hands anybody? 


How about musical notation? We could sing our parcels to their 
destinations. ;-)


Dave F.


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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Iván Sánchez Ortega]

El Miércoles 13. julio 2016 12.10.29 Frederik Ramm escribió:
> [...] is a coordinate system, not an addressing system.

I think there's a thin line separating the both. But this is not obvious to us 
europeans, I think.

See south america: house addresses are the distance in meters to the start of 
the street/road. So your linear position is part of your address.

See gridded cities in north america: There's 1st ave, 2nd ave, 3rd ave, the 
first block is 1000, the second is 2000, etc. So actually your position within 
the grid is your address.

The main difference being, the reference line or grid is an actual feature in 
the ground (made of asphalt or concrete). And there's enough irregularities in 
those lines/grids that it makes sense to have that addressing info in OSM.


On the other hand, fully algorithmic systems (like W3F) would just add useless 
overhead to the OSM database. I have no doubt I would be labelled as a moron 
if I were to add W3F addresses to OSM nodes.


Now a smarter question would be: Does it make sense to have addresses based on 
*invisible*, *imaginary*, *non-surveyable* grids/lines/landmarks that you can 
only see when your cellphone has battery?

Does it make sense to have physical milestones/postboxes/streetsigns to enable 
an algorithmic system to work in the physical world (but not viceversa) ?

Would land records be based on the algorithmic or on the physical system?



That's the kind of questions that should be discussed, and not the "but you 
can pronounce them" or "but you can download a 10MB android library" 
b**lsh**t. For f**k sake.


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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

On 2016-07-13 12:24, Dave F wrote:

> On 13/07/2016 11:10, Frederik Ramm wrote: 
> 
>> W3W is a coordinate system...
> 
> I fail to see how it can even be described as that as there is no 
> coordination. The address of one block has no relation to adjacent ones.

Agreed - it's not a coordinate system, it's an addressing system, i.e. a
way of encapsulating a location in a convenient manifestation. 

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Dave F]

On 13/07/2016 11:10, Frederik Ramm wrote:


  W3W is a coordinate system...


I fail to see how it can even be described as that as there is no 
coordination. The address of one block has no relation to adjacent ones.


Dave F.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 07/13/2016 11:35 AM, Colin Smale wrote:
> I disagree with this... They are not trying to replace / fix up lat/lon,
> they are providing a lingua franca for people to use when communicating.
> It's an alternate form of address, not an alternate form of location.

No. It is a core element of W3W marketing to call their system an
"addressing system", but it has virtually none of the properties that an
addressing system has. W3W is a coordinate system, not an addressing system.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

On 2016-07-13 10:23, Lester Caine wrote:

> W3W and OLC both have the same problem. They are trying to fix something
> which is not really broken.

I disagree with this... They are not trying to replace / fix up lat/lon,
they are providing a lingua franca for people to use when communicating.
It's an alternate form of address, not an alternate form of location.
They are intended for use by humans - so being short, memorable and
reliable is an advantage. This is where W3W wins it from OLC as
accurately remembering three words is easier than remembering a "random"
sequence of symbols, and when you read it out over the phone the chances
of a misunderstanding producing an existing but wrong result are
minimal. 

They are like postcodes, whereby pretty much all other components of an
address are redundant (except for maybe apartment numbers). 

Us westerners are spoilt with our wonderful postal addressing systems...
There are many, many areas in the world which don't have street names or
even house numbers. Telling someone where you live means a whole chunk
of descriptive text like "second red building on the left". 

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Iván Sánchez Ortega]

El Miércoles 13. julio 2016 09.23.17 Lester Caine escribió:
> Even something as simple as identifying the local time given some sort
> of location identifier becomes unreliable when local variations of
> language and custom are added in.

If written/spoken language is the barrier, maybe we should try something more 
cross-cultural, like signwriting language.

http://signbank.org/iswa/cat_1.html


what3hands anybody?


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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Lester Caine]

On 12/07/16 21:44, Paul Johnson wrote:
> The way I see it, it takes a simple problem and tries to make it
> simpler, but at the same time, as soon as you start talking about a
> situation in which language commonality is not a given, the whole thing
> makes you understand the simple elegance of latitude and longitude,
> particularly in decimal form.

Along with storing all times as simple UTC.

W3W and OLC both have the same problem. They are trying to fix something
which is not really broken. I'd commented in the thread about "Open
Location Code should we support it?" that all these re-coding methods
are just a second layer to the lat/long and that is something that the
LOCAL client view needs to handle. The words used in W3W and the
language used where places are included with OLC makes using either of
them difficult for a 'Nomination' search.

Even something as simple as identifying the local time given some sort
of location identifier becomes unreliable when local variations of
language and custom are added in.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Jóhannes Birgir Jensson]

Hello Tim.

Admirable post although I'm wondering if I'm often perplexed according 
to your very first sentence?


Perplexion is at the vitriol - I myself - being a programmer who strives 
to be more civil than my nature would naturally be - understand the 
factual criticism levelled at what3words but the vitriol that follows it 
is the perplexing part. What3fucks and What3shits sort of deem 
themselves in their elegance.


You can deem something unusable but standing over someone and hitting 
them in the face telling them that this thing is shit is a mark of 
vitriol which is uncalled for. By all means level the factual critique 
and why your ideology is uncomfortable with it but do so in a civil 
manner. As for aggressive marketing I've never seen it personally but of 
course I'm not in a major market, are they running full size banners, 
spreads in broadsheets and TV ads?


I also have to correct a factual error - the user of the mobile app does 
not need to have an active internet connection - a GPS signal is enough 
to get the location - they however lose the background map itself (since 
it is Google). I've just tested by taking my phone offline - the app 
contains the algorithm to calculate and I could pinpoint my position and 
scroll around it to get other w3w's.


I personally have no stake in What3Words, I met its founder in Iceland a 
while back and we had a chat about it and his vision. I like the 
problems it is trying to solve, I see why it is proprietary and whilst 
not ideal I fully acknowledge why they would keep it that way. Some of 
the things levelled at it here were addressed in my chat - for example 
adjacent points having completely different words - that is by design 
and is similar to the last 4 digits of the OLP approach which has 
previously been lauded.


Tim does an elegant job in his post to address the issue of making 
money. One thing I want to address though is the OSM angle - I don't 
know of What3Words putting any pressure on OSM, I know some apps that 
build on OSM also incorporate W3W but that is totally outside OSM.


Many of us are geogeeks and as such any geomatters, like geocoding, are 
of interest. But are they of interest to OSM itself and this list? Not 
really in my opinion unless W3W are actually pushing into OSM space.



--Jói


Þann 12.7.2016 20:22, skrifaði Tim Waters:

Heather and folks who are often perplexed,

are you actually perplexed or do you understand but disagree? I ask
because I have heard some mappers say the opposite: "I don't
understand why people would choose w3w!!11". Is it a turn of phrase?
Or a genuine plea for illumination? I often disagree with blind
vitriol, but I try to understand why it exists. The words we say often
give different responses. For example in the UK many people said "I
don't understand why people voted for Brexit" and some of them
genuinely did not know of any reasons why people voted that way
(filter bubble doesnt help), whilst others said that phrase, but could
understand why others voted that way but simply disagreed with the
reasons. Some people simply could not put themselves in the
oppositions shoes. The cognitive dissonance hurts too much.  I
therefore think its not just a turn of phrase for all. So here's a
response which I hope covers both angles:

In this example of w3w should the OSM community or the OSM Foundation
provide reasons why people disagree to help those who do not
understand community responses to product, or, should the OSM
Community or the OSM Foundation communicate better so that differences
of opinion are valued and can coexist with each other? Should reasons
on both sides be listed, or should we work so that blind vitriol and
anti vitriol statements be lowered? Is the problem the thing, or is it
that the thing cannot be easily understood?

Personally, I like w3w, I don't think the promise to release the code
if it goes belly up means anything. Contracts and terms of conditions
can be changed whenever, and it looks like they are aiming to be
acquired. Also, if they are successful it would never be released, so
why should we wait for it? They are VC funded, after all so they want
to grow and get a profit. I disagree mostly with the proprietary 3rd
party access. It's not open and not the OSM way. Its a proprietary
gatekeeper of information, something diametrically opposed to our
little mapping project. Would someone say the proceeding few sentences
was vitriolic? I don't think so. Critical yes. Was it offensive? Maybe
their investors don't like it, but I think it should be allowed to be
said, right?

However, I also disagree with criticism from mappers directed at
Mongolia which is patronising at best. To go with w3w is similar to
any proprietary software contract, which big businesses and big
countries do every day. It's not something I would promote generally,
it's not an open way forward is it? However it gives people jobs, and
its the money making capitalist world we live in. I believe w3w 

Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Paul Johnson]

On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 11:13 AM, Frank Villaro-Dixon <
fr...@villaro-dixon.eu> wrote:

> More importantly, the system is completely "brain-inefficient". If
> everybody adopted this system you would then have to remember all the codes
> for all the places whereas of now you don't need to. Your brain only
> remembers the road and then a number for each house.


It gets worse:  Which *language* of W3W are you using and which one do the
locals at that place know?  Now it's what six words, English and Mongolian,
right?  But now Wang Wu has a box of widgets he needs to send there, and I
don't have an ear for it so he could be Mandarin or Cantonese.  What twelve
words?  But then they've enlisted Juan Pelotes and plan on flying him in
from Argentina to put the whole project together.  What fifteen words.
Good luck getting a common match between any of them to describe the same
spot.

The way I see it, it takes a simple problem and tries to make it simpler,
but at the same time, as soon as you start talking about a situation in
which language commonality is not a given, the whole thing makes you
understand the simple elegance of latitude and longitude, particularly in
decimal form.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Tim Waters]

Heather and folks who are often perplexed,

are you actually perplexed or do you understand but disagree? I ask
because I have heard some mappers say the opposite: "I don't
understand why people would choose w3w!!11". Is it a turn of phrase?
Or a genuine plea for illumination? I often disagree with blind
vitriol, but I try to understand why it exists. The words we say often
give different responses. For example in the UK many people said "I
don't understand why people voted for Brexit" and some of them
genuinely did not know of any reasons why people voted that way
(filter bubble doesnt help), whilst others said that phrase, but could
understand why others voted that way but simply disagreed with the
reasons. Some people simply could not put themselves in the
oppositions shoes. The cognitive dissonance hurts too much.  I
therefore think its not just a turn of phrase for all. So here's a
response which I hope covers both angles:

In this example of w3w should the OSM community or the OSM Foundation
provide reasons why people disagree to help those who do not
understand community responses to product, or, should the OSM
Community or the OSM Foundation communicate better so that differences
of opinion are valued and can coexist with each other? Should reasons
on both sides be listed, or should we work so that blind vitriol and
anti vitriol statements be lowered? Is the problem the thing, or is it
that the thing cannot be easily understood?

Personally, I like w3w, I don't think the promise to release the code
if it goes belly up means anything. Contracts and terms of conditions
can be changed whenever, and it looks like they are aiming to be
acquired. Also, if they are successful it would never be released, so
why should we wait for it? They are VC funded, after all so they want
to grow and get a profit. I disagree mostly with the proprietary 3rd
party access. It's not open and not the OSM way. Its a proprietary
gatekeeper of information, something diametrically opposed to our
little mapping project. Would someone say the proceeding few sentences
was vitriolic? I don't think so. Critical yes. Was it offensive? Maybe
their investors don't like it, but I think it should be allowed to be
said, right?

