Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/8 Shaun McDonald sh...@shaunmcdonald.me.uk: There is nothing wrong with mapping each lane even when it is two way, as that is effectively what it is as I doubt you'd be allowed to do a u-turn on most of those examples. There is continuous discussions about this, and generally we agreed that you shouldn't do it in absence of a physical divider. E.g. you could do a U-Turn agains the traffic-rules, or you could be not affected by traffic rules (police, ambulance,...) cheers, Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 08/10/09 01:19, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: oh yes, there are. oneway=no, maxspeed=no, drinkable=no, building=no, area=no, noexit=no (really, it is just used 803 times, but we could add it to millions of ways), access=no, actually many tags do have some no-values in the db, also if it doesn't make much sense in many cases. OK, I should have been more careful in what I said. When I said no-one has genuinely suggested, I mean that no-one has put forward a proposal which has received significant levels of support. But having said that, some of the examples you list above are actually positive pieces of information, not denotations of a positive lack. e.g. maxspeed=no is the same as maxspeed=infinite drinkable=no is the same as undrinkable=yes oneway=no might be useful in the very rare case that mappers for some reason keep marking a road as oneway, but it's actually not! But I'd expect a note= to be more appropriate. Other than that, I agree it and noexit=no seem pointless. Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Gervase Markham wrote: oneway=no might be useful in the very rare case that mappers for some reason keep marking a road as oneway, but it's actually not! But I'd expect a note= to be more appropriate. Other than that, I agree it and noexit=no seem pointless. oneway=no is useful for highway types which would usually imply oneway=yes: highway=motorway, highway=motorway_link and junction=roundabout. The southern A601(M), that bonkers sliproad on the M50, and (depending on interpretation) the Swindon Magic Roundabout are UK examples of each case where two-way traffic is permitted. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/SteveC-should-decide-tp25692544p25801054.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Richard Fairhurst wrote: Gervase Markham wrote: e.g. maxspeed=no is the same as maxspeed=infinite Although technically correct (some autobahns?) it seems positively dangerous to label as such. (no). oneway=no is useful for highway types which would usually imply oneway=yes: highway=motorway, highway=motorway_link and junction=roundabout. The southern A601(M), that bonkers sliproad on the M50, and (depending on interpretation) the Swindon Magic Roundabout are UK examples of each case where two-way traffic is permitted. Richard Do you know where are the Motorway Ends signs are located in you examples? OS define the links as M* classification, but Google shows them as A* B*. http://osm.org/go/evhVzyiB http://osm.org/go/euwqKRNL I interpret the the Magic Roundabout as separate lanes as there are central reservations. Which, I believe, is how you mapped it (?) http://osm.org/go/eumbs5che-- I notice in the relation for the MR, the wiki tag has the title of the relevant page. I've been using the URL. Is there a reason I shouldn't? Cheers Dave F. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Using the URL seems reasonable, since the URL is unique and the page title likely isn't unique. -- John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all. -- Hypatia of Alexandria -Original Message- From: Dave F. dave...@madasafish.com Date: Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:43:40 Cc: talk@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide Richard Fairhurst wrote: Gervase Markham wrote: e.g. maxspeed=no is the same as maxspeed=infinite Although technically correct (some autobahns?) it seems positively dangerous to label as such. (no). oneway=no is useful for highway types which would usually imply oneway=yes: highway=motorway, highway=motorway_link and junction=roundabout. The southern A601(M), that bonkers sliproad on the M50, and (depending on interpretation) the Swindon Magic Roundabout are UK examples of each case where two-way traffic is permitted. Richard Do you know where are the Motorway Ends signs are located in you examples? OS define the links as M* classification, but Google shows them as A* B*. http://osm.org/go/evhVzyiB http://osm.org/go/euwqKRNL I interpret the the Magic Roundabout as separate lanes as there are central reservations. Which, I believe, is how you mapped it (?) http://osm.org/go/eumbs5che-- I notice in the relation for the MR, the wiki tag has the title of the relevant page. I've been using the URL. Is there a reason I shouldn't? Cheers Dave F. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Dave F. wrote: Do you know where are the Motorway Ends signs are located in you examples? OS define the links as M* classification, but Google shows them as A* B*. http://osm.org/go/evhVzyiB http://osm.org/go/euwqKRNL On the M50 (I was originally thinking about j3, which is our regular route from Charlbury to South Wales, but I guess it applies to j1 too) the whole slip-road is definitely under motorway regulation and signed as such. The highway design principle is that if a road leads inexorably to a motorway, it must itself be a motorway - otherwise non-motorway traffic will find itself stuck with nowhere to go. So Google is wrong, surprise surprise. I don't know the A601(M) that well - I've only been there once. But http://www.pathetic.org.uk/current/a601m/ is pretty clear that it's all motorway, too. I interpret the the Magic Roundabout as separate lanes as there are central reservations. Which, I believe, is how you mapped it (?) http://osm.org/go/eumbs5che-- Yep, absolutely. Hemel Hempstead would have been a better example. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/SteveC-should-decide-tp25692544p25802973.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
oneway=no is useful for highway types which would usually imply oneway=yes: highway=motorway, highway=motorway_link and junction=roundabout. The southern A601(M), that bonkers sliproad on the M50, and (depending on interpretation) the Swindon Magic Roundabout are UK examples of each case where two-way traffic is permitted. Richard Do you know where are the Motorway Ends signs are located in you examples? OS define the links as M* classification, but Google shows them as A* B*. http://osm.org/go/evhVzyiB http://osm.org/go/euwqKRNL Google has it incorrect. The southern A601(M) is definitely (M) http://www.pathetic.org.uk/current/a601m/photos/pages/Dsc00054_jpg.shtml Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Richard Fairhurst wrote: http://www.pathetic.org.uk/ What a superb site. What t'internet was invented for. :-) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 8 Oct 2009, at 10:39, Richard Fairhurst wrote: Gervase Markham wrote: oneway=no might be useful in the very rare case that mappers for some reason keep marking a road as oneway, but it's actually not! But I'd expect a note= to be more appropriate. Other than that, I agree it and noexit=no seem pointless. oneway=no is useful for highway types which would usually imply oneway=yes: highway=motorway, highway=motorway_link and junction=roundabout. The southern A601(M), that bonkers sliproad on the M50, and (depending on interpretation) the Swindon Magic Roundabout are UK examples of each case where two-way traffic is permitted. There is nothing wrong with mapping each lane even when it is two way, as that is effectively what it is as I doubt you'd be allowed to do a u-turn on most of those examples. Shaun smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
John Smith wrote: 2009/10/7 Dave F. dave...@madasafish.com: The more uploaded GPX traces/checks of a route the better. Surely? It would be more useful to know what created the traces also, some units are bound to be better than others and knowing this you would be able to weight the tracks rather than treat them all as equal. Not necessarily more useful, but give a general idea of how the data was collected, yes. Unfortunately there's more to the accuracy of a GPX recording than the accuracy of the chip. Such as number of lock on satellites, weather, geography Cheers Dave F.. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/7 Dave F. dave...@madasafish.com: Not necessarily more useful, but give a general idea of how the data was collected, yes. Unfortunately there's more to the accuracy of a GPX recording than the accuracy of the chip. Such as number of lock on satellites, weather, geography The number of sats doesn't matter as much as how far apart they are, I'm not sure if the weather you are thinking of would have as much of an effect as you think it would, unpredicatable changes in the ionosphere is another matter but I doubt you can see these. Number of sunspots, since it's an indication of output from the sun, of late, well last couple of years there has been less and less activity/output from the sun. Also it's not just about the accuracy of a chip, but also the sensitivity, knowing what device would also give you an idea of the antenna as well, so yes knowing what device, not what chip, recorded a track would be useful. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 06/10/09 18:19, John Smith wrote: I have no idea about Europe/England to be honest, never been in any European countries. Oops, sorry for the assumption there. Most roads in Australia tend to be named, even some basic concrete slab colvets that aren't even real bridges get named. OK. The same is not true in many other countries. Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 06/10/09 19:15, DavidD wrote: If you have 10 people in the same area chasing an unnamed road then a noname tag isn't going to solve the actual problem. A road in OSM that has been surveyed by a single person is tagged identically to a road that has a dozen gps tracks and has been checked by several people. True. But at the moment, a road with no name which has been surveyed by no people (e.g. traced from aerial imagery) is tagged the same as one which has been surveyed by one person. I agree there is a certain difference between being surveyed by 1 person and being surveyed by 10 people. But there's a much larger difference between being surveyed by 0 people and surveyed by 1 person. You seem to be advocating using no-name roads as some sort of bait to lure mappers into the area so they'll check other nearby work in passing, while finding out for the 9th time that the road actually does have no name :-) Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