However, I also disagree with criticism from mappers directed at
Mongolia which is patronising at best. To go with w3w is similar to
any proprietary software contract, which big businesses and big
countries do every day. It's not something I would promote generally,
it's not an open way forward is it? However it gives people jobs, and
its the money making capitalist world we live in. I believe w3w whilst
being a poor choice is a workable choice. And it may be a great choice
for the country if it works for them. If the country asked me, I would
not have recommended w3w, but dont hold it against them! Just like
using closed data, or proprietary software is a poor choice, it does
actually work. Microsoft or Esri products actually work pretty well!
(and so do their better FOSS alternatives of course). I do reserve my
vitriol to protect open data and open source, as this protects this
OSM community and foundation and what I think we stand for. Mongolia,
I believe made a good choice in their eyes for their country.

I hope this helps the perplexity, if there is genuine perplexity. Many
people do not understand the issues, and that's okay, and I want to
help people understand things if they are open to learn. And i hope
this helps understand some of the issues why people disagree with the
project if there is a genuine need to learn about some of these. I
want to help people empathise with others, to put themselves in their
opponents shoes and see that they are not actually opponents after
all!. I suspect the reality in many people's cases with controversial
subjects it is a mixture :)

best regards,

Tim

On 12 July 2016 at 12:12, Heather Leson  wrote:
> Well, slightly off-topic but I am often perplexed by the vitriol in OSM. I
> even shudder to post this statement because the environment has shown itself
> to be hard.
>
> Maybe we can have conversations at SOTM about how to turn this tide in a
> collaborative way.
>
>
> Heather
>
> Heather Leson
> heatherle...@gmail.com
> Twitter/skype: HeatherLeson
> Blog: textontechs.com
>
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson 
> wrote:
>>
>> I don't know if they are using the English version in Mongolia but I doubt
>> it. You can already swap to 8 other languages on their website (top right
>> option).
>>
>> I did discuss Icelandic with Mapillary and they looked into available word
>> sets and concluded that it was more than sufficient to make Iceland itself
>> work in an Icelandic w3w implementation.
>>
>> The circle-jerk is strong here about w3w, they have a human readable
>> solution for GPS-coordinates (which OPL isn't sadly), they've pledged to
>> offer the source code if their business goes belly-up and seem to doing a

Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Maurizio Napolitano]

> This is funny, because what3fucks:
>
> 1) Has variable precision
> 2) Its fuckonyms are correlated
> 3) Code can be downloaded and needs no network connectivity to do the
> calculations
> 4) Gives a fuck
>
> What a crazy random coincidence, huh?!

PS:
there is also an Pokemon implementation :)
http://www.what3pokemon.com/

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[moltonel]

On 12 July 2016 08:46:08 GMT+01:00, Steve Doerr  wrote:
>On 12/07/2016 00:23, Dave F wrote:
>
>> This system [...] doesn't work in the real world.
>
>It's apparently used in Mongolia as of this month. So the proof of the 
>pudding . . .

People have different criterias for what makes a postcode system 'work in the 
real world'. Many people in the osm/foss comunity have criterias that put w3w 
firmly in the 'doesn't work' category, whatever Mongolia's government may think.

Ireland recently got a postcode system that is so bad that nobody in the know 
wants to (or can) use it. The goverment only selected it because of lobbying 
(to put it nicely) by the company selling the system. There were much better 
systems available but they didn't manage to get the politicians or people's 
interest. I'm not familiar with Mongolia but I'm pretty sure the same story 
happened there.

IMHO plus codes are much better than w3w, and I guess w3w mainly thrives 
marketing/lobbying and because their system looks cool at first blush. 
Openpostcode is another good system, very similar to plus codes, which is used 
as the official postcode in Yemen since 2014.
-- 
Vincent Dp

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Simon Poole]

Am 12.07.2016 um 21:07 schrieb Mark Wagner:
> ..
> 3) ... and my GPS can't display it.
That however is only the small problem of w3w paying the device
manufacturer enough so they include it, or becoming popular enough so
that the device manufacturer pays w3w for including it.

Typically the technical aspects of a particular solution have nothing to
do with its market success.

Simon



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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Iván Sánchez Ortega]

On Tuesday 12 July 2016 12:07:36 Mark Wagner wrote:
> 1) There's no way to reduce precision. 
> 
> 2) There's no correlation of names between adjacent locations.
> 
> 3) It requires an internet connection.

This is funny, because what3fucks:

1) Has variable precision
2) Its fuckonyms are correlated
3) Code can be downloaded and needs no network connectivity to do the 
calculations
4) Gives a fuck

What a crazy random coincidence, huh?!

-- 
Iván Sánchez Ortega 

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Mark Wagner]

There are three major problems with What3Words:

1) There's no way to reduce precision.  I can say "the left front door
of the Avista central office building", but I can't say "the Avista
headquarters campus" or "downtown Spokane".

2) There's no correlation of names between adjacent locations.  The
aforementioned left front door has a totally different name from the
right front door.

3) It requires an internet connection.  If I'm out hiking and a member
of my party breaks a leg, I can't get on the radio and tell
Search & Rescue my What3Words location: my map doesn't have it (and
never will: see the precision issues), and my GPS can't display it.

In short, What3Words has solved the problem of human transmission of GPS
coordinates from one internet-connected device to another.  But they're
hyping it as if it were the ultimate solution to all your location
problems, hence the derision.

-- 
Mark

On Tue, 12 Jul 2016 11:04:59 +
Jóhannes Birgir Jensson  wrote:

> I don't know if they are using the English version in Mongolia but I 
> doubt it. You can already swap to 8 other languages on their website 
> (top right option).
> 
> I did discuss Icelandic with Mapillary and they looked into available 
> word sets and concluded that it was more than sufficient to make
> Iceland itself work in an Icelandic w3w implementation.
> 
> The circle-jerk is strong here about w3w, they have a human readable 
> solution for GPS-coordinates (which OPL isn't sadly), they've pledged
> to offer the source code if their business goes belly-up and seem to
> doing a lot of good things. I'm slightly perplexed at the extent of
> vitriol they suffer here.
> 
> --JBJ
> 
> Þann 12.07.2016 08:11, Janko Mihelić reit:
> > So they are using the english version? What good does that do to the
> > local people? It would be easier to learn the GPS coordinates.
> > 
> > Janko
> > 
> > uto, 12. srp 2016. u 09:47 Steve Doerr 
> > napisao je:
> >   
> >> On 12/07/2016 00:23, Dave F wrote:
> >>   
> >>> This system [...] doesn't work in the real world.  
> >> 
> >> It's apparently used in Mongolia as of this month. So the proof of
> >> the
> >> pudding . . .
> >> 
> >> --
> >> Steve
> >> 
> >> ---
> >> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus
> >> software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus [1]
> >> 
> >> ___
> >> talk mailing list
> >> talk@openstreetmap.org
> >> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk [2]  
> > 
> > 
> > Links:
> > --
> > [1] https://www.avast.com/antivirus
> > [2] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
> > 
> > ___
> > talk mailing list
> > talk@openstreetmap.org
> > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk  
> 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Frank Villaro-Dixon]

On 16-07-12 11:04:59, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson, wrote 2.4K characters saying:
The circle-jerk is strong here about w3w, they have a human readable 
solution for GPS-coordinates (which OPL isn't sadly), they've pledged to 
offer the source code if their business goes belly-up and seem to doing a 
lot of good things. I'm slightly perplexed at the extent of vitriol they 
suffer here.



I didn't knew about W3W before yesterday. When I looked-it up, I thought:
``Yay, this system is so cool. It's easier to remember words than numbers, 
so it should be useful.''
Then I looked at the coordinates of my house. Something like 
"pudding.speaker.table". Okay, that's definitely easy to remember. But 
when I looked at the coordinates of my neighbour (I expected something 
like "pudding.speaker.Z"), and they were completely different. There's 
absolutely no way of knowing adjacent coordinates form the tile you're in.


And that's fucking shit! Could you imagine in a city ? If you're in 
"Boulevard Jacques", next to house number 42 and you want to reach the 
"1324 Boulevard Jacques", then it's easy: it's sequential.


But with this revolutionary new system if you're in 
"pudding.speaker.table", want to go to "completely.broken.system", and 
your phone no longer has a charge, then you're fucked.


More importantly, the system is completely "brain-inefficient". If 
everybody adopted this system you would then have to remember all the 
codes for all the places whereas of now you don't need to. Your brain only 
remembers the road and then a number for each house.



I won't even talk about the fact that their magical algorithm is 
completely closed..



Frankly, the system could be interesting if they didn't implement their 
magical "error correction", and thus made the addressing sequential (like 
first column is some segmented space, second column is latitude, last is 
longitude) or something logical.


I can already see an elderly people reacting to their idea: ``Meh, who 
needs that shit ?''



A shame…



Cheers,



--
frank.villaro-dixon.eu   - PGP: 6F36914A
Envie d'électricité 100% verte ? Enercoop.fr
What is a Velomobile ?   www.sans-essence.eu

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Simon Poole]

It should be noted that this discussion and the subject of the many
jokes, ridicule, parodies etc. is a company, or rather a specific
product of that company.

Particularly given the fairly aggressive marketing of the product, but
even without that, it is difficult to determine why personal feelings
should be hurt and anybody should be offended by the, sometimes not in
particularly good taste, flak that the product is receiving (it's a
thing, not a person).

Simon



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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[john whelan]

>We're not PR people. We're engineers and developers, and communicate as
such.

I don't think its called communication.  Communication is discussing ideas
and respecting others point of view.

I may see issues in what is being suggested I may have concerns about the
ideas but communication should be limited to issues and concerns.

These days we accomplish more by working in teams but to do that you have
to be able to communicate your ideas to others.

The soft skills are essential.  I used to work through one of the admin
assistants who ran the Avon catalog and she would show the new system to
her clients as they came into the office, we noted their feedback.

When we sent upper management in to do a presentation on the new system
they were met with Oh we know about that next agenda item.  They came back
perplexed as they'd never seen anything from IT go thrugh so smoothly but
we never let on how we'd done it.

Cheerio John

On 12 July 2016 at 07:34, Iván Sánchez  wrote:

> El Martes 12. julio 2016 14.12.06 Heather Leson escribió:
> > Well, slightly off-topic but I am often perplexed by the vitriol in OSM.
>
> Let me quote one of my personal heroes, Eric Raymond, from the FAQ in
> http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#keepcool :
>
>
> «Much of what looks like rudeness in hacker circles is not intended to give
> offense. Rather, it's the product of the direct, cut-through-the-bullshit
> communications style that is natural to people who are more concerned about
> solving problems than making others feel warm and fuzzy.»
>
>
> We're not PR people. We're engineers and developers, and communicate as
> such.
>
>
> --
> Iván Sánchez Ortega  
> 
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Iván Sánchez Ortega]

El Martes 12. julio 2016 14.12.06 Heather Leson escribió:
> Well, slightly off-topic but I am often perplexed by the vitriol in OSM.

Let me quote one of my personal heroes, Eric Raymond, from the FAQ in  
http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#keepcool :


«Much of what looks like rudeness in hacker circles is not intended to give 
offense. Rather, it's the product of the direct, cut-through-the-bullshit 
communications style that is natural to people who are more concerned about 
solving problems than making others feel warm and fuzzy.»


We're not PR people. We're engineers and developers, and communicate as such.


-- 
Iván Sánchez Ortega   


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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Heather Leson]

Well, slightly off-topic but I am often perplexed by the vitriol in OSM. I
even shudder to post this statement because the environment has shown
itself to be hard.

Maybe we can have conversations at SOTM about how to turn this tide in a
collaborative way.


Heather

Heather Leson
heatherle...@gmail.com
Twitter/skype: HeatherLeson
Blog: textontechs.com

On Tue, Jul 12, 2016 at 2:04 PM, Jóhannes Birgir Jensson 
wrote:

> I don't know if they are using the English version in Mongolia but I doubt
> it. You can already swap to 8 other languages on their website (top right
> option).
>
> I did discuss Icelandic with Mapillary and they looked into available word
> sets and concluded that it was more than sufficient to make Iceland itself
> work in an Icelandic w3w implementation.
>
> The circle-jerk is strong here about w3w, they have a human readable
> solution for GPS-coordinates (which OPL isn't sadly), they've pledged to
> offer the source code if their business goes belly-up and seem to doing a
> lot of good things. I'm slightly perplexed at the extent of vitriol they
> suffer here.
>
> --JBJ
>
> Þann 12.07.2016 08:11, Janko Mihelić reit:
>
>> So they are using the english version? What good does that do to the
>> local people? It would be easier to learn the GPS coordinates.
>>
>> Janko
>>
>> uto, 12. srp 2016. u 09:47 Steve Doerr 
>> napisao je:
>>
>> On 12/07/2016 00:23, Dave F wrote:
>>>
>>> This system [...] doesn't work in the real world.

>>>
>>> It's apparently used in Mongolia as of this month. So the proof of
>>> the
>>> pudding . . .
>>>
>>> --
>>> Steve
>>>
>>> ---
>>> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
>>> https://www.avast.com/antivirus [1]
>>>
>>> ___
>>> talk mailing list
>>> talk@openstreetmap.org
>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk [2]
>>>
>>
>>
>> Links:
>> --
>> [1] https://www.avast.com/antivirus
>> [2] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>>
>> ___
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>> talk@openstreetmap.org
>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>>
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Jóhannes Birgir Jensson]

I don't know if they are using the English version in Mongolia but I 
doubt it. You can already swap to 8 other languages on their website 
(top right option).


I did discuss Icelandic with Mapillary and they looked into available 
word sets and concluded that it was more than sufficient to make Iceland 
itself work in an Icelandic w3w implementation.


The circle-jerk is strong here about w3w, they have a human readable 
solution for GPS-coordinates (which OPL isn't sadly), they've pledged to 
offer the source code if their business goes belly-up and seem to doing 
a lot of good things. I'm slightly perplexed at the extent of vitriol 
they suffer here.


--JBJ

Þann 12.07.2016 08:11, Janko Mihelić reit:

So they are using the english version? What good does that do to the
local people? It would be easier to learn the GPS coordinates.

Janko

uto, 12. srp 2016. u 09:47 Steve Doerr 
napisao je:


On 12/07/2016 00:23, Dave F wrote:


This system [...] doesn't work in the real world.


It's apparently used in Mongolia as of this month. So the proof of
the
pudding . . .

--
Steve

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Janko Mihelić]

So they are using the english version? What good does that do to the local
people? It would be easier to learn the GPS coordinates.

Janko

uto, 12. srp 2016. u 09:47 Steve Doerr  napisao je:

> On 12/07/2016 00:23, Dave F wrote:
>
> > This system [...] doesn't work in the real world.
>
> It's apparently used in Mongolia as of this month. So the proof of the
> pudding . . .
>
> --
> Steve
>
> ---
> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
> https://www.avast.com/antivirus
>
>
> ___
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> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Steve Doerr]

On 12/07/2016 00:23, Dave F wrote:


This system [...] doesn't work in the real world.


It's apparently used in Mongolia as of this month. So the proof of the 
pudding . . .


--
Steve

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Dave F]

On 11/07/2016 16:55, john whelan wrote:

How would we make use of it?



We won't.

This system isn't relative. There's no way of knowing the address of the 
adjacent blocks. I doesn't work in the real world. Even antiquated UK 
postcodes have rough relativity.


Let's face it, it's a joke.

Dave F.


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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Ian Dees]

Indeed. But it was from 2015. Why is it coming up again 6 months later?

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 5:51 PM, Nicolás Alvarez 
wrote:

> 2016-07-11 12:30 GMT-03:00 Ian Dees :
> > On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 5:23 PM, Blake Girardot 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On a slightly more serious note:
> >>
> >> There are other solutions to the issue of lack of addresses in large
> >> parts of the world.
> >>
> >> Google has put forth a solution that tries to address most of the w3w
> >> issues. It is open source, works off line, non-propriety, usable for
> >> printed maps among other issues they try and solve, called Open
> >> Location Codes aka "Plus Codes"
> >>
> >> http://openlocationcode.com/
> >>
> >>
> >>
> https://maps.googleblog.com/2015/08/plus-codes-new-way-to-help-pinpoint.html
> >>
> >> https://plus.codes/
> >>
> >> It is still a work in progress for them but they are seriously seeking
> >> feedback from the OSM and humanitarian communities. I have no opinion
> >> on it because it is a bit beyond my full understanding at the moment,
> >> but as I said, thoughtful feedback on it would help I think.
> >
> >
> > The mailing lists have talked about what3words before, too:
> >
> > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2015-November/075051.html
>
> Your link is the first post on *this* thread.
>
> --
> Nicolás
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[john whelan]

My preference would be the open source solution.  The three words one
assumes you will recognise the words and many locations use postcodes
already these aren't much different.

How would we make use of it?

Thanks John

On 11 July 2016 at 11:23, Blake Girardot  wrote:

> On a slightly more serious note:
>
> There are other solutions to the issue of lack of addresses in large
> parts of the world.
>
> Google has put forth a solution that tries to address most of the w3w
> issues. It is open source, works off line, non-propriety, usable for
> printed maps among other issues they try and solve, called Open
> Location Codes aka "Plus Codes"
>
> http://openlocationcode.com/
>
>
> https://maps.googleblog.com/2015/08/plus-codes-new-way-to-help-pinpoint.html
>
> https://plus.codes/
>
> It is still a work in progress for them but they are seriously seeking
> feedback from the OSM and humanitarian communities. I have no opinion
> on it because it is a bit beyond my full understanding at the moment,
> but as I said, thoughtful feedback on it would help I think.
>
> Regards,
> Blake
>
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 4:37 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer
>  wrote:
> >
> >
> > sent from a phone
> >
> >> Il giorno 11 lug 2016, alle ore 16:29, Steve Doerr <
> doerr.step...@gmail.com> ha scritto:
> >>
> >> Just came across this story:
> http://qz.com/705273/mongolia-is-changing-all-its-addresses-to-three-word-phrases/
> >
> >
> > maybe you're also interested in this Twitter account:
> https://mobile.twitter.com/what3rudewords
> >
> >
> > cheers,
> > Martin
> > ___
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Nicolás Alvarez]

2016-07-11 12:30 GMT-03:00 Ian Dees :
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 5:23 PM, Blake Girardot  wrote:
>>
>> On a slightly more serious note:
>>
>> There are other solutions to the issue of lack of addresses in large
>> parts of the world.
>>
>> Google has put forth a solution that tries to address most of the w3w
>> issues. It is open source, works off line, non-propriety, usable for
>> printed maps among other issues they try and solve, called Open
>> Location Codes aka "Plus Codes"
>>
>> http://openlocationcode.com/
>>
>>
>> https://maps.googleblog.com/2015/08/plus-codes-new-way-to-help-pinpoint.html
>>
>> https://plus.codes/
>>
>> It is still a work in progress for them but they are seriously seeking
>> feedback from the OSM and humanitarian communities. I have no opinion
>> on it because it is a bit beyond my full understanding at the moment,
>> but as I said, thoughtful feedback on it would help I think.
>
>
> The mailing lists have talked about what3words before, too:
>
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2015-November/075051.html

Your link is the first post on *this* thread.

-- 
Nicolás

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Ian Dees]

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 5:23 PM, Blake Girardot  wrote:

> On a slightly more serious note:
>
> There are other solutions to the issue of lack of addresses in large
> parts of the world.
>
> Google has put forth a solution that tries to address most of the w3w
> issues. It is open source, works off line, non-propriety, usable for
> printed maps among other issues they try and solve, called Open
> Location Codes aka "Plus Codes"
>
> http://openlocationcode.com/
>
>
> https://maps.googleblog.com/2015/08/plus-codes-new-way-to-help-pinpoint.html
>
> https://plus.codes/
>
> It is still a work in progress for them but they are seriously seeking
> feedback from the OSM and humanitarian communities. I have no opinion
> on it because it is a bit beyond my full understanding at the moment,
> but as I said, thoughtful feedback on it would help I think.


The mailing lists have talked about what3words before, too:

https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk/2015-November/075051.html
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Blake Girardot]

On a slightly more serious note:

There are other solutions to the issue of lack of addresses in large
parts of the world.

Google has put forth a solution that tries to address most of the w3w
issues. It is open source, works off line, non-propriety, usable for
printed maps among other issues they try and solve, called Open
Location Codes aka "Plus Codes"

http://openlocationcode.com/

https://maps.googleblog.com/2015/08/plus-codes-new-way-to-help-pinpoint.html

https://plus.codes/

It is still a work in progress for them but they are seriously seeking
feedback from the OSM and humanitarian communities. I have no opinion
on it because it is a bit beyond my full understanding at the moment,
but as I said, thoughtful feedback on it would help I think.

Regards,
Blake

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 4:37 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer
 wrote:
>
>
> sent from a phone
>
>> Il giorno 11 lug 2016, alle ore 16:29, Steve Doerr  
>> ha scritto:
>>
>> Just came across this story: 
>> http://qz.com/705273/mongolia-is-changing-all-its-addresses-to-three-word-phrases/
>
>
> maybe you're also interested in this Twitter account: 
> https://mobile.twitter.com/what3rudewords
>
>
> cheers,
> Martin
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> Il giorno 11 lug 2016, alle ore 16:44, Iván Sánchez Ortega 
>  ha scritto:
> 
> Ahem.
> 
> www.what3fucks.com


WTF, that's brillant 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Iván Sánchez Ortega]

El Lunes 11. julio 2016 16.37.03 Martin Koppenhoefer escribió:
> Steve Doerr  ha scritto:
> > Just came across this story:
> > http://qz.com/705273/mongolia-is-changing-all-its-addresses-to-three-word
> > -phrases/

> maybe you're also interested in this Twitter account:
> https://mobile.twitter.com/what3rudewords

Ahem.

www.what3fucks.com


-- 
Iván Sánchez Ortega   


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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

sent from a phone

> Il giorno 11 lug 2016, alle ore 16:29, Steve Doerr  
> ha scritto:
> 
> Just came across this story: 
> http://qz.com/705273/mongolia-is-changing-all-its-addresses-to-three-word-phrases/


maybe you're also interested in this Twitter account: 
https://mobile.twitter.com/what3rudewords


cheers,
Martin 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Steve Doerr]

Just came across this story: 
http://qz.com/705273/mongolia-is-changing-all-its-addresses-to-three-word-phrases/


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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

   don't know why you warm up this thread after half a year but:

On 05/10/2016 07:57 AM, Bryce Nesbitt wrote:
> As for the "not open" or "can't depend on it", the company does have a
> FAQ topic that's on point:

It's not really on point because it only commits them to "maintain the
what3words technology" - it still leaves it totally open for them to
restrict access, for example to paying customers or people willing to
watch an ad or people from a particular IP range or so.