The general pattern in the USA is that roads on public land tend to be named; roads on private land may or may not be named, according to the wishes of the land-owner. Short service roads, such as to connect a public road to a parking lot, or roads within a farm, are particularly unlikely to be named. -- John F. Eldredge -- j...@jfeldredge.com Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all. -- Hypatia of Alexandria -Original Message- From: Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net Date: Wed, 07 Oct 2009 22:34:50 To: talk@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide On 06/10/09 18:19, John Smith wrote: I have no idea about Europe/England to be honest, never been in any European countries. Oops, sorry for the assumption there. Most roads in Australia tend to be named, even some basic concrete slab colvets that aren't even real bridges get named. OK. The same is not true in many other countries. Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/6 Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net: The swimming pool point is a slippery slope argument, but in fact the slope isn't at all slippery. Names are different to swimming pools. AFAIK, no-one has genuinely suggested swimming_pool=no, or in fact any other =no type thing apart from names. oh yes, there are. oneway=no, maxspeed=no, drinkable=no, building=no, area=no, noexit=no (really, it is just used 803 times, but we could add it to millions of ways), access=no, actually many tags do have some no-values in the db, also if it doesn't make much sense in many cases. cheers, Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:17:37 +1000, John Smith wrote: I thought this was anything goes, why are you dictating something can't be done? I'm also puzzled why it can't be done by a comitee elected BY OSM mappers?!? Why not? -- pratite me na twitteru - www.twitter.com/valentt http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/ linux, blog, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org. ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Fri, 02 Oct 2009 20:29:30 -0400, Russ Nelson wrote: That's okay, too. What I want, what I REALLY want, is for SteveC to be able to exercise leadership without being told that he's evil for doing so. Why only him? Let's choose a few people we all trust and let them come to a agreement. -- pratite me na twitteru - www.twitter.com/valentt http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/ linux, blog, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org. ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:33:40 +0100, Jonathan Bennett wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_bureaucracy for what Another Plaice thinks of that idea. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, but you can't start writing nonsense or material that is not encyclopedia type texts. For example you can't start writing manuals there, you will be kicked out right away. -- pratite me na twitteru - www.twitter.com/valentt http://kernelreloaded.blog385.com/ linux, blog, anime, spirituality, windsurf, wireless registered as user #367004 with the Linux Counter, http://counter.li.org. ICQ: 2125241, Skype: valent.turkovic ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, but you can't start writing nonsense or material that is not encyclopedia type texts. For example you can't start writing manuals there, you will be kicked out right away. That's *exactly the same* problem though. Who decides what is encyclopedic or nonsense? Not everyone will agree - hence the existence of Deletionpedia. Tags clearly need namespaces. It's the only way this is going to work, keep everyone happy, and stand a chance of producing some kind of consistent data. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 9:58 PM, Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net wrote: On 05/10/09 11:04, Dave Stubbs wrote: As the person whose first came up with a no-names map for London (well, actually it was a named map of London, turned into a nonames map on SteveC's suggestion), I have an *official leadership announcement* to make: There shall be no tagging of unnamed roads. It is not important. They show up on the no-names map -- big deal -- its a mapping aid not a holy grail of there shall be no highlighted roads. Just deal with it. So why did you make the noname map in the first place, if it's not important? Have you changed your mind about its usefulness? As a mapping aid, to find large chunks of unnamed roads from traced aerial imagery etc. Single roads were never really the intended target, not for me anyway. I originally thought a noname like tag would be useful and should be implemented, but I was convinced otherwise by some very persuasive arguments and now think it's completely not worth doing and not at all important. Dave ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Valent Turkovic writes: On Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:17:37 +1000, John Smith wrote: I thought this was anything goes, why are you dictating something can't be done? I'm also puzzled why it can't be done by a comitee elected BY OSM mappers?!? Why not? It could ... but that committee would need to establish a reputation, and SteveC already has one. It's quite possible, and even likely, that he would delegate the actual decision-making to someone(s) else. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Dave Stubbs writes: I was convinced otherwise by some very persuasive arguments and now think it's completely not worth doing and not at all important. I'm not convinced. Could you share them? -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 2:10 PM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: Dave Stubbs writes: I was convinced otherwise by some very persuasive arguments and now think it's completely not worth doing and not at all important. I'm not convinced. Could you share them? a) what are you actually marking? - no name in OSM -- we know that already - the mapper didn't find a name -- so we shouldn't check again? - the road definitely hasn't got a name -- it definitely hasn't got a swimming pool in the middle of it either, but I'm not putting swimming_pool=no - you don't want validators checking this b) what are you actually trying to achieve? - mappers don't go looking for unnamed streets that definitely have no name -- well, whatever, they can put the post boxes and address data in while they're there. If a street has a post box, addresses, all the shops, amenities and power cables then I'm sure eventually the next mapper will realise what's going on. plus you can add a note tag if you want. - a nice orange free map -- go look at the normal layer then - an error free map -- well, despite what the validator tells you, road without name is not actually an error, just potentially unlikely in western europe at least. c) what does it actually tell you if not present? - the road has a name, but we don't know what it is - we don't know if the road has a name or not - the user who mapped it doesn't care for no names tags - hasn't been mapped d) does it help the original point of the no names map? - no, not really -- the no names map was primarily invented to act as a metric of mappedness for areas that had been thoroughly traced from Yahoo imagery. Blocks of orange still stand out, and as most streets in London are named, that's not distracting from the task. That might not be true everywhere, but I'm guessing it's true most places that no names maps are useful metrics at all. So in summary, the arguments against are that you don't know what you're trying to mark, you don't really have a good reason, and it doesn't tell you very much. YMMV obviously and there are other opinions out there. Dave ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Gervase Markham wrote: So why did you make the noname map in the first place, if it's not important? Have you changed your mind about its usefulness? It's useful *as a guide*, or a tool. What some people seem to be unable to grasp is that *it's OK for a road to appear in red on NoNames*. You don't have to eliminate them completely. It's just a guide, not a gospel. -- Jonathan (Jonobennett) ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 06/10/09 15:18, Dave Stubbs wrote: a) what are you actually marking? - no name in OSM -- we know that already - the mapper didn't find a name -- so we shouldn't check again? Probably not, no. Just as when a mapper adds a postbox, someone else doesn't think he's added a postbox. I should go and check that there's actually a postbox there. I agree that in this case you are noting a negative, not a positive, and that's more unusual. But I think the same principle applies. You trust other mappers to map sanely unless there's evidence to the contrary. - the road definitely hasn't got a name -- it definitely hasn't got a swimming pool in the middle of it either, but I'm not putting swimming_pool=no Right. But most roads have names, and names are useful for navigation. Names being missing when they shouldn't be is therefore bad. The swimming pool point is a slippery slope argument, but in fact the slope isn't at all slippery. Names are different to swimming pools. AFAIK, no-one has genuinely suggested swimming_pool=no, or in fact any other =no type thing apart from names. - mappers don't go looking for unnamed streets that definitely have no name -- well, whatever, they can put the post boxes and address data in while they're there. Except that many people like to map with a method that gets the map to a base level of usefulness (say, all roads present and correctly named) across an area first, and then add details later. c) what does it actually tell you if not present? - the road has a name, but we don't know what it is - we don't know if the road has a name or not - hasn't been mapped (These three are basically the same.) Yes - so go look, and add it, or add the noname tag. - the user who mapped it doesn't care for no names tags That may also be true, but hopefully someone will put one in, and stop lots of mappers visiting it to complete (to a certain level of detail) the map in that area. What I don't get is why people opposed to marking noname roads as noname actually mind. What offends you about tags you don't care about? Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 06/10/09 05:37, John Smith wrote: It sounds like he made it to see which roads needed surveying to acquire their name, however I'm still confused why people use noname=yes when the street does have a name but not a street sign, as I posted before there is actually a few streets near here on the golf course which really aren't named, the buildings a just unit numbers. If you know the street has a name but there's no sign, remove the noname tag and put the name in :-) Anything without a street sign should be reported to someone in local government, they may not be aware that their sign has been damaged/destroyed, and to ask them for the name, there is 2 streets with vandalised signs I keep meaning to annoy council about here. That seems like a fairly European-city-centric view to me. There are loads of unnamed roads across rural England, across Europe, and in other countries around the world. And not all of them are such because their sign has been vandalised. Or have I missed your point? Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 06/10/09 16:49, Jonathan Bennett wrote: It's useful *as a guide*, or a tool. What some people seem to be unable to grasp is that *it's OK for a road to appear in red on NoNames*. You don't have to eliminate them completely. It's just a guide, not a gospel. A road appearing in red means that there's a possibility of there being missing information in the map. In one sense, of course that's OK. The map has missing information all over the place. But what do we do with missing information we know is missing? We try and put it in, to make the map better and more complete. Basically, opposing the noname stuff is saying you need to keep in your head a list of all the roads in your area which genuinely have no name, in order to prevent yourself visiting them again to add the name in. And every mapper in an area has to do that. Isn't that right? Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net wrote: On 06/10/09 15:18, Dave Stubbs wrote: a) what are you actually marking? - no name in OSM -- we know that already - the mapper didn't find a name -- so we shouldn't check again? Probably not, no. Just as when a mapper adds a postbox, someone else doesn't think he's added a postbox. I should go and check that there's actually a postbox there. I agree that in this case you are noting a negative, not a positive, and that's more unusual. But I think the same principle applies. You trust other mappers to map sanely unless there's evidence to the contrary. - the road definitely hasn't got a name -- it definitely hasn't got a swimming pool in the middle of it either, but I'm not putting swimming_pool=no Right. But most roads have names, and names are useful for navigation. Names being missing when they shouldn't be is therefore bad. Right, that's why we highlight them at all. It doesn't then follow that names being missing when they should be is also bad, which is the point here. The swimming pool point is a slippery slope argument, but in fact the slope isn't at all slippery. Names are different to swimming pools. AFAIK, no-one has genuinely suggested swimming_pool=no, or in fact any other =no type thing apart from names. I agree, simming_pool=yes, incline=yes would definitely be a slippery slope. But actually yes, they have suggested other tags for no. Examples include the language variants so noname:es=yes, refs, to entirely generic systems of tagging designed to specify any tag you like as deliberately not put on. In general we do not tag negatives, you regard name as somehow special in this regard which is of course up to you, but I don't. - mappers don't go looking for unnamed streets that definitely have no name -- well, whatever, they can put the post boxes and address data in while they're there. Except that many people like to map with a method that gets the map to a base level of usefulness (say, all roads present and correctly named) across an area first, and then add details later. Sure, but if you're chasing a single unnamed road then you've already hit that level of completion anyway. Obviously if you don't want to map that extra level of detail you don't have to, but hey, what else you going to do :-) [snip] What I don't get is why people opposed to marking noname roads as noname actually mind. What offends you about tags you don't care about? Personally, nothing. As I said YMMV, there are different opinions, tag how you want. Russ asked for a decision to be made. I made it. He asked for an explanation, I gave it. And I'm almost certain he doesn't agree, but then that's what happens when you ask for someone else's advice :-) Dave ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/7 Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net: On 06/10/09 16:49, Jonathan Bennett wrote: It's useful *as a guide*, or a tool. What some people seem to be unable to grasp is that *it's OK for a road to appear in red on NoNames*. You don't have to eliminate them completely. It's just a guide, not a gospel. A road appearing in red means that there's a possibility of there being missing information in the map. In one sense, of course that's OK. The map has missing information all over the place. But what do we do with missing information we know is missing? We try and put it in, to make the map better and more complete. Basically, opposing the noname stuff is saying you need to keep in your head a list of all the roads in your area which genuinely have no name, in order to prevent yourself visiting them again to add the name in. And every mapper in an area has to do that. Isn't that right? Yes and keep it to yourself, don't bother telling anyone else since they really want to waste their time finding out there is no name, after the 10th person does this I'm sure someone has a right to be upset. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/7 Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net: On 06/10/09 05:37, John Smith wrote: It sounds like he made it to see which roads needed surveying to acquire their name, however I'm still confused why people use noname=yes when the street does have a name but not a street sign, as I posted before there is actually a few streets near here on the golf course which really aren't named, the buildings a just unit numbers. If you know the street has a name but there's no sign, remove the noname tag and put the name in :-) My point was to distinguish streets with no name, verses streets with no sign, due to slack councils or vandelism or what not. That seems like a fairly European-city-centric view to me. There are loads of unnamed roads across rural England, across Europe, and in other countries around the world. And not all of them are such because their sign has been vandalised. I have no idea about Europe/England to be honest, never been in any European countries. Also euro-centric views tend to clash on occasion with Australian views. Most roads in Australia tend to be named, even some basic concrete slab colvets that aren't even real bridges get named. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/6 John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com: Yes and keep it to yourself, don't bother telling anyone else since they really want to waste their time finding out there is no name,a after the 10th person does this I'm sure someone has a right to be upset. If you have 10 people in the same area chasing an unnamed road then a noname tag isn't going to solve the actual problem. A road in OSM that has been surveyed by a single person is tagged identically to a road that has a dozen gps tracks and has been checked by several people. The fact that a road has no name is irrelevant. A road with a name is also potentially incorrect and needs to be checked. Currently those 10 people will end up checking the same areas multiple times while some areas don't get checked at all. The problem is that there is no way to communicate the verification level or an object in the database. If the 10 people want to verify the data in an efficient and systematic way then they they need to organise between themselves and store information outside the database. It's a problem that needs a general solution not a single tag that works in a very specific case. -- DavidD ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/7 DavidD thewi...@gmail.com: 2009/10/6 John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com: Yes and keep it to yourself, don't bother telling anyone else since they really want to waste their time finding out there is no name,a after the 10th person does this I'm sure someone has a right to be upset. If you have 10 people in the same area chasing an unnamed road then a noname tag isn't going to solve the actual problem. A road in OSM that has been surveyed by a single person is tagged identically to a road that has a dozen gps tracks and has been checked by several people. The fact that a road has no name is irrelevant. A road with a name is also potentially incorrect and needs to be checked. Currently those 10 people will end up checking the same areas multiple times while some areas don't get checked at all. The problem is that there is no way to communicate the verification level or an object in the database. If the 10 people want to verify the data in an efficient and systematic way then they they need to organise between themselves and store information outside the database. It's a problem that needs a general solution not a single tag that works in a very specific case. That's assuming they aren't just doing this as a side thing as they travel about, potentially going out of their way to get the name of a street that has no name or no street sign, so communicating that is important beyond any local grouping. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Gervase Markham wrote: On 06/10/09 15:18, Dave Stubbs wrote: a) what are you actually marking? - no name in OSM -- we know that already - the mapper didn't find a name -- so we shouldn't check again? Probably not, no. Just as when a mapper adds a postbox, someone else doesn't think he's added a postbox. I should go and check that there's actually a postbox there. Yes! We should!! I've seen postboxes, shops, pubs restaurants placed on the wrong road let a lone in the incorrect place on the right road! I don't even trust my own mapping (especially my GPS recording) would welcome people checking my data. I'm gob-smacked by an attitude I've seen in OSM of believing blindly that the first only trace of a route is automatically spot on!! This laissez faire attitude to accuracy within OSM astounds me. The more uploaded GPX traces/checks of a route the better. Surely? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/7 Dave F. dave...@madasafish.com: The more uploaded GPX traces/checks of a route the better. Surely? It would be more useful to know what created the traces also, some units are bound to be better than others and knowing this you would be able to weight the tracks rather than treat them all as equal. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 4:24 AM, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: Matt Amos writes: forcing all mappers, editors and renderers to support it? Why do people keep saying that I want to use force? From where do they get this idea? Have I ever suggested the use of force? Gun, knife, sword, empty hand? Rejection of ill-formed tags at the API? Please, quote me on it if you think I have. if mappers tag the way they feel is best and the tool authors (i.e: nonames layer) consume the tags in the way they feel is best then the two will converge, Let me propose an alternative course of events which is less desirable: Anyone who asks how to mark a road as having no name is told that there is no consensus. They might get sent to the Wiki page on it. That page gives no advice or too much advice. The mapper takes no action. The database has no tags, the tool authors don't implement any of them because the data isn't there, and the issue doesn't converge. I point to the +1 year age of the Noname proposal and recent inactivity and suggest that convergance isn't happening. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Noname I suggest instead that in cases such as these, SteveC should bless one of them with his Holy Water of Antioch (and the number of the tags shall be 3, no more and no less). His blessing will tip the stable disconvergance in one direction. As the person whose first came up with a no-names map for London (well, actually it was a named map of London, turned into a nonames map on SteveC's suggestion), I have an *official leadership announcement* to make: There shall be no tagging of unnamed roads. It is not important. They show up on the no-names map -- big deal -- its a mapping aid not a holy grail of there shall be no highlighted roads. Just deal with it. Right. Done. Now anyone respecting my authority can happily continue with life. I'll leave someone else to document the wiki with my decision. Thanks, Dave PS. I have no idea who does/doesn't agree with me and I've no idea what SteveC thinks about it. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/4 Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com: ...that he's conducting bizarre breeding experiments on cute little animals. Basically, SteveC doesn't find this teasing at all funny. what's this breeding stuff about? Can anyone point to a relevant page? Cheers, Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 11:33 AM, Martin Koppenhoefer dieterdre...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/10/4 Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com: ...that he's conducting bizarre breeding experiments on cute little animals. Basically, SteveC doesn't find this teasing at all funny. what's this breeding stuff about? Can anyone point to a relevant page? it's just a little in-joke. http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/legal-talk/2009-March/002236.html cheers, matt ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