Bye
Frederik

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Bryce Nesbitt]

> On 11/22/2015 2:39 AM, Colin Smale wrote:
>
>>
>> I have heard a few times recently about what3words, a new novel
>> coordinate/addressing system for the whole world.
>> Could/should we be doing anything to support/facilitate/implement this
>> system in OSM?
>
>
I don't think it belongs in any way in tags,
but  it could be nifty in nominatum.  It is just another data source.


As for the "not open" or "can't depend on it", the company does have a FAQ
topic that's on point:


*If we, what3words ltd, are ever unable to maintain the what3words
> technology or make arrangements for it to be *

*maintained by a third-party (with that third-party being willing to make
> this same commitment), then we will release*

*our source code into the public domain. We will do this in such a way and
> with suitable licences and documentation*

*to ensure that any and all users of what3words, whether they are
> individuals, businesses, charitable organisations,*

*aid agencies, governments or anyone else can continue to rely on the
> what3words system.*
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Lester Caine]

On 30/11/15 14:28, Ian Dees wrote:
> so could we maybe let this thread die?

The Abu Dhabi perhaps shows a better understanding of the problems of
managing addresses than the w3w project? But I've not looked to see if
OSM is picking up on that initiative yet. Certainly since it is in
effect a local postcode system it would be more appropriate to be using
with OSM data ... especially since it is adding the missing names to
many of the new roads in the area as well as giving a smartcode tag
which can be converted to a rough geo location.

It's not clear from the citymetric article if the smartcode goes down to
individual postal addresses, or just the building?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Lester Caine]

On 22/11/15 14:32, Colin Smale wrote:
> By the way, just to be absolutely clear, I am not thinking of w3w as a 
> coordinate system in OSM, but as an addressing attribute similar to postcodes.

On one hand, one plugs in the three word location to their app and get a
coordinate which takes you approximately to where you want to be. One
needs the map to find the location in the first place, so if nothing is
mapped one needs a precise coordinate ... so one logs the coordinate as
well? I get the idea of 'what3words' but not while it has a page for
pricing! It is something that should be a free world standard and there
is nothing stopping the likes of HOT providing an alternative? But when
one adds proper support for 6500+ languages building something
inherently based on English is perhaps not the best starting point? All
the uses I am seeing for it ALSO have the coordinates so it seems
somewhat contrived trying to make it commercial in the first place?

The second you NEED an app to convert from one 'system' to another is
there really any need to have some human readable name? Can I go to
amuses.sizing.stream without an app, when I can go to
uk.worcs.broadway.xxx by following signs?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

I think their big attraction is the 75% (their figure) of the world that
doesn't have a functional address system. The added value in the UK is
indeed zero. In some tribal village in Africa for example where an
address might not get any better than "3rd mud hut on the left after the
group of 3 trees" the idea of giving all the dwellings a simple address
might open the world of e-commerce up to them. They will have an address
to use, and Amazon's drones will be able to find them. Maybe not today,
maybe not even tomorrow, but soon. 

On 2015-11-30 12:40, Lester Caine wrote: 

> On 22/11/15 14:32, Colin Smale wrote: 
> 
>> By the way, just to be absolutely clear, I am not thinking of w3w as a 
>> coordinate system in OSM, but as an addressing attribute similar to 
>> postcodes.
> 
> On one hand, one plugs in the three word location to their app and get a
> coordinate which takes you approximately to where you want to be. One
> needs the map to find the location in the first place, so if nothing is
> mapped one needs a precise coordinate ... so one logs the coordinate as
> well? I get the idea of 'what3words' but not while it has a page for
> pricing! It is something that should be a free world standard and there
> is nothing stopping the likes of HOT providing an alternative? But when
> one adds proper support for 6500+ languages building something
> inherently based on English is perhaps not the best starting point? All
> the uses I am seeing for it ALSO have the coordinates so it seems
> somewhat contrived trying to make it commercial in the first place?
> 
> The second you NEED an app to convert from one 'system' to another is
> there really any need to have some human readable name? Can I go to
> amuses.sizing.stream without an app, when I can go to
> uk.worcs.broadway.xxx by following signs?
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Marc Gemis]

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:50 PM, Colin Smale  wrote:
> In my example the party that needs to do the translation from w3w to lat/lon
> would be Amazon, and they will probably be paying w3w for a licence to do
> that.

Wouldn't it be more likely that Amazon would invent their own system
where customers get a mat with some sensors or build-in GPS tracker
(so I can move and take the mat with me) that can be used by the drone
? Why would they rely on a (broken) third-party solution ?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2015-11-30 12:59 GMT+01:00 Colin Smale :

> In some tribal village in Africa for example where an address might not
> get any better than "3rd mud hut on the left after the group of 3 trees"
> the idea of giving all the dwellings a simple address might open the world
> of e-commerce up to them. They will have an address to use, and Amazon's
> drones will be able to find them. Maybe not today, maybe not even tomorrow,
> but soon.



I believe the main reason Amazon is not serving them right now is not
because they don't have working addressing roled out. Missing an addressing
system is just a symptom of many other deficits that prevent e-businesses
from making big dollars in tribal villages in Africa. It's not even a pure
distribution problem (within the poors countries), there simply isn't much
to distribute in most of them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita#/media/File:Countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_Per_Capita_in_2014.svg

Cheers,
Martin
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[steggink]

Citeren Colin Smale :


Correct, but the accuracy issue is a weakness in lat/lon based
coordinates as well. If you use your consumer GPS or phone to find your
lat/lon, you might indeed be a long way adrift and you might get
different values on different occasions. Imagine that you were relying
on that to get your shopping delivered...



It isn't the same issue. There isn't a weakness in the lat/lon system  
itself (unless you're not using enough digits), but the weakness is in  
consumer GPS devices as you say. When using w3w in combination with  
GPS, you have to convert it to lat/lon first, so you have to deal with  
both the 3x3m inaccuracy AND the inaccuracy of consumer GPS devices.


Frank


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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Lester Caine]

On 30/11/15 11:59, Colin Smale wrote:
> I think their big attraction is the 75% (their figure) of the world that
> doesn't have a functional address system. The added value in the UK is
> indeed zero. In some tribal village in Africa for example where an
> address might not get any better than "3rd mud hut on the left after the
> group of 3 trees" the idea of giving all the dwellings a simple address
> might open the world of e-commerce up to them. They will have an address
> to use, and Amazon's drones will be able to find them. Maybe not today,
> maybe not even tomorrow, but soon.

But 'What3words' can't actually locate them ... you HAVE to convert it
to the GPS coordinates. Third hut on the left at least works without
needing a mobile phone :) Doing the reverse process you need an accurate
GPS system to establish the coordinates before you can convert that TO a
w3w title. If the mapping system is only accurate to 10mts your android
drone has a selection of targets. I've just looked up my own address in
the UK and depending on which map overlay I select I got four different
answers, some the next door addresses.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Lester Caine]

On 30/11/15 12:50, Colin Smale wrote:
> Correct, but the accuracy issue is a weakness in lat/lon based
> coordinates as well. If you use your consumer GPS or phone to find your
> lat/lon, you might indeed be a long way adrift and you might get
> different values on different occasions. Imagine that you were relying
> on that to get your shopping delivered...
Which is why you need something on the premises you are trying to access
even if that is only 'the pink door'

> In my example the party that needs to do the translation from w3w to
> lat/lon would be Amazon, and they will probably be paying w3w for a
> licence to do that.
But if two adjacent doors both have amazon landing mats there is still
no guarantee that the w3w tag is correct for one or other of those mats.
But I expect at some point some sort of bar code cross check would
evolve and the correct mat can be identified. As has already been
pointed out on the discussions on these droids, it only works when there
is a single story dwelling. Add 100 flats with one front door on a busy
street ... but personally I think there will be more losses due to
droids being intercepted in flight? :)

> On 2015-11-30 13:30, Lester Caine wrote:
> 
>> On 30/11/15 11:59, Colin Smale wrote:
>>> I think their big attraction is the 75% (their figure) of the world that
>>> doesn't have a functional address system. The added value in the UK is
>>> indeed zero. In some tribal village in Africa for example where an
>>> address might not get any better than "3rd mud hut on the left after the
>>> group of 3 trees" the idea of giving all the dwellings a simple address
>>> might open the world of e-commerce up to them. They will have an address
>>> to use, and Amazon's drones will be able to find them. Maybe not today,
>>> maybe not even tomorrow, but soon.
>>
>> But 'What3words' can't actually locate them ... you HAVE to convert it
>> to the GPS coordinates. Third hut on the left at least works without
>> needing a mobile phone :) Doing the reverse process you need an accurate
>> GPS system to establish the coordinates before you can convert that TO a
>> w3w title. If the mapping system is only accurate to 10mts your android
>> drone has a selection of targets. I've just looked up my own address in
>> the UK and depending on which map overlay I select I got four different
>> answers, some the next door addresses.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

Correct, but the accuracy issue is a weakness in lat/lon based
coordinates as well. If you use your consumer GPS or phone to find your
lat/lon, you might indeed be a long way adrift and you might get
different values on different occasions. Imagine that you were relying
on that to get your shopping delivered... 

In my example the party that needs to do the translation from w3w to
lat/lon would be Amazon, and they will probably be paying w3w for a
licence to do that. 

On 2015-11-30 13:30, Lester Caine wrote: 

> On 30/11/15 11:59, Colin Smale wrote: 
> 
>> I think their big attraction is the 75% (their figure) of the world that
>> doesn't have a functional address system. The added value in the UK is
>> indeed zero. In some tribal village in Africa for example where an
>> address might not get any better than "3rd mud hut on the left after the
>> group of 3 trees" the idea of giving all the dwellings a simple address
>> might open the world of e-commerce up to them. They will have an address
>> to use, and Amazon's drones will be able to find them. Maybe not today,
>> maybe not even tomorrow, but soon.
> 
> But 'What3words' can't actually locate them ... you HAVE to convert it
> to the GPS coordinates. Third hut on the left at least works without
> needing a mobile phone :) Doing the reverse process you need an accurate
> GPS system to establish the coordinates before you can convert that TO a
> w3w title. If the mapping system is only accurate to 10mts your android
> drone has a selection of targets. I've just looked up my own address in
> the UK and depending on which map overlay I select I got four different
> answers, some the next door addresses.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Lester Caine]

On 30/11/15 13:43, Marc Gemis wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:50 PM, Colin Smale  wrote:
>> > In my example the party that needs to do the translation from w3w to 
>> > lat/lon
>> > would be Amazon, and they will probably be paying w3w for a licence to do
>> > that.
> Wouldn't it be more likely that Amazon would invent their own system
> where customers get a mat with some sensors or build-in GPS tracker
> (so I can move and take the mat with me) that can be used by the drone
> ? Why would they rely on a (broken) third-party solution ?