russ and i had a useful chat on IRC late last night and i think we've cleared up the misunderstanding that lies at the root of this thread. (russ - please correct me if i've misreported anything here). apologies to anyone who's getting really tired of this thread. hopefully we're at or near the end now. On 10/4/09, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: you asked why people are thinking that you're in favour of people being told what to do. your answer appears to confirm that, yes; you're in favour of people being told what to do. It appears to me as if your being told what to do should be interpreted as coercion, but I've repeatedly said that leadership in a voluntary organization is not coercion. How many times do I have to tell you that it's NOT POSSIBLE TO COERCE VOLUNTEERS Why do I have to shout to be heard? the misunderstanding here came from different interpretations of the word decide. my reading of it was the meaning final, authoritative judgement, but russ' intended meaning was different, something more like give advice, and have it listened-to (my words). for this definition of decide i'm in complete agreement with russ; steve should be able to give advice and have it listened to. russ had some good guidelines for appropriately resolving tagging debates (slightly paraphrased): 1) if it's an issue where the community hasn't been able to decide, they might need a decision/advice. 2) if one of the schemas preserves enough information to be transformed into the others at some future date, use that one. 3) it's better to keep mapping and tagging than argue about tagging. there was some discussion of whether voting is a good way of resolving anything. but that's a whole other debate, which i'd rather leave for another day ;-) cheers, matt ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 05/10/09 11:04, Dave Stubbs wrote: As the person whose first came up with a no-names map for London (well, actually it was a named map of London, turned into a nonames map on SteveC's suggestion), I have an *official leadership announcement* to make: There shall be no tagging of unnamed roads. It is not important. They show up on the no-names map -- big deal -- its a mapping aid not a holy grail of there shall be no highlighted roads. Just deal with it. So why did you make the noname map in the first place, if it's not important? Have you changed your mind about its usefulness? Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/6 Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net: On 05/10/09 11:04, Dave Stubbs wrote: As the person whose first came up with a no-names map for London (well, actually it was a named map of London, turned into a nonames map on SteveC's suggestion), I have an *official leadership announcement* to make: There shall be no tagging of unnamed roads. It is not important. They show up on the no-names map -- big deal -- its a mapping aid not a holy grail of there shall be no highlighted roads. Just deal with it. So why did you make the noname map in the first place, if it's not important? Have you changed your mind about its usefulness? It sounds like he made it to see which roads needed surveying to acquire their name, however I'm still confused why people use noname=yes when the street does have a name but not a street sign, as I posted before there is actually a few streets near here on the golf course which really aren't named, the buildings a just unit numbers. Anything without a street sign should be reported to someone in local government, they may not be aware that their sign has been damaged/destroyed, and to ask them for the name, there is 2 streets with vandalised signs I keep meaning to annoy council about here. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
John Smith wrote: There will always be a vocal minority, it doesn't mean they are right or they are speaking for the majority, they are just shouting the loudest. Very true, although I'm a bit unsure about which vocal minority is shouting the loudest at the moment. Is it the anti-Führer anarchists or the pro-Führer tag fascists? It's _almost_ enough to distract the mapping sheep from our happy mapping. rcr ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 4 Oct 2009, at 09:52, Rob wrote: John Smith wrote: There will always be a vocal minority, it doesn't mean they are right or they are speaking for the majority, they are just shouting the loudest. Very true, although I'm a bit unsure about which vocal minority is shouting the loudest at the moment. Is it the anti-Führer anarchists or the pro-Führer tag fascists? It's _almost_ enough to distract the mapping sheep from our happy mapping. I though it was the Führer who was meant to shout loudest in such situations, but actually our Führer, if that is who he is, is being very quiet and may not actually be a Führer at all. Possibly he is just an ordinary sheep like the rest of us and is happily mapping in some sunny field somewhere and ignoring the whole thread! Regards, Peter rcr ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/4 Peter Miller peter.mil...@itoworld.com: On 4 Oct 2009, at 09:52, Rob wrote: John Smith wrote: There will always be a vocal minority, it doesn't mean they are right or they are speaking for the majority, they are just shouting the loudest. Very true, although I'm a bit unsure about which vocal minority is shouting the loudest at the moment. Is it the anti-Führer anarchists or the pro-Führer tag fascists? It's _almost_ enough to distract the mapping sheep from our happy mapping. I though it was the Führer who was meant to shout loudest in such situations, but actually our Führer, if that is who he is, is being very quiet and may not actually be a Führer at all. good point Peter. I'd say, our Führer forfeited his Führer-position, as he is not shouting loud enough in this thread to be a strong Führer. (He might still have a special position though, which he gained by inventing and promoting OSM). cheers, Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 10/4/09, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: That said, I believe it a mistake to NOT have perfect consistency as a goal even though that goal cannot be achieved. If you don't know where you're going in the long term you'll likely go in circles in the short term. Like this discussion. i'll keep this short, then ;-) Matt Amos writes: On 10/3/09, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: you seem to be advocating for a tag with the sole purpose of not rendering something in a single renderer. to me, that seems wrong. No, that's not the sole purpose. See my reply to Andrew which you should have already received. so the purpose is to indicate to other mappers, including via the nonames renderer and other debugging tools, that there is no name? so you're not tagging what's on the ground (that there is no name), you're tagging out-of-band information that isn't useful to any end-users of the map? let me put it a different way: maybe convergence hasn't happened *yet*. That argument is not falsifiable; it is no argument at all. for the noname tag, it isn't measurable. the parallel debate with oneway=yes/true/1 can be measured, though, and the results are attached. notwithstanding some bot vandalism in earlier parts of the year, it's pretty clear that convergence is happening and oneway=yes is the winner. i would conjecture that convergence isn't specific to the oneway tag and is happening to all tags, although as you correctly point out, it's not testable for many tags. note that i didn't say forced this time, but i do get the impression that you're suggesting that people should be told what to do and how to tag. Yes. I believe in leadership. Imagine that. Google for Servant Leadership. Or find out how Quaker meeting's clerks operate. Same idea. that's a non sequitur. you asked why people are thinking that you're in favour of people being told what to do. your answer appears to confirm that, yes; you're in favour of people being told what to do. The OSM community is hostile to leadership even when that leadership merely renders advice. Frederick's advice to create a committee to provide leadership is not useful advice. maybe the community feels that such leadership advice is not useful advice, just as you feel towards frederik's advice? Are you agreeing with me that the community is hostile to leadership? sure - you're part of the community and you're rejecting frederik's advice. so, by your definition of hostile and your membership of the community; some of the community is hostile to leadership. cheers, matt PS: this is a re-post with the png reduced in size to meet this list's size limit. sorry if anyone gets any duplicates. attachment: oneway.png___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Matt Amos writes: On 10/4/09, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: No, that's not the sole purpose. See my reply to Andrew which you should have already received. so the purpose is to indicate to other mappers, including via the nonames renderer and other debugging tools, that there is no name? so you're not tagging what's on the ground (that there is no name), you're tagging out-of-band information that isn't useful to any end-users of the map? Well, anything that isn't rendered is of no use to end-users of the map, so the principle you're trying to apply here: map for the renderer is deprecated pretty universally. But if noname roads are rendered as such, then when you're looking for that street, you would expect to see a street without street signs. Neither you nor Andrew are getting anywhere with but noname=yes isn't useful. I suggest you drop it. let me put it a different way: maybe convergence hasn't happened *yet*. That argument is not falsifiable; it is no argument at all. for the noname tag, it isn't measurable. Stuff and nonsense. There are 9 specific proposals, use of each of which can be counted. My point here is that you can ALWAYS point to a failure of convergence and say If we wait longer, we will achieve success. you asked why people are thinking that you're in favour of people being told what to do. your answer appears to confirm that, yes; you're in favour of people being told what to do. It appears to me as if your being told what to do should be interpreted as coercion, but I've repeatedly said that leadership in a voluntary organization is not coercion. How many times do I have to tell you that it's NOT POSSIBLE TO COERCE VOLUNTEERS Why do I have to shout to be heard? Why do I sound like your mother? Mattie-boy, clean up your room now ... don't make me shout. sure - you're part of the community and you're rejecting frederik's advice. so, by your definition of hostile and your membership of the community; some of the community is hostile to leadership. I didn't say that Frederick is evil, nor that his actions are dictated by the needs of his company, nor that he's acting like a king (and his girlfriend is a queen), nor that he's conducting bizarre breeding experiments on cute little animals. Basically, SteveC doesn't find this teasing at all funny. Not at all. He's asked that people stop it, and I'm asking y'all to stop it. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Peter Miller wrote: I though it was the Führer who was meant to shout loudest in such It's been a nice four years on this list, but now it's just getting too stupid and way overloaded. The list would benefit from some slight moderation or posting guidelines, but since that doesn't happen here, I'm moderating my own inbox by unsubscribing. Bye! -- Lars Aronsson (l...@aronsson.se) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
I had three replies to my message about nonames. Thank you. Why do you assume that if the name=* tag is missing then this is an error? Andrew ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 03/10/09 06:00, John Smith wrote: No we need a committee to decide upon a core set of values that people should use where possible instead of naming the same thing 10 different ways, the argument over boolean values just highlights the point. OK, sorry, I thought that someone was suggesting setting up a committee just for this. :-) My view is not that we should have one committee, but that groups of people with particular expertise should come together to develop the tag sets for particular areas (e.g. canals, mountain biking), those should be what's published on the wiki, and it should be an OSM community norm to tag in accordance with what's on the wiki even if you feel that it doesn't capture all the information, and you have to add MyName:extratag=value tags to make it absolutely clear what you mean. Wikipedia has much less need for consistency than we do (e.g. it doesn't matter if one article is in American English and another in Australian English; articles are not machine-parsed) and yet they have all sorts of mechanisms for ensuring it. As Russ says, freeform tagging != anarchy. Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 03/10/09 04:00, Matt Amos wrote: are you suggesting that the best way forward is for some authority to decree that there is One True Way of tagging noname roads and forcing all mappers, editors and renderers to support it? No, the best way forward is for some authority to decree that there is One True Way of tagging noname roads, and for mappers, editors and renderer authors to go fab, that makes my life a lot easier and choose to follow it. At the moment, people are deathly afraid of the second half of your sentence, and so think that makes the first half impossible. it might be helpful if the wiki documented the guidance of experienced mappers, rather than the free-for-all of half-baked ideas that it seems to have become. Quite :-) then why suggest placing any one person in an exalted leadership position? Because sometimes, occasionally, a benevolent dictator (a phrase used by lots of open source projects) has to break deadlock and dictate. Things are working well when that power is used very, very rarely, but it needs to exist. Mozilla has two - one code, one non-code, and I can't remember the last time they had to break a deadlock in this way. But it's vital that they _could_. if mappers tag the way they feel is best and the tool authors (i.e: nonames layer) consume the tags in the way they feel is best then the two will converge, as long as everyone keeps an open mind and refrains from childish antagonism. I think that is unrealistically optimistic. How long have we been going, and why hasn't it happened yet? Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 03/10/09 00:49, DavidD wrote: Just start making the decisions and build the thing on top of OSM. It wouldn't even be that difficult to start off. Just take planet.osm and strip unapproved tags and build up from there. So OSM is in a state where it only becomes usefully consistent if you throw away a lot of the information? That doesn't sound like the best use of the time of the mappers who put it there. Lack of guidance, which is what we have now, is a disincentive to new mappers, and a disappointment to existing ones. If I pick way #5 of the nine different ways to tag a road with no name, come back a week later and find that I spent two hours tagging but it's not rendered because Mapnik only supports ways #3, #6 and #7, then I'm going to be disappointed. Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/3 Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net: My view is not that we should have one committee, but that groups of people with particular expertise should come together to develop the tag sets for particular areas (e.g. canals, mountain biking), those should I was starting small, I thought if we could at least get a core set that would a) stop the constant pointless/endless debates over the same thing all the time, b) give people a known good footing on where to start, c) have consistency for the entire database so that if people edit things in one region (regardless if it's a county, state/province/territory/whatever, county/local government area) it won't matter because everyone should be doing something very similar if not the same. If there is a need for more granular committees then so be it, but there is some fairly fundamental things that need to be addressed, like street numbering, like foot paths/cycle ways. Wikipedia has much less need for consistency than we do (e.g. it doesn't matter if one article is in American English and another in Australian English; articles are not machine-parsed) and yet they have all sorts of mechanisms for ensuring it. Exactly, what we're dealing with is the equivolent if all the wikipedia information was in a single article and that article has to be readable and not disjointed. As Russ says, freeform tagging != anarchy. Some freeform tagging != anarchy, but completely freeform tagging would be chaos... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 03/10/09 01:08, Frederik Ramm wrote: It may be your way to try and understand a conversation by looking not at what has been said, but at who said it and what that might reveal about their personal situation, upbringing, education, employment or other circumstances. I'm used to this from previous discussions in which you participiated, but I still don't find it (morally or intellectually) acceptable to talk about what you think a posting reveals about its author. This is off-topic and useless at best, insulting at worst, and reflects poorly on your intellectual ability to engage in factual discourse. On the contrary; understanding where someone is coming from is vital to understanding their point. It's part of good communication. We are not robots, communicating using an unambiguous digital protocol. There are unstated assumptions, attitudes of mind and history in the lives of all of us which affect what we mean when particular words or expressions are used. Everyone does this form of assessment, consciously or unconsciously, as part of communicating. It's just that (as another commenter pointed out) I said what I'd done so you could correct me. I think you are (IMO mistakenly) opposed to people having authority because of your country's history and the negative consequences that ensued when people gave someone too much power because there were problems that needed sorting out. Am I wrong? You need to distinguish between good leadership and bad leadership. Good leadership sometimes tells people to do things they don't agree with. Because the leader is the intellectual visionary and the sheep cannot be expected to have the information or the intellectual capacity to understand. Yes, that is true with many religious, political, or business leaders of past and present. So you think that a good leader never tells people to do things they disagree with? How do you resolve disputes within GeoFabrik, if discussion does not provide an agreed way forward? Frankly, I think it may be a mistake to try an apply experience from the Mozilla project to OSM. I think there are vast differences between our projects on various levels, and it would be wrong to say well they're both large projects to do with computers so they must be somehow the same. That's not what I'm saying. I just don't think this is a lesson that can be transferred to OSM in a meaningful way. I think that's an unwarranted generalization. You have to look at each point and see if the two projects are relevantly similar in that case. From what organizations do you think that OSM can usefully gain insight? How about just taking the lesson from every other provider of data? Who else has a data set with multiple values for true and false? Even two for each would be considered a bug to be fixed, let alone ten. * who has the power to decide which values are allowed for a certain tag? who would decree that oneway is boolean? * how is that codified in our software? * how is that codified in our social structures (votes, elections, who is allowed how many votes, who decides who has how many votes and how does the appeal process work)? * what happens if someone thinks they need an exemption from the rule? * what is the balance of power between mapper and user interests in OSM? Right. And no-one is arguing people should be forced to tag in a certain way, I am arguing that the regular, linked-to-from-the-front-page, normal namespace wiki should reflect a single, recommended way to tag, that particular sections of the tag space should be maintained by a loose group of experts in that area, who are recognised by their knowledge and contribution, that if they can't come to a decision then SteveC should break the deadlock among that group, and that after all that has happened, people can tag any way they like. But if they want to document alternative schemes on the wiki, don't do it by hacking around the page of recommendations. All this is possible *within* the existing OSM framework and without any strong leader telling us where to go. Not, as Russ says, if any attempt is automatically branded evil. I don't quite understand why those who crave most for strict rules etc. never, ever tried to do what I have sketched above, when it would seem the most natural way of evolving such a system. Two reasons off the top of my head: because we don't want to spend ages developing consistent tag sets and putting them on the wiki only to have someone else mess around with them. And because we'd like to get some sort of consensus before starting off on what will undoubtedly be an enormous chunk of work. Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 03/10/09 05:16, Andrew Errington wrote: If you see a street on the map with no name displayed you might think one of two things: 1) The street has no name (and you might hum a tune by U2) 2) The street has a name but it has not been recorded Either way, it doesn't matter. It darn well does if you don't want to be the eighteenth mapper to go and visit it specially to complete the map in that area and find out that it actually doesn't have a name. Not marking noname roads is a giant waste of resources, because work gets duplicated. If I am a map maker then I know whether or not the street has a name, because I've been there and seen it. There are multiple people working in each area. And no-one has a perfect memory. Are you really saying the memory of all local mappers is the right place to store this information? Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Sat, 3 Oct 2009, John Smith wrote: If there is a need for more granular committees then so be it, but there is some fairly fundamental things that need to be addressed, like street numbering, like foot paths/cycle ways. and street numbering has been looked at on the committee basis and a schema produced and named this is an excellent example which i hope to see repeated ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/3 Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net: Two reasons off the top of my head: because we don't want to spend ages developing consistent tag sets and putting them on the wiki only to have someone else mess around with them. And because we'd like to get some sort of consensus before starting off on what will undoubtedly be an enormous chunk of work. This is a really big thing for me, some suggest using a set of tags a lot and then documenting, but I've done that with school zones only to be told I did it all wrong and I should have done it some other way. This was not only highly frustrating but demoralising and as a result I've not been bothered tagging any more school zones because I don't see a point until there is a One True Way to tag school zones. So OSM has lost a collection of data from the real world as a result. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 03/10/2009, at 4:25 PM, Gervase Markham wrote: Wikipedia has much less need for consistency than we do (e.g. it doesn't matter if one article is in American English and another in Australian English; articles are not machine-parsed) and yet they have all sorts of mechanisms for ensuring it. I believe those mechanisms are something along the lines of if it's related to a particular country, use their spelling, if not whoever creates the article first. Which of course leads to articles like Orange_(colour) and Grey using the British spellings, and most other colour articles using the American spelling. As long as it's consistent within the article, they don't seem to mind. I'm all for working groups, who have their own mailing list (reporting to the rest of us occasionally), and having regular meetings. Pick an arbitrary time in UTC and rotate between that, that+8 and that+16 for the meetings. I think having their own mailing lis is important - because anyone who just likes to argue, and doesn't actually care, hopefully won't bother subscribing. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 03/10/2009, at 5:02 PM, John Smith wrote: This was not only highly frustrating but demoralising and as a result I've not been bothered tagging any more school zones because I don't see a point until there is a One True Way to tag school zones. Just do what I and a lot of other people have done - give up on the wiki being useful, and just go ahead and tag it however you like, checking tagwatch and similar to see what other people are actually using. If you do see an article on the wiki, you have no idea whether anyone actually uses it. If it's approved it was probably because three people voted on it and everyone else got sick of arguing and didn't vote. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/3 James Livingston doc...