And of cause why rely on some optical barcode marking when a wireless
based tag would be better. May need to change the battery every few
years, but it only need to be in receive mode until a drone is in range
... with a button to 'sync' location with base ...

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

The issue is as you say not an intrinsic problem with lat/lon but in the
devices used to measure it. The 3x3m grid should however be sufficient
for the purposes for which it is intended. It is not a designed as a
competitor to lat/lon. 

In the hypothetical tribal village in Africa, all it needs is a single
visit from a surveyor with cm-grade GPS kit to tell everyone their
coordinates. That's one end of the problem; the other end is that the
users of these coordinates will also need accurate coordinates, but this
time in real time (assuming they are searching for the right house, to
deliver something for example). 

By the way, for all the detractors of such a system, check out what the
UAE introduced recently - a fairly affluent country with a poor
addressing system. The difference is they use 10 digits which are
algorithmically linked to grid coordinates, instead of three words. 

http://www.citymetric.com/horizons/buildings-dubai-and-abu-dhabi-didnt-have-official-addresses-thats-finally-changing-838


On 2015-11-30 14:41, stegg...@steggink.org wrote: 

> Citeren Colin Smale :
> 
>> Correct, but the accuracy issue is a weakness in lat/lon based
>> coordinates as well. If you use your consumer GPS or phone to find your
>> lat/lon, you might indeed be a long way adrift and you might get
>> different values on different occasions. Imagine that you were relying
>> on that to get your shopping delivered...
> 
> It isn't the same issue. There isn't a weakness in the lat/lon system  itself 
> (unless you're not using enough digits), but the weakness is in  consumer GPS 
> devices as you say. When using w3w in combination with  GPS, you have to 
> convert it to lat/lon first, so you have to deal with  both the 3x3m 
> inaccuracy AND the inaccuracy of consumer GPS devices.
> 
> Frank
> 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Ian Dees]

Hi everyone,

I think we've long-since strayed from the topic of conversation into
critique of what3words. That's not really the topic of this conversation
let alone the topic of this list, so could we maybe let this thread die?

-Ian

On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 9:19 AM, Lester Caine  wrote:

> On 30/11/15 13:43, Marc Gemis wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 30, 2015 at 1:50 PM, Colin Smale 
> wrote:
> >> > In my example the party that needs to do the translation from w3w to
> lat/lon
> >> > would be Amazon, and they will probably be paying w3w for a licence
> to do
> >> > that.
> > Wouldn't it be more likely that Amazon would invent their own system
> > where customers get a mat with some sensors or build-in GPS tracker
> > (so I can move and take the mat with me) that can be used by the drone
> > ? Why would they rely on a (broken) third-party solution ?
>
> And of cause why rely on some optical barcode marking when a wireless
> based tag would be better. May need to change the battery every few
> years, but it only need to be in receive mode until a drone is in range
> ... with a button to 'sync' location with base ...
>
> --
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[John Eldredge]

Also agreed. The existing latitude/longitude system has the advantage of 
being an international standard, supported by hundreds of different maps 
and mapping devices, not to mention the GPS satellite system.


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drive out hate; only love can do that." -- Martin Luther King, Jr.




On November 22, 2015 8:53:12 AM Colin Smale  wrote:




On 2015-11-22 15:47, Dave F. wrote:


On 22/11/2015 14:32, Colin Smale wrote:


I just said "w3w exists, what could/should we do?"


The consensus appears to be "Nothing"


Agreed.

--colin


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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Paul Johnson]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 10:25 AM, Tom Taylor 
wrote:

> Isn't it simply the equivalent of TinyURL for coordinates?
>

Not quite.  TinyURL's point is to fit around limitations with some means of
electronic communication in terms of handling certain characters or
arbitrary character limits.   w3w is trying to be a mnemonic device.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Tom Taylor]

Isn't it simply the equivalent of TinyURL for coordinates?

Tom Taylor
TomT5454

On 24/11/2015 9:00 AM, Andres Ortiz Haro wrote:

When I first knew about w3w I thought it was some kind of a "solution in search of a 
problem", searching for other views on the matter I actually found a great blog post 
[1] with an explanation and a funny example as to why they don't help much, if you don't 
have time for a long read you can still skip to the last part where a fictional scenario 
using w3w is presented (that's the funny part).


[1] http://blog.telemapics.com/?p=589


Regards,

Andrés


From: Paul Johnson <ba...@ursamundi.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2015 4:22 AM
To: Martin Koppenhoefer
Cc: openstreetmap
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] What3words



On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 3:10 AM, Martin Koppenhoefer 
<dieterdre...@gmail.com<mailto:dieterdre...@gmail.com>> wrote:

2015-11-24 8:54 GMT+01:00 Colin Smale 
<colin.sm...@xs4all.nl<mailto:colin.sm...@xs4all.nl>>:
I think their idea is that you can quote a location with the words which for 
humans is much easier to memorize and less prone to mishearing over dodgy phone 
and radio links than lat/lon or some other scientific grid reference.


yes, but it has a lot of other disadvantages, e.g. the fact that you can't know 
anything about the location without their API: you can't see from the 3 words 
where approximately a place is, and therefore you also can't see which 
3-word-combinations are close to each other and which are far. Traditional 
addressing works much better for these situations where you already know 
something of the city, e.g. you can bet that Downing Street 11 is not too far 
away from Downing Street 10. Imagine a postman having to deliver a bag of 
letters with only 3-word addresses on them. He'd very likely need some kind of 
device and look up all of them rather than knowing them by heart.

Or in the case of the traveling salesman/field service engineer scenario, I 
couldn't tell you where head.butt.teakettle is but give me a street address 
within about 50-70 miles of Tulsa or Oklahoma City's address origins and I can 
get you to within about a mile of that location and know which side of the road 
to be looking on straight off the top of my head, even if I've never been there 
before.  And if it's an unnamed county road or a section line I happen to know 
the name of, I don't even need a map.




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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Paul Johnson]

On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 12:08 PM, Peter Gervai 
wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 2:01 PM, ajt1...@gmail.com 
> wrote:
> > On 22/11/2015 12:51, Colin Smale wrote:
>
> > ...and once again, as seems to be the norm in OSM, any minority interest
> > which is not supported by the oligarchy gets mercilessly shot down.
>
> > ... except it's not _just_ the "oligarchy", is it?  No-one on this list
> > seems to have a good word for the original idea.
>
> And even many of the the lurkers don't. Central repository is bad for
> longevity.
>

Even if we completely ignore the licensing issues, there is a profit motive
behind w3w.  They gotta sell something.  And I'd be shocked if it's not
vanity words.  So, say I start telling friends about this awesome sushi
place at food.bear.utopia, but a competing eating establishment buys the
naming rights and has it changed to sushi.sucks.ass.  Now you're not going
to find your salmon sashimi at food.bear.utopia because that's not a valid
combination anymore.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Paul Johnson]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 11:29 PM, Jake Wasserman 
wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 11:28 PM, Max  wrote:
>
>> Additionally it is a mind booggling case of anglocentrism and neo
>> colonialism to put english words all over parts of the world where
>> people have different scripts and have no idea what those words mean and
>> how they are pronounced. how is this better then a local addressing
>> scheme or a geocoordinate if you have to remember the latin letters of
>> the three 'words' because you don't know their meaning?
>>
>>
> From their website: http://what3words.com/about/
> "We have rolled out our 3 word address system in 9 languages: English,
> French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, Russian, German, Turkish & Swedish.
> We are adding to those every month and are currently working on Italian,
> Greek, Arabic and more."
>

So, it's less "what3words" and more like "what27words".  Starts making
datum issues look easy by contrast...
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2015-11-24 8:54 GMT+01:00 Colin Smale :

> I think their idea is that you can quote a location with the words which
> for humans is much easier to memorize and less prone to mishearing over
> dodgy phone and radio links than lat/lon or some other scientific grid
> reference.



yes, but it has a lot of other disadvantages, e.g. the fact that you can't
know anything about the location without their API: you can't see from the
3 words where approximately a place is, and therefore you also can't see
which 3-word-combinations are close to each other and which are far.
Traditional addressing works much better for these situations where you
already know something of the city, e.g. you can bet that Downing Street 11
is not too far away from Downing Street 10. Imagine a postman having to
deliver a bag of letters with only 3-word addresses on them. He'd very
likely need some kind of device and look up all of them rather than knowing
them by heart.

Cheers,
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Tom Hughes]

On 24/11/15 08:00, Paul Johnson wrote:


Even if we completely ignore the licensing issues, there is a profit
motive behind w3w.  They gotta sell something.  And I'd be shocked if
it's not vanity words.  So, say I start telling friends about this
awesome sushi place at food.bear.utopia, but a competing eating
establishment buys the naming rights and has it changed to
sushi.sucks.ass.  Now you're not going to find your salmon sashimi at
food.bear.utopia because that's not a valid combination anymore.


It's no secret that they do that - it's called a "OneWord".

I'll grant you I can't easily see it on their web site right now but 
they certainly were selling single word locators for a premium.


See eg http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/08/what3words/.

Tom

--
Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu)
http://compton.nu/

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Paul Johnson]

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 3:10 AM, Martin Koppenhoefer  wrote:

>
> 2015-11-24 8:54 GMT+01:00 Colin Smale :
>
>> I think their idea is that you can quote a location with the words which
>> for humans is much easier to memorize and less prone to mishearing over
>> dodgy phone and radio links than lat/lon or some other scientific grid
>> reference.
>
>
>
> yes, but it has a lot of other disadvantages, e.g. the fact that you can't
> know anything about the location without their API: you can't see from the
> 3 words where approximately a place is, and therefore you also can't see
> which 3-word-combinations are close to each other and which are far.
> Traditional addressing works much better for these situations where you
> already know something of the city, e.g. you can bet that Downing Street 11
> is not too far away from Downing Street 10. Imagine a postman having to
> deliver a bag of letters with only 3-word addresses on them. He'd very
> likely need some kind of device and look up all of them rather than knowing
> them by heart.
>

Or in the case of the traveling salesman/field service engineer scenario, I
couldn't tell you where head.butt.teakettle is but give me a street address
within about 50-70 miles of Tulsa or Oklahoma City's address origins and I
can get you to within about a mile of that location and know which side of
the road to be looking on straight off the top of my head, even if I've
never been there before.  And if it's an unnamed county road or a section
line I happen to know the name of, I don't even need a map.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Max]

On 2015년 11월 24일 14:29, Jake Wasserman wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 11:28 PM, Max  > wrote:
> 
> Additionally it is a mind booggling case of anglocentrism and neo
> colonialism to put english words all over parts of the world where
> people have different scripts and have no idea what those words mean and
> how they are pronounced. how is this better then a local addressing
> scheme or a geocoordinate if you have to remember the latin letters of
> the three 'words' because you don't know their meaning?
> 
> 
> From their website: http://what3words.com/about/
> "We have rolled out our 3 word address system in 9 languages: English,
> French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, Russian, German, Turkish &
> Swedish. We are adding to those every month and are currently working on
> Italian, Greek, Arabic and more."

thanks, didn't see it. unfortunately that just opens another can of
worms. translation problems. i wanted to go to topf.hut.auto but ended
up at pan.hut.car instead of pot.hat.car.


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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

They stopped selling OneWords. 

https://twitter.com/what3words/status/594070034625986561 

On 2015-11-24 11:03, Tom Hughes wrote: 

> On 24/11/15 08:00, Paul Johnson wrote:
> 
>> Even if we completely ignore the licensing issues, there is a profit
>> motive behind w3w.  They gotta sell something.  And I'd be shocked if
>> it's not vanity words.  So, say I start telling friends about this
>> awesome sushi place at food.bear.utopia, but a competing eating
>> establishment buys the naming rights and has it changed to
>> sushi.sucks.ass.  Now you're not going to find your salmon sashimi at
>> food.bear.utopia because that's not a valid combination anymore.
> 
> It's no secret that they do that - it's called a "OneWord".
> 
> I'll grant you I can't easily see it on their web site right now but they 
> certainly were selling single word locators for a premium.
> 
> See eg http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/08/what3words/.
> 
> Tom
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2015-11-24 10:26 GMT+01:00 Max :

> thanks, didn't see it. unfortunately that just opens another can of
> worms. translation problems. i wanted to go to topf.hut.auto but ended
> up at pan.hut.car instead of pot.hat.car.
>



for obvious reasons, these are very likely distinct systems per language,
not translations. I.e. every 3x3m location has its own independent, human
readable, cryptic address in each of the languages.

FWIW, I don't think we have to find the hair in the soup, as we have
already stated in overwhelming majority that the soup is bitter and we
won't eat it anyway.

Cheers,
Martin
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Andres Ortiz Haro]

When I first knew about w3w I thought it was some kind of a "solution in search 
of a problem", searching for other views on the matter I actually found a great 
blog post [1] with an explanation and a funny example as to why they don't help 
much, if you don't have time for a long read you can still skip to the last 
part where a fictional scenario using w3w is presented (that's the funny part).


[1] http://blog.telemapics.com/?p=589


Regards,

Andrés


From: Paul Johnson <ba...@ursamundi.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2015 4:22 AM
To: Martin Koppenhoefer
Cc: openstreetmap
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] What3words



On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 3:10 AM, Martin Koppenhoefer 
<dieterdre...@gmail.com<mailto:dieterdre...@gmail.com>> wrote:

2015-11-24 8:54 GMT+01:00 Colin Smale 
<colin.sm...@xs4all.nl<mailto:colin.sm...@xs4all.nl>>:
I think their idea is that you can quote a location with the words which for 
humans is much easier to memorize and less prone to mishearing over dodgy phone 
and radio links than lat/lon or some other scientific grid reference.


yes, but it has a lot of other disadvantages, e.g. the fact that you can't know 
anything about the location without their API: you can't see from the 3 words 
where approximately a place is, and therefore you also can't see which 
3-word-combinations are close to each other and which are far. Traditional 
addressing works much better for these situations where you already know 
something of the city, e.g. you can bet that Downing Street 11 is not too far 
away from Downing Street 10. Imagine a postman having to deliver a bag of 
letters with only 3-word addresses on them. He'd very likely need some kind of 
device and look up all of them rather than knowing them by heart.

Or in the case of the traveling salesman/field service engineer scenario, I 
couldn't tell you where head.butt.teakettle is but give me a street address 
within about 50-70 miles of Tulsa or Oklahoma City's address origins and I can 
get you to within about a mile of that location and know which side of the road 
to be looking on straight off the top of my head, even if I've never been there 
before.  And if it's an unnamed county road or a section line I happen to know 
the name of, I don't even need a map.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2015-11-23 11:27 GMT+01:00 Colin Smale :

> They tend to emphasise the opposite: one building with a single address,
> but multiple entrances; they can each have an individual w3w.



thing is, in Italy they give each door/gate to the street a _house_number,
and doors can be very close (literally next to each other), in many cases,
e.g. a shop and the entrance of a condominium will have distinct
housenumbers, even a shop with 3 doors to the street will have 3
housenumbers.

Example here (but it's actually nearly everywhere like this, at least in
the big cities):
http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/41.88657/12.53837
that's what it looks like on a photo:
https://www.google.it/maps/search/via+gabriele+fondulo,+roma/@41.886674,12.5372237,3a,24.3y,18.48h,81.65t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s2Nr-tHgPwDYLYkwnvpa8Xw!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo3.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3D2Nr-tHgPwDYLYkwnvpa8Xw%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D26.731657%26pitch%3D0!7i13312!8i6656
(the glass door is the main entrance to the appartements, the green
shutters hide 2 doors to the same (at the time of the photo supposedly
vacant) shop, each with its own housenumber.

cheers,
Martin
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

True, they admit the 3D aspect cannot be handled at the moment. They
tend to emphasise the opposite: one building with a single address, but
multiple entrances; they can each have an individual w3w. 

On 2015-11-23 10:43, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: 

> 2015-11-22 15:32 GMT+01:00 Colin Smale :
> 
>> You argument about being able to derive the w3w from the geometry is valid, 
>> but requires the use of the proprietary API. But as you mention their 
>> resolution is 3m, and I have seen discussions where people point out that 
>> their house falls into multiple squares so there is not a single translation 
>> from a building to w3w. ...
> 
>> By the way, just to be absolutely clear, I am not thinking of w3w as a 
>> coordinate system in OSM, but as an addressing attribute similar to 
>> postcodes.
> 
> it clearly is a coordinate system and not an addressing system. Addresses 
> adopt to the requirements, this system doesn't. Addresses are unique (at 
> least in the areas I know), this system can't guarantee it. If there are 2 
> doors side to side falling into the same grid square 3x3, they will get the 
> same "address" (coordinates) in w3w, despite having actually distinct 
> addresses (this is how addressing works in Italy, one address for every 
> entrace). 
> 
> cheers, 
> Martin
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Martin Koppenhoefer]

2015-11-22 15:32 GMT+01:00 Colin Smale :

> You argument about being able to derive the w3w from the geometry is
> valid, but requires the use of the proprietary API. But as you mention
> their resolution is 3m, and I have seen discussions where people point out
> that their house falls into multiple squares so there is not a single
> translation from a building to w3w. ...
>
By the way, just to be absolutely clear, I am not thinking of w3w as a
> coordinate system in OSM, but as an addressing attribute similar to
> postcodes.
>


it clearly is a coordinate system and not an addressing system. Addresses
adopt to the requirements, this system doesn't. Addresses are unique (at
least in the areas I know), this system can't guarantee it. If there are 2
doors side to side falling into the same grid square 3x3, they will get the
same "address" (coordinates) in w3w, despite having actually distinct
addresses (this is how addressing works in Italy, one address for every
entrace).


cheers,
Martin
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Max]

Additionally it is a mind booggling case of anglocentrism and neo
colonialism to put english words all over parts of the world where
people have different scripts and have no idea what those words mean and
how they are pronounced. how is this better then a local addressing
scheme or a geocoordinate if you have to remember the latin letters of
the three 'words' because you don't know their meaning?

max

On 2015년 11월 22일 20:16, Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On 11/22/2015 11:39 AM, Colin Smale wrote:
>> I have heard a few times recently about what3words, a new novel
>> coordinate/addressing system for the whole world.
> 
> It's a blatant attempt at commercializing location. Under the (rather
> tasteless) guise of finally being able to bring Christmas presents to
> the slums of this world, they try to get everyone to use their API. In
> truth they're just planning to make money through selling vanity
> locations. If businesses pay millions for top level domains, goes the
> thinking, then they will also pay millions to be found under
> "great.shoes". By adding their API to your web site, you're pimping out
> your search form for them to harvest money from it.
> 
> Ask yourself whether the venture capitalists would really fork out tons
> of money for someone who wants to bring addressing to the poor.
> 
> Bye
> Frederik
> 


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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Jake Wasserman]

On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 11:28 PM, Max  wrote:

> Additionally it is a mind booggling case of anglocentrism and neo
> colonialism to put english words all over parts of the world where
> people have different scripts and have no idea what those words mean and
> how they are pronounced. how is this better then a local addressing
> scheme or a geocoordinate if you have to remember the latin letters of
> the three 'words' because you don't know their meaning?
>
>
>From their website: http://what3words.com/about/
"We have rolled out our 3 word address system in 9 languages: English,
French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, Russian, German, Turkish & Swedish.
We are adding to those every month and are currently working on Italian,
Greek, Arabic and more."
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

I think their idea is that you can quote a location with the words which for 
humans is much easier to memorize and less prone to mishearing over dodgy phone 
and radio links than lat/lon or some other scientific grid reference.

On 24 November 2015 08:45:18 CET, Paul Johnson  wrote:
>On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 6:00 AM, Stefano  wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> just for reference in May I saw a discussion on okfn-labs on "opening
>up"
>> w3w by doing an open location code system (different from the Google
>one).
>> https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-labs/2015-May/001623.html
>>
>> See also https://github.com/pudo/open3words/issues/1
>>
>
>I hate to be the spoilsport here.  Given that latitude and longitude is
>already a thing that exists, is verifiable, widely used, universal, and
>potentially infinitely precise, yet granular to an entire degree of
>arc,
>and coherent (it's generally possible to visibly estimate proximity
>between
>two pairs of coordinates just by looking at them), it begs the
>question:
>How are these things extant?  o3w and w3w have zero buy-in, have no
>cogent
>pattern, are subject to change without rhyme or reason, and don't
>scale.
>It's like street addressing, but worse...
>
>
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Paul Johnson]

On Sun, Nov 22, 2015 at 6:00 AM, Stefano  wrote:

> Hi,
> just for reference in May I saw a discussion on okfn-labs on "opening up"
> w3w by doing an open location code system (different from the Google one).
> https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-labs/2015-May/001623.html
>
> See also https://github.com/pudo/open3words/issues/1
>

I hate to be the spoilsport here.  Given that latitude and longitude is
already a thing that exists, is verifiable, widely used, universal, and
potentially infinitely precise, yet granular to an entire degree of arc,
and coherent (it's generally possible to visibly estimate proximity between
two pairs of coordinates just by looking at them), it begs the question:
 How are these things extant?  o3w and w3w have zero buy-in, have no cogent
pattern, are subject to change without rhyme or reason, and don't scale.
It's like street addressing, but worse...
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[lester]

Sent from my android device so quoting is crap!

-Original Message-
From: Colin Smale <colin.sm...@xs4all.nl>
To: Daniel Kastl <dan...@georepublic.de>
Cc: talk@openstreetmap.org
Sent: Sun, 22 Nov 2015 12:57
Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

On 2015-11-22 13:49, Daniel Kastl wrote:


The difference in their proprietary system (if you want to call
address systems in in countries closed and proprietary) is, that when
their API (and "algorithm") goes away, you won't find any address
anymore. It's totally unreliable to depend on a proprietary API to
locate an address, and a waste of time to add such data to OSM in my
opinion.