@mac.com: On 03/10/2009, at 5:02 PM, John Smith wrote: This was not only highly frustrating but demoralising and as a result I've not been bothered tagging any more school zones because I don't see a point until there is a One True Way to tag school zones. Just do what I and a lot of other people have done - give up on the wiki being useful, and just go ahead and tag it however you like, I would like the information I'm adding to be useful, not just there to make up the numbers kind of thing, and if what I'm doing is inconsistent with others then it most likely won't be useful in the form I enter it and virtually a waste of time tagging it in the first place. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 03/10/2009, at 4:29 PM, Gervase Markham wrote: Because sometimes, occasionally, a benevolent dictator (a phrase used by lots of open source projects) has to break deadlock and dictate. Things are working well when that power is used very, very rarely, but it needs to exist. Mozilla has two - one code, one non-code, and I can't remember the last time they had to break a deadlock in this way. But it's vital that they _could_. As well as a benevolent dictator, they also have a power structure underneath them, which gives the community guidance on how to work together to solve issues. The guiding force of the power structure is why the benevolent dictator doesn't have to use their power very often. As far as I'm aware, OSM doesn't have any kind of power structure - there is no equivalent to the contributor-committer-core developer-maintainer chain. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I think we need a Tagging Committee. Not to develop tags themselves, but to oversee working groups who develop tags. If we had one, they could create a footpaths, cycleways, and tracks working group, who would then sort out the highway=footway/cycleway/path mess. The WG would work together to sort it out, and the TC would then say we think your WG has achieved a consensus, your tags are now approved. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Roy Wallace schrieb: On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: I really do encourage you and all those calling for leadership to get together, form your own advisory board or tagging committee or whatever, create the structures you think are required, and then offer them for voluntary use by the community. +1. Get on with it. +2. Though of course that is going to be more work than just saying SteveC should do it... ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
ed...@billiau.net schrieb: Frederik said All this is possible *within* the existing OSM framework and without any strong leader telling us where to go. I really do encourage you and all those calling for leadership to get together, form your own advisory board or tagging committee or whatever, create the structures you think are required, and then offer them for voluntary use by the community. This is likely to result in several insular communities. In particular I am considering that au mappers would write a tight set of guidelines for mapping and, as an example, we wouldn't have to worry about residential vs unclassified in rural areas for any other country - we would define our own strategy and stick to it. If Au does that, and the Argentinians make their own set of preferences, and other groups do the same, we will have a project with multiple forks. I don't really want to split the project, but if it becomes the only way to peace it will happen by itself. Funny to read: likely to result, we will have ... We already have insular communities (e.g. using highway=unclassified for this or for that or for something different), we have a special definition page for germany tagging and ... Problem: we just don't stick to definitions or change it every few weeks/months. Regards, ULFL ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/3 Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net: On 03/10/09 00:49, DavidD wrote: Just start making the decisions and build the thing on top of OSM. It wouldn't even be that difficult to start off. Just take planet.osm and strip unapproved tags and build up from there. So OSM is in a state where it only becomes usefully consistent if you throw away a lot of the information? That doesn't sound like the best use of the time of the mappers who put it there. Obviously nobody wants to spend a day gathering data then editing for that work to go to waste. That's the incentive for people to get onboard. If you can show actual real benefits then people will start investing time. Once you have people you can develop better methods that throw away less data. More importantly you can start building the structures and hierarchies that are arguably needed to produce a consistent set of tags. These things are not going to appear out of nowhere. If that isn't good enough what other method is there? How do you get from where OSM is now to the goal? Until someone starts coming up with ideas that have some connection to reality this will get nowhere. At the moment it is not much more than a bunch of people yelling this sucks every 10 minutes. -- DavidD ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/3 James Livingston doc...@mac.com: That mostly works because you're talking about code, not paragraphs of description of what a tag means. If they're knowledgeable enough to figure it out, two people reading a chunk of code should come up the same idea of what it does, which doesn't happen with tag descriptions. +1 If a tagging overlord who happens to be English writes a description of a tag, I can pretty much guarantee that some native English speakers from another country (e.g. Australia or the US) will read it a different way, or people who have English as a second language will rad it a different way. I don't think it is a problem of different uses of English (sure, different cultures don't make it any easier): the main problem is interpretation: look at legislation: there are laws, which are written by experts undertaking serious efforts, but still there is need for judges and advocats, still there is room for interpretation. Two advocats might come to opposite conclusions for the same case and in the same jurisdiction. One thing is to find really good definitions (laws), the other is to debate continuously their meaning and be able to solve conflicts in an appropriate way. It is naive to think we (or even worse one big leader) could just set up some strict rules and everything would be easy forever. We do need flexibility and continuous will to change/renew/adjust our definitions to what fits best with current reality. cheers, Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/3 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org: We have, time and time again, debated tagging rules. Some people, including you, tirelessly (well, more or less) campaigned for stricter rules, with a tight voting system and all. Others, including me, were of the laissez-faire disposition. I think that if some people devised a set of tagging rules or recommendations and laid it out in a structured way, including rules on how to create, discuss, amend the definitions, there would really be demand for that inside OSM. don't we already have the wiki with defined voting rules, categories (approved, rejected, proposed, ...) and all the like, official features (Mapfeatures)? Isn't that already a system to note down meanings of tags? Many people would use that set of recommendations and participate in its development. It's less people than you'd expect (always the same in the wiki, few in votings, recently on highway-importance there were ~128 votes casted, still a relative small number but almost factor 10 compared to the average vote). It is well possible that after a few years of operation, such a committee-backed set of tagging rules would be so successful that anything else is virtually insignificant. (I would perhaps use these rules myself if I found they made sense.) that's more or less the current situation: we have a set of rules (wiki) developped in the past 5 years and people more or less agree with it and use it. Based on this we produce data that contains some errors and inconsistencies but is generally working for routing as for printed maps. All this is possible *within* the existing OSM framework and without any strong leader telling us where to go. I'd say this is not only possible but already happening. cheers, Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
DavidD schrieb: If that isn't good enough what other method is there? How do you get from where OSM is now to the goal? Until someone starts coming up with ideas that have some connection to reality this will get nowhere. At the moment it is not much more than a bunch of people yelling this sucks every 10 minutes. I agree that most of the current discussion is not heading towards a concrete solution to work on. However, the discussion shows, that a bunch of people as you call it seem to think that we currently have a problem and continuing the way we did in the past will not solve the issues or probably make things even worse in the future. By talking with the mappers here in the area, my feeling is that this is not a bunch, but the vast majority of OSM people (as most of the not so experienced mappers are not participating in this list). If this discussion just results in more people getting aware of these problems and just start to think about possible solutions then for me this was worth the time and effort. Regards, ULFL ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 10/3/09, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: Matt Amos writes: forcing all mappers, editors and renderers to support it? Why do people keep saying that I want to use force? From where do they get this idea? Have I ever suggested the use of force? Gun, knife, sword, empty hand? Rejection of ill-formed tags at the API? Please, quote me on it if you think I have. you've repeatedly said that we should have a leader and that when that leader makes a decision we should do it that way. you're not talking about a recommendation, you're talking about a decree: If SteveC says that mountain=green means that first there is a mountain, and that mountain=blue means there is no mountain, then damnit, we should do it that way. if mappers tag the way they feel is best and the tool authors (i.e: nonames layer) consume the tags in the way they feel is best then the two will converge, Let me propose an alternative course of events which is less desirable: Anyone who asks how to mark a road as having no name is told that there is no consensus. They might get sent to the Wiki page on it. That page gives no advice or too much advice. The mapper takes no action. The database has no tags, the tool authors don't implement any of them because the data isn't there, and the issue doesn't converge. I point to the +1 year age of the Noname proposal and recent inactivity and suggest that convergance isn't happening. maybe there isn't a need for convergence here? we've got a nonames map to help mappers decide where their time might be well-spent. if they find a road which genuinely has no name they're welcome to add a note= tag, or a noname=yes tag, or whatever they like. nowhere has anyone said that the debugging tools available show all errors, or that everything shown will be an error. as in most things in life, personal judgement is required. of course, there's always the possibility of action; why not make a nonames layer which reflects your view of how the data should be interpreted? I suggest instead that in cases such as these, SteveC should bless one of them with his Holy Water of Antioch (and the number of the tags shall be 3, no more and no less). His blessing will tip the stable disconvergance in one direction. steve is perfectly able to weigh in on one side of the argument or other. where we're disagreeing is that you're suggesting some sort of special status to his opinion, and i'm suggesting that, while his opinion is important and valuable, there are others in the community who are equally well-placed to offer good guidance. But for him to be able to do that, we need to not be throwing the sheep or Furher word around just because some people are trying to lead and others are trying to follow. and i agree with you 100% - steve's contribution to this project can't be played down (it wouldn't exist in its current form without him) and this pervasive steve is evil thing is just weird and unhelpful. it has to be said that, according to my german dictionary, the word Führer just means leader or guide. i don't know if there are pejorative overtones to it in modern german use. finally, for effective leadership there also has to be the opportunity for people to *not* follow. if you want to follow someone's leadership that's fine. but please don't try to compel that followership onto others. cheers, matt ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/3 Matt Amos zerebub...@gmail.com: it has to be said that, according to my german dictionary, the word Führer just means leader or guide. i don't know if there are pejorative overtones to it in modern german use. no, there aren't, it's the only word for guide, used in alpine tourism, for tourist guides in general, etc. (even for driving license: der Führer war ein armes Schwein, er hatte keinen Führerschein). To me it seems the most appropriate term for a leader like the requested, that shows a strong hand, everybody would get instantly what's this about if we call him OSM-Führer. cheers, Martin ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