From their website:

If we, what3words ltd, are ever unable to maintain the what3words technology or 
make arrangements for it to be maintained by a third-party (with that 
third-party being willing to make this same commitment), then we will release 
our source code into the public domain. We will do this in such a way and with 
suitable licences and documentation to ensure that any and all users of 
what3words, whether they are individuals, businesses, charitable organisations, 
aid agencies, governments or anyone else can continue to rely on the what3words 
system.

Translation- if we can't make money from this then you are on your own   
There is nothing stopping anybody creating an open source alternative now 
perhaps directly extending the already open source data?
what3words is not a good base to start from o why would we provide them free 
support?

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

Andy, you are right, if you accept that the 3 or 4 people who have
participated in this discussion are representative of OSM at large. But
the most active inhabitants of this list and others are limited to maybe
10 people, who frequently use authoritative-sounding language like "we
are not doing it" and "it has no place in OSM" without the merest hint
of "IMHO". I am not naming any names, and I don't want to get into any
personal arguments, but it is a general frustration I have with the
discussions on these lists. 

There may be many arguments against w3w in OSM, but I was kind of hoping
that some of the attacks would also apply objectively to other entities
which are or are not mapped in OSM. On-the-ground visibility was
mentioned, and that is spurious in the sense that there are many other
things in OSM which are not visible and are yet tolerated. Being
proprietary was mentioned, but it is not really much more proprietary
than the coordinates of UK postcodes used to be, and we were happily
reverse-engineering them and adding them to point addresses and deriving
district boundaries from that data. Through all that effort the
proprietary nature (and the commercial value) of the PAF was to some
extent diluted, and now a lot of this information is publicly available.
Only time will tell if w3w takes off commercially. Right now they have
had $5m of funding and have an impressive list of partners. 

--colin 

On 2015-11-22 14:01, ajt1...@gmail.com wrote: 

> On 22/11/2015 12:51, Colin Smale wrote: 
> 
>> ...and once again, as seems to be the norm in OSM, any minority interest 
>> which is not supported by the oligarchy gets mercilessly shot down.
> 
> ... except it's not _just_ the "oligarchy", is it?  No-one on this list seems 
> to have a good word for the original idea.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Andy (SomeoneElse)
> 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

Hi Daniel, 

I didn't actually say there was any point in putting it in OSM, I just
said "w3w exists, what could/should we do?" 

You argument about being able to derive the w3w from the geometry is
valid, but requires the use of the proprietary API. But as you mention
their resolution is 3m, and I have seen discussions where people point
out that their house falls into multiple squares so there is not a
single translation from a building to w3w. People choose which w3w to
publish as "their location." An adjacent square has a completely
different w3w, so a human can't just visually assess whether it is close
or just plain wrong. An address may have multiple phone numbers, and the
inhabitants choose which one to publish; typically that one gets into
contact:phone=* in OSM. 

IF anyone wants to put their w3w into OSM, I don't think that would be
sufficiently wrong to require the data to be removed, even if the
concept is causing some raised eyebrows at the moment. 

By the way, just to be absolutely clear, I am not thinking of w3w as a
coordinate system in OSM, but as an addressing attribute similar to
postcodes. 

--colin 

On 2015-11-22 14:52, Daniel Kastl wrote: 

> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA256
> 
> Hi Colin,
> 
> Beside the different opinions about proprietary and closed technology,
> what is the point to add these 3 words as a tag? I don't really
> understand the benefit, because the relation between location
> (coordinates) and their address system is fixed. It's just a 3x3m grid.
> 
> In OSM every object has a geometry and you can query the w3w address
> just using their API. So I don't see the point where it makes sense to
> add such an address tag. It's like you add "latlon" as a tag.
> 
> Regards,
> Daniel
> 
> On 22/11/15 22:37, Colin Smale wrote: 
> 
> Andy, you are right, if you accept that the 3 or 4 people who have 
> participated in this discussion are representative of OSM at large.
> But the most active inhabitants of this list and others are limited
> to maybe 10 people, who frequently use authoritative-sounding
> language like "we are not doing it" and "it has no place in OSM"
> without the merest hint of "IMHO". I am not naming any names, and I
> don't want to get into any personal arguments, but it is a general
> frustration I have with the discussions on these lists.
> 
> There may be many arguments against w3w in OSM, but I was kind of
> hoping that some of the attacks would also apply objectively to
> other entities which are or are not mapped in OSM. On-the-ground
> visibility was mentioned, and that is spurious in the sense that
> there are many other things in OSM which are not visible and are
> yet tolerated. Being proprietary was mentioned, but it is not
> really much more proprietary than the coordinates of UK postcodes
> used to be, and we were happily reverse-engineering them and adding
> them to point addresses and deriving district boundaries from that
> data. Through all that effort the proprietary nature (and the
> commercial value) of the PAF was to some extent diluted, and now a
> lot of this information is publicly available. Only time will tell
> if w3w takes off commercially. Right now they have had $5m of
> funding and have an impressive list of partners.
> 
> --colin
> 
> On 2015-11-22 14:01, ajt1...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
> On 22/11/2015 12:51, Colin Smale wrote: 
> 
> ...and once again, as seems to be the norm in OSM, any
> minority interest which is not supported by the oligarchy gets
> mercilessly shot down.
> 
> ... except it's not _just_ the "oligarchy", is it?  No-one on
> this list seems to have a good word for the original idea.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Andy (SomeoneElse)
> 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Daniel Kastl]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256

Hi Colin,

Beside the different opinions about proprietary and closed technology,
what is the point to add these 3 words as a tag? I don't really
understand the benefit, because the relation between location
(coordinates) and their address system is fixed. It's just a 3x3m grid.

In OSM every object has a geometry and you can query the w3w address
just using their API. So I don't see the point where it makes sense to
add such an address tag. It's like you add "latlon" as a tag.

Regards,
Daniel


On 22/11/15 22:37, Colin Smale wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Andy, you are right, if you accept that the 3 or 4 people who have 
> participated in this discussion are representative of OSM at large.
> But the most active inhabitants of this list and others are limited
> to maybe 10 people, who frequently use authoritative-sounding
> language like "we are not doing it" and "it has no place in OSM"
> without the merest hint of "IMHO". I am not naming any names, and I
> don't want to get into any personal arguments, but it is a general
> frustration I have with the discussions on these lists.
> 
> There may be many arguments against w3w in OSM, but I was kind of
> hoping that some of the attacks would also apply objectively to
> other entities which are or are not mapped in OSM. On-the-ground
> visibility was mentioned, and that is spurious in the sense that
> there are many other things in OSM which are not visible and are
> yet tolerated. Being proprietary was mentioned, but it is not
> really much more proprietary than the coordinates of UK postcodes
> used to be, and we were happily reverse-engineering them and adding
> them to point addresses and deriving district boundaries from that
> data. Through all that effort the proprietary nature (and the
> commercial value) of the PAF was to some extent diluted, and now a
> lot of this information is publicly available. Only time will tell
> if w3w takes off commercially. Right now they have had $5m of
> funding and have an impressive list of partners.
> 
> --colin
> 
> On 2015-11-22 14:01, ajt1...@gmail.com wrote:
> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 22/11/2015 12:51, Colin Smale wrote:
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ...and once again, as seems to be the norm in OSM, any
>>> minority interest which is not supported by the oligarchy gets
>>> mercilessly shot down.
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> ... except it's not _just_ the "oligarchy", is it?  No-one on
>> this list seems to have a good word for the original idea.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> 
>> Andy (SomeoneElse)
>> 
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> 
> 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

On 2015-11-22 15:47, Dave F. wrote: 

> On 22/11/2015 14:32, Colin Smale wrote: 
> 
>> I just said "w3w exists, what could/should we do?"
> 
> The consensus appears to be "Nothing"

Agreed.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Maarten Deen]

On 2015-11-22 13:34, Colin Smale wrote:

On 2015-11-22 13:18, Maarten Deen wrote:



I also don't understand this:"It's a non-hierarchical system. The
problem with latitude and longitude coordinates is that if you make
a mistake when writing them down you will be completely lost. But
with our system similar sounding words are located very far apart so
people don't get lost if you hear it wrong."
First, making a mistake in a lat/lon coordinate does not by
definition mean you are completely lost. It is when you make a
mistake in significant digits (add one degree to the latitude and
you're way off) but it isn't when you make a mistake in the
non-significant digits (the difference between 51.3456247 and
51.3456248 is mere centimeters).
Secondly, if you write a similar sounding word wrong, you are
completely off. I mean, they specificaly say "similar sounding words
are located very far apart".
So if someone tells you nice.place.here and you use nice.place.hear,
you are by definition not near your intended location.


As I understand it, they have avoided homophones like your example.
The idea of placing similar-sounding words far apart geographically is
that you would be instantly alerted to an error. If you expect a
location in North London and it translates to Peru, a bell would ring
an you would double-check it. But if you the location you hear
translates to one 1km from what was intended, you might be going round
in circles for hours trying to find it.


So the three-level address system is at least a four-level address 
system. When saying the location is nice.place.here, you should say the 
location is nice.place.here in London (England, not Canada, 5 
level-address system).


That is exactly the same as with coordinates. Give a coordinate and say 
where it is on the ground. That way you eliminate a lot of errors. So 
the "mistake" factor does not apply.
It is only easier to use, but only if you want to address places that do 
not have proper addresses. Because Amsterdam.Kalverstraat.50 for me is 
just as easy to memorize as nice.place.here.


It seems the only useful application for this scheme is in undeveloped 
countries or very rural areas.


Maarten

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Barry Hunter]

On 22 November 2015 at 11:07, Colin Smale  wrote:

>  I guess there would be no objections to someone adding
> addr:w3w:en=nice.place.here ? Or addr:w3w=en:nice.place.here ?
>

Ok, so turning it around, what would be the benefit of this? Why bother?
What purpose does it serve?




The only purpose I see, it then serves as an independent database of w3w's.
Persuming the database is comprehensive enough could perform a lookup via
the OSM database to find the location of a given set of words.

But as then it effectively makes the proprietary 'app' redundant,
 what3words themselves might then take exception to it anyway. And/or might
infringe database right.



As I see it what3words is not really 'andress' system. Its a coordinate
system. Its a way of encoding a location in a series of words. OSM
generally uses decimal Lat/Long as its encoding.

OSM doesnt store every known coordinate in the system. Like
addr:mgrs=4QFJ.1234.6789
or British National Grid. Or Indian Grid. Or UTM Coordinates. etc

There are lots of ways of encoding coordinates. Each with (generally) a
well known conversion from WGS84 lat/long (complicated by the fact there
may be a datum transformation needed)

If end user wants to use a given system, then can use that conversion. They
dont need to exist in the database.
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Tim Waters]

As an infrequent poster to osm-talk I think I'm excluded from Colin's "3 or
4 people" and "most active participants" and am not in the Fetted Inner
Core (at least I wasn't the last time I checked!) - however my views are
similar to the ones previously, in this case, very sorry Colin! :-)

In short, What Three Words does initially appear to be a "wow that's cool"
techy project, but given closer inspection it's not that suitable for an
open data project. It is not open or ground verifiable *at the moment*. Yes
it has got recently millions in funding. I frankly would expect more public
pressure to get it used in OSM than there has been. Perhaps they are
avoiding direct pressure until their board demands it, or perhaps they are
approaching the Foundation obliquely. I do know that they have been doing a
lot of work promoting the service to development and humanitarian
organisations, and they really are good at promoting their product. Very
many good quality proprietary data and software for profit companies make
healthy profits from working in the development and humanitarian
industries. One could think that such good causes should be the preserve of
Libre Software and non profit organizations, but that's a fallacy. Anyhow
I'm digressing, sorry!