John Smith wrote: 2009/10/3 Apollinaris Schoell ascho...@gmail.com: On 2 Oct 2009, at 21:06 , John Smith wrote: You do if you want a consistent data set. And what if I don't want? There are 1000s of mappers and not everyone thinks like you and agrees with you. If you can't accept so much freedom it's your problem not mine or theirs. there are many things I don't like in osm, but I am free to change it because it's free and open or I can learn that others had better ideas and accept it. And so we'll end up with a database not with better map data but with a completely inconsistent kludge that won't be of any use to anyone beyond their local area... So people will just keep using commercial data and not bother with OSM because it's more hassle than it's worth, in turn no one will bother contributing because they can simply do an overlay on top of google data so they get a consistent set of map tiles... +1 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 03/10/09 09:24, James Livingston wrote: Just do what I and a lot of other people have done - give up on the wiki being useful, and just go ahead and tag it however you like, checking tagwatch and similar to see what other people are actually using. tagwatch tells you what tags people are using, but not what they are using them _for_. There is insufficient semantic information in the statement lots of people are using highway=unclassified for you to know what to use it for, or even whether they are all using it for the same thing. A set of tags alone is not sufficient to get consistency or convergence. Explanations are needed. Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Matt Amos writes: I point to the +1 year age of the Noname proposal and recent inactivity and suggest that convergance isn't happening. maybe there isn't a need for convergence here? we've got a nonames map to help mappers decide where their time might be well-spent. And well-spent and well-spent and well-spent, as mappers repeatedly home in on roads which have no name, and no way to tell the nonames map that there is in fact no name. So they put in name=Fiddle-de-Faddle Street and gee, nonames stops marking it as not having a name. WIN! Can I prove that this has happened? No. And that's the problem. If it happened, then we now have a namless road which is named only in OSM. I can understand mistakes and omissions. I can't understand why people would advocate FOR error. The claim was made that convergance happens automatically, with no guidance. I've presented an example where it doesn't, and now you're trying to say that when convergance doesn't happen, it's because convergance isn't necessary. steve is perfectly able to weigh in on one side of the argument or other. Actually, not, he's not. He's told me that he's tried doing that, and when he does, he's told that he's shilling for Cloudmade, or that he's evil, or that he has a portal to hell in his basement, or in his attic or wherever, or that he's breeding strange conglomeration animals. where we're disagreeing is that you're suggesting some sort of special status to his opinion, and i'm suggesting that, while his opinion is important and valuable, there are others in the community who are equally well-placed to offer good guidance. No. A project founder always has a greater gravitas. It's possible to destroy that gravitas through years of a consistent pattern of misbehavior, but Steve hasn't done that. finally, for effective leadership there also has to be the opportunity for people to *not* follow. if you want to follow someone's leadership that's fine. but please don't try to compel that followership onto others. Where does this WEIRD idea come from that I'm advocating that anybody be forced to do anything??? I've already said that the paragraph you quoted earlier was taken out of context and then misinterpreted. The OSM community is hostile to leadership even when that leadership merely renders advice. Frederick's advice to create a committee to provide leadership is not useful advice. SteveC (or you, or Shawn, or Andy) are willing to provide advice. The community has been told that anybody who takes advice is a sheep, or that we intentionally don't tag consistently and that's okay, or that we'll never ever do things that way here. I seem to have to repeat the disclaimer every couple of paragraphs: I'm not talking about forcing anybody to do anything. I AM talking about not denigrating the concept of leadership. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 2:06 PM, John Smith deltafoxtrot...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/10/3 Roy Wallace waldo000...@gmail.com: Frederik's point is valid - if you want a tagging committee/working group/whatever, start one. If you want an international tagging committee, start one. If it's better than the current arrangement, mappers will flock to it. No they won't, they'll think their idea is better and you'll end up with 250 or more ways of doing the same thing. Do you realise that the only alternative to voluntary adoption is enforcement? Do you really want to force your idea on others even if they think their idea is better? /No thanks/. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 10/3/09, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: Matt Amos writes: I point to the +1 year age of the Noname proposal and recent inactivity and suggest that convergance isn't happening. maybe there isn't a need for convergence here? we've got a nonames map to help mappers decide where their time might be well-spent. And well-spent and well-spent and well-spent, as mappers repeatedly home in on roads which have no name, and no way to tell the nonames map that there is in fact no name. So they put in name=Fiddle-de-Faddle Street and gee, nonames stops marking it as not having a name. WIN! Can I prove that this has happened? No. And that's the problem. If it happened, then we now have a namless road which is named only in OSM. I can understand mistakes and omissions. I can't understand why people would advocate FOR error. no one is advocating for error. you seem to be advocating for a tag with the sole purpose of not rendering something in a single renderer. to me, that seems wrong. The claim was made that convergance happens automatically, with no guidance. I've presented an example where it doesn't, and now you're trying to say that when convergance doesn't happen, it's because convergance isn't necessary. let me put it a different way: maybe convergence hasn't happened *yet*. maybe there isn't the impetus from mappers and tool-makers to converge any quicker? i don't consider complaining on the mailing lists / irc to be impetus. what works is either well-reasoned arguments or alternative actions, such as building your own nonames layer that takes the noname=yes tag into account. steve is perfectly able to weigh in on one side of the argument or other. Actually, not, he's not. He's told me that he's tried doing that, and when he does, he's told that he's shilling for Cloudmade, or that he's evil, or that he has a portal to hell in his basement, or in his attic or wherever, or that he's breeding strange conglomeration animals. he's perfectly able - he just doesn't want to. i fully understand and commiserate the reasons why he doesn't, along with you. and he *is* breeding strange conglomeration animals, see the attachment to [1], a picture i helped him take. very exciting genius research ;-) where we're disagreeing is that you're suggesting some sort of special status to his opinion, and i'm suggesting that, while his opinion is important and valuable, there are others in the community who are equally well-placed to offer good guidance. No. A project founder always has a greater gravitas. It's possible to destroy that gravitas through years of a consistent pattern of misbehavior, but Steve hasn't done that. we'll have to agree to disagree. i don't think that steve's status as founder gives him any special insight above and beyond his natural intelligence. finally, for effective leadership there also has to be the opportunity for people to *not* follow. if you want to follow someone's leadership that's fine. but please don't try to compel that followership onto others. Where does this WEIRD idea come from that I'm advocating that anybody be forced to do anything??? I've already said that the paragraph you quoted earlier was taken out of context and then misinterpreted. note that i didn't say forced this time, but i do get the impression that you're suggesting that people should be told what to do and how to tag. here are some more (potentially out-of-context) quotes, which have helped me form this impression: So, Steve, would you PLEASE tell us what the canonical binary true and false values should be? And when you're done there, would you choose one of the schemes for marking a highway or a bridleway with no name? The reason [the tagging debate] eternal is because there's no one to choose. No, I'm saying that mountain=green and mountain=viridian are the same thing, but that when SteveC tells us to use green we should use green. So, when we have true/false, yes/no, and 0/1, then damnit, we should look to SteveC to pick one of them as arbitrarily as if he was picking between mountain=green and mountain=blue. I suggest instead that in cases such as these, SteveC should bless one of them with his Holy Water of Antioch (and the number of the tags shall be 3, no more and no less). His blessing will tip the stable disconvergance in one direction. The OSM community is hostile to leadership even when that leadership merely renders advice. Frederick's advice to create a committee to provide leadership is not useful advice. maybe the community feels that such leadership advice is not useful advice, just as you feel towards frederik's advice? SteveC (or you, or Shawn, or Andy) are willing to provide advice. The community has been told that anybody who takes advice is a sheep, or that we intentionally don't tag consistently and that's okay, or that we'll never ever do things that way here. you're
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/4 Roy Wallace waldo000...@gmail.com: Do you realise that the only alternative to voluntary adoption is enforcement? Do you really want to force your idea on others even if they think their idea is better? /No thanks/. That isn't the only alternative, you always have carrots not just sticks. The carrot in this case is having things render properly is a very good incentive for people to tag things in a certain way. While they're still free to tag anyway they want it doesn't mean their ideas will be rendered. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/4 Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com: The OSM community is hostile to leadership even when that leadership merely renders advice. Frederick's advice to create a committee to I think the problem here isn't the OSM community, but a vocal minority that don't want anything but the status quo, and while techniques and methods that have worked well in the past are now more likely to actively discourage innovation because people won't want to do them if their efforts will be for nothing, or they will need to do double or tripple the work to keep up with who ever is the most voicetress today. There will always be a vocal minority, it doesn't mean they are right or they are speaking for the majority, they are just shouting the loudest. tag consistently and that's okay, or that we'll never ever do things that way here. I've seen this in other threads and just because something was done in a particular way in the past is an appeal to authority and not a rational reason why other ideas should be immediately shouted down. If things were to always stay the same we'd be still in horse and buggies because that's how people used to do it for 1000s of years and it worked well so why exactly did we move away from something that was working very well? Because something better came along and by the vocal minority stiffling the same innovation they claim to be saving it does no one any good because the same endless debates just keep reoccuring because there is no rational or logical reason why things can't be different it's just some people have a mindset that they're horse and cart is the only way to do things. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/4 Matt Amos zerebub...@gmail.com: no one is advocating for error. you seem to be advocating for a tag with the sole purpose of not rendering something in a single renderer. to me, that seems wrong. I use a similar feature in JOSM to show me unnamed streets to know which ones still need to be named, I think potlatch has a similar feature and if all three things used the same mechanism to remove warnings about streets that have no name is it still tagging for a single renderer? arguments or alternative actions, such as building your own nonames layer that takes the noname=yes tag into account. I wonder if that is documented anywhere, so bugs can be filed against various pieces of software. he's perfectly able - he just doesn't want to. i fully understand and commiserate the reasons why he doesn't, along with you. and he *is* I certainly wouldn't want to be in his position, any time anyone mentions something the vocal minority doesn't like they hound them, or at least try to intimidate people into their way of thinking. we'll have to agree to disagree. i don't think that steve's status as founder gives him any special insight above and beyond his natural intelligence. I think it's classified as first mover advantage, but I agree with you founding something doesn't mean you are a natural born leader, which seems to be the problem here. note that i didn't say forced this time, but i do get the impression that you're suggesting that people should be told what to do and how to tag. here are some more (potentially out-of-context) quotes, which have helped me form this impression: Do you disagree that something needs to be done about all the dead lock, if so what is your suggestion? maybe the community feels that such leadership advice is not useful advice, just as you feel towards frederik's advice? Something needs to change, the status quo only leads to lots of the same emails, so the status quo isn't working out as much as some would like to think it is. you're the only one saying anybody who takes advice is a sheep. i can only find 4 uses of the word sheep in this thread. the first by frederik and the remaining 3 by you. I think he's referring to other threads, although I haven't searched the mailing list to confirm this. then we're in complete agreement; steve (and everyone else) should be able to say what they like and give whatever advice they think is fitting without fear of ad-hominem attacks. also, that there should be This is slightly disturbing, I mean if people have to resort to personal attacks because they have no standing in logic it seems they should be the ones being told to cut the nonsense out and this is one reason a committee is a better solution in this case so you don't have one person sticking their neck out waiting to have it swiped at with an axe. no compulsion on anyone to take one person's advice over any other's on the basis of their position within the project, rather than the merit of what their advice. Except the merit most of the time isn't examined if the status quo is likely to be effected. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Andrew Errington writes: 1) The street has no name (and you might hum a tune by U2) 2) The street has a name but it has not been recorded Either way, it doesn't matter. E, no, it really does matter. If I am a map user then I can not intuit whether the name is missing, or there just isn't one. If there should be a name it's too bad. I can't do anything about it. In particular, if it's a street I'm looking for then I will be frustrated if I later learn that the unnamed street was the one I wanted, but again, it's too bad. There's another case you haven't considered. If you're looking at OSM and you see a street with no name, then as you're driving down the street, in your case 1, you would expect to see a street without street signs, but in case 2, you wouldn't know whether to expect a street sign or not. If I am a map maker then I know whether or not the street has a name, because I've been there and seen it. I can look at the map and see that this street has no name, but I know that it does. So I will edit the data to make it right. This also covers the case where the name is wrong, or misspelled. There's another case you haven't considered. If you are a map maker and are looking at OSM data and see no name, then you don't know if that street sign needs to be added or if it's simply missing. If the former, then it's worth a jaunt out to the road to fix it. If the former, then it's NOT worth a jaunt out there. So, it makes sense for both a map maker AND a map user to use noname=yes. I don't expect to extinguish the noname debate with my argument, Me neither. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Before we get too far, I want to say that I believe that OSM will NEVER be completely correct or consistent. Its correctness and consistency will fluctuate up and down depending on the expectations of the viewer. That said, I believe it a mistake to NOT have perfect consistency as a goal even though that goal cannot be achieved. If you don't know where you're going in the long term you'll likely go in circles in the short term. Like this discussion. Matt Amos writes: On 10/3/09, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: you seem to be advocating for a tag with the sole purpose of not rendering something in a single renderer. to me, that seems wrong. No, that's not the sole purpose. See my reply to Andrew which you should have already received. let me put it a different way: maybe convergence hasn't happened *yet*. That argument is not falsifiable; it is no argument at all. note that i didn't say forced this time, but i do get the impression that you're suggesting that people should be told what to do and how to tag. Yes. I believe in leadership. Imagine that. Google for Servant Leadership. Or find out how Quaker meeting's clerks operate. Same idea. The OSM community is hostile to leadership even when that leadership merely renders advice. Frederick's advice to create a committee to provide leadership is not useful advice. maybe the community feels that such leadership advice is not useful advice, just as you feel towards frederik's advice? Are you agreeing with me that the community is hostile to leadership? -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Markus Lindholm markus.lindh...@gmail.com wrote: Isn't it time that the governing board establishes a tagging council of some sort (SteveC can't possibly have time to take all decisions), with the mandate to maintain an official set of keys and values (for applicable keys). Wouldn't also be a good idea to establish a convention that keys that are not in the official set should be prefixed with an agreed upon string, e.g. custom:my_very_own_key=value I think you're on the wrong mailing list - this is the openstreetmap mailing list and that's not how we will ever do things. Cheers, Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Matt Amos wrote:
i absolutely agree. i'd also defend frederik's right to say this is
the Frederik Ramm approved tagging scheme without catching grief, or
andy to say it's the One True Gravitystorm way, etc... etc...
Now we're getting somewhere. This goes back to an idea floated a while
ago by RichardF, and mentioned by Harry Wood in his talk at SOTM - I
think it is called tags I use.
The idea behind that (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that anyone makes
their own decisions (just like now) and in cases where people think they
have a good definition they put this on some kind of special wiki page
or database or whatever (tags I use, and how I use them). Others can
then choose to follow someone else's definitions, or not, or follow a
mix, or create their own.
That's fine, so long as the tags themselves are namespaced. Otherwise,
just as now, the semantics get confused.
I.E, It should be the case that if I tag as
FredericRamm:interesting=true
then I'm using the definition of 'interesting' *owned* by
FredericRamm. But If I tag
Gravitystorm:interesting=true
I'm using the definition *owned* by the gravitystorm person or
persons. If I don't agree with the strict definition they're using,
then I must create my own. The owners of the tag have the absolute
right to say 'you have used my tag incorrectly'
This allows that
FredericRamm:interesting != Gravitystorm:interesting=true
However - if at a later date it is decided that really
FredericRamm:interesting === Gravitystorm:interesting=true, then you
could do a number of different things
a) Store an equivalence (as SteveC was saying)
b) Perform a subsumation by renaming all FredericRamm:interesting tags
to Gravitystorm:interesting tags, provided the owners of them were
happy to do so.
c) Perform a subsumation by renaming all {FredericRamm:interesting,
Gravitystorm:interesting} tags into something else - maybe
osm:interesting.
That way everyone can have their own sandbox, AND groups that want to
standardise can do so, without dictatorship or anarchy.
I'm ok with that kind of leadership where everyone can choose for
himself by whom he wants to be led. I'm just not ok with A and B
choosing a leader and C then has to follow.
My impression is that nobody wants to force anyone to do anything -
But - where you have a 'global' tag namespace, there's substantial
overloading when there's disagreement as to the semantics involved.
___
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Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/2 Andy Allan gravityst...@gmail.com: I think you're on the wrong mailing list - this is the openstreetmap mailing list and that's not how we will ever do things. I thought this was anything goes, why are you dictating something can't be done? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Different people can then experiment with different approaches to produce consistent datasets tailored to their own needs. They don't need to be proprietary - in fact, given the number of people around here talking about it I'd have hoped someone would have stepped up and produced a tailored dataset by now. Cheers, Andy Like tagging highway=path bicycle=yes instead of highway=cycleway? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 01/10/09 04:14, Russ Nelson wrote: I'm tired of this silly true/false 1/0 yes/no up/down left/right in/out fore/aft port/starboard debate/debacle. It's trivial, it's stupid, we could just as easily toss a coin as engage in any rational debate about how binary values should be expressed. This is just wrong. If SteveC says that mountain=green means that first there is a mountain, and that mountain