So, if my local shops start to use it in the future, if "people on the
ground" use it, then I would say it could be added then - but there's no
benefit to mappers, or people on the ground for adding it before that stage.
At that stage, before people actually use it, it's just another way of
encoding location, and therefore redundant. Futhermore in both cases, the
only way for another mapper to tell if the reference is correct is to use
the third party API.

Given their approach and closedness however, I very much doubt that most
people will start using it. Perhaps they will buy into getting a developing
country to use it nationally, but we will have to see what happens. So, in
the future, if normal folks use it on the ground, it may be useful to add
it, in my humble opinion. Perhaps they will open source their algorithm but
keep their APIs and services closed, again we will have to see. Perhaps *if
and when it is used by people on the ground* we can pressure the company to
open up enough of their solution to make it OSM friendly and for them to
still please their board of investors?

But the main reason I don't see it being used in OSM is that it goes
against the spirit of the project.
This spirit of openness, collaborativeness and Libre software. It's closed,
it doesn't look like it will ever be open and it ties the usage of the
system through a closed API.  It's a closed data project, and OSM is *the*
open data project.

Cheers,

Tim
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Dave F.]

On 22/11/2015 14:32, Colin Smale wrote:


I just said "w3w exists, what could/should we do?"




The consensus appears to be "Nothing"

Dave F.



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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

I guess there would be no objections to someone adding
addr:w3w:en=nice.place.here ? Or addr:w3w=en:nice.place.here ? 

Surely the established addressing systems are also closed and
proprietary, in the sense that some organisation with a sanctioned
monopoly tells YOU what your address is - you cannot just make it up
yourself. Street naming, postal codes etc are definitely in this
category. We have been crowdsourcing postcodes for years without
problems. 

Integration with nominatim for example, which will need to use the w3w
API, is a different subject as this would need licensing. 

On 2015-11-22 11:46, Paul Norman wrote: 

> On 11/22/2015 2:39 AM, Colin Smale wrote: 
> 
>> I have heard a few times recently about what3words, a new novel 
>> coordinate/addressing system for the whole world.
>> 
>> Could/should we be doing anything to support/facilitate/implement this 
>> system in OSM?
> 
> No. Other people might talk about the numerous problems how what3words 
> doesn't do what it claims to accomplish or flaws in the technical 
> implementation, but there's a much simpler reason why it doesn't belong on 
> osm.org: It's a closed proprietary system that others can't reuse.
> 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 11/22/2015 11:39 AM, Colin Smale wrote:
> I have heard a few times recently about what3words, a new novel
> coordinate/addressing system for the whole world.

It's a blatant attempt at commercializing location. Under the (rather
tasteless) guise of finally being able to bring Christmas presents to
the slums of this world, they try to get everyone to use their API. In
truth they're just planning to make money through selling vanity
locations. If businesses pay millions for top level domains, goes the
thinking, then they will also pay millions to be found under
"great.shoes". By adding their API to your web site, you're pimping out
your search form for them to harvest money from it.

Ask yourself whether the venture capitalists would really fork out tons
of money for someone who wants to bring addressing to the poor.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

On 2015-11-22 13:49, Daniel Kastl wrote: 

> The difference in their proprietary system (if you want to call
> address systems in in countries closed and proprietary) is, that when
> their API (and "algorithm") goes away, you won't find any address
> anymore. It's totally unreliable to depend on a proprietary API to
> locate an address, and a waste of time to add such data to OSM in my
> opinion.

>From their website: 

_If we, what3words ltd, are ever unable to maintain the what3words
technology or make arrangements for it to be maintained by a third-party
(with that third-party being willing to make this same commitment), then
we will release our source code into the public domain. We will do this
in such a way and with suitable licences and documentation to ensure
that any and all users of what3words, whether they are individuals,
businesses, charitable organisations, aid agencies, governments or
anyone else can continue to rely on the what3words system._ 

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[ajt1...@gmail.com]

On 22/11/2015 12:51, Colin Smale wrote:



...and once again, as seems to be the norm in OSM, any minority 
interest which is not supported by the oligarchy gets mercilessly shot 
down.




... except it's not _just_ the "oligarchy", is it?  No-one on this list 
seems to have a good word for the original idea.


Cheers,

Andy (SomeoneElse)
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Michael Reichert]

Hi Colin,

Am 2015-11-22 um 11:39 schrieb Colin Smale:
> I have heard a few times recently about what3words, a new novel
> coordinate/addressing system for the whole world. 
> 
> Could/should we be doing anything to support/facilitate/implement this
> system in OSM? 

No. It is a propietary system and there is no place for such stuff at OSM.

Best regards

Michael

-- 
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ausgenommen)
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Steve Doerr]

I've read articles about it a few times, and for fun I sometimes post my 
w3w location on Facebook. But I don't know if it's achieved much traction.


One maps site that I use from time to time, www.streetmap.co.uk, 
includes w3w addresses for searching and on its 'convert co-ordinates' 
screen, e.g. http://www.streetmap.co.uk/idgc.srf?x=530051=179922 (10 
Downing Street).


Maybe our search box could do the same, either directly or through 
integrating into Nominatim. I wouldn't suggest storing w3w addresses in 
the main OSM database though.


Steve


On 22/11/2015 10:39, Colin Smale wrote:


I have heard a few times recently about what3words, a new novel 
coordinate/addressing system for the whole world.


Could/should we be doing anything to support/facilitate/implement this 
system in OSM?


http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/2434706/move-aside-google-maps-the-future-of-navigation-is-just-three-words

--colin



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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Tom Hughes]

On 22/11/15 11:13, Steve Doerr wrote:


Maybe our search box could do the same, either directly or through
integrating into Nominatim. I wouldn't suggest storing w3w addresses in
the main OSM database though.


As I said we have been asked to do this at least twice and we have 
refused on both occasions.


That's partly a question of not wanting to add something that may never 
gain any traction and partly a question of whether we should be 
supporting what is essentially a proprietary project that uses a 
patented algorithm and relies on a proprietary database.


Frankly, the main thing they're good at (apart from spamming me) is 
whoring themselves in the media, which is why they always seem to be far 
more significant than I think they really are.


Tom

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Stefano]

Hi,
just for reference in May I saw a discussion on okfn-labs on "opening up"
w3w by doing an open location code system (different from the Google one).
https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-labs/2015-May/001623.html

See also https://github.com/pudo/open3words/issues/1

Regards,
Stefano

2015-11-22 12:37 GMT+01:00 Simon Poole :

> It is not as if there are not numerous alternative addressing schemes
> see for example this list (which was produced for an open system from,
> gosh, the goog).
>
>
> https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/master/docs/comparison.adoc
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Mateusz Konieczny]

On Sun, 22 Nov 2015 12:07:43 +0100
Colin Smale  wrote:
 
> I guess there would be no objections to someone adding
> addr:w3w:en=nice.place.here ? Or addr:w3w=en:nice.place.here ? 

Only in cases where such "adress" is displayed on the ground.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Stefano]

2015-11-22 13:16 GMT+01:00 Simon Poole :

>
> While developing a similar system to w3w might be an attractive proposal,
> have you checked what the w3w patent covers given that the thoughts in the
> referenced issue would seem to result in at least a very similar system?
>


Actually no, I like how they patented things like "ONEWORD".

Brb gotta retire my demo

Thanks,
Stefano


>
> Am 22.11.2015 um 13:00 schrieb Stefano:
>
> Hi,
> just for reference in May I saw a discussion on okfn-labs on "opening up"
> w3w by doing an open location code system (different from the Google one).
> https://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/okfn-labs/2015-May/001623.html
>
> See also https://github.com/pudo/open3words/issues/1
>
> Regards,
> Stefano
>
> 2015-11-22 12:37 GMT+01:00 Simon Poole :
>
>> It is not as if there are not numerous alternative addressing schemes
>> see for example this list (which was produced for an open system from,
>> gosh, the goog).
>>
>>
>> https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/master/docs/comparison.adoc
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Mateusz Konieczny]

On Sun, 22 Nov 2015 13:16:24 +0100
Colin Smale  wrote:

>  
> 
> On 2015-11-22 13:04, Mateusz Konieczny wrote: 
> 
> > On Sun, 22 Nov 2015 12:07:43 +0100
> > Colin Smale  wrote:
> > 
> >> I guess there would be no objections to someone adding
> >> addr:w3w:en=nice.place.here ? Or addr:w3w=en:nice.place.here ?
> > 
> > Only in cases where such "adress" is displayed on the ground.
> 
> So the same as we do for postcodes then? I honestly don't see the
> difference. The criteria is not visibility, but verifiability. 
>   

Main problem with What3words is that it is a small project with nearly
no usage. Adding it in places where it has no real usage would be
useless, pointless and spammy.

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Daniel Kastl]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA256


> 
> I guess there would be no objections to someone adding 
> addr:w3w:en=nice.place.here ? Or addr:w3w=en:nice.place.here ?
> 
> Surely the established addressing systems are also closed and 
> proprietary, in the sense that some organisation with a sanctioned 
> monopoly tells YOU what your address is - you cannot just make it
> up yourself. Street naming, postal codes etc are definitely in
> this category. We have been crowdsourcing postcodes for years
> without problems.
> 

The difference in their proprietary system (if you want to call
address systems in in countries closed and proprietary) is, that when
their API (and "algorithm") goes away, you won't find any address
anymore. It's totally unreliable to depend on a proprietary API to
locate an address, and a waste of time to add such data to OSM in my
opinion.

Regards,
Daniel




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[OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

I have heard a few times recently about what3words, a new novel
coordinate/addressing system for the whole world. 

Could/should we be doing anything to support/facilitate/implement this
system in OSM? 

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/feature/2434706/move-aside-google-maps-the-future-of-navigation-is-just-three-words


--colin 

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Tom Hughes]

On 22/11/15 11:07, Colin Smale wrote:


I guess there would be no objections to someone adding
addr:w3w:en=nice.place.here ? Or addr:w3w=en:nice.place.here ?


I don't see the point, and it's certainly not ground truthable.


Integration with nominatim for example, which will need to use the w3w
API, is a different subject as this would need licensing.


They would be more than happy though - we have refused them several 
times already.


Tom

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Re: [OSM-talk] What3words

[Colin Smale]

 

On 2015-11-22 13:04, Mateusz Konieczny wrote: 

> On Sun, 22 Nov 2015 12:07:43 +0100
> Colin Smale  wrote:
> 
>> I guess there would be no objections to someone adding
>> addr:w3w:en=nice.place.here ? Or addr:w3w=en:nice.place.here ?
> 
> Only in cases where such "adress" is displayed on the ground.

So the same as we do for postcodes then? I honestly don't see the
difference. The criteria is not visibility, but verifiability. 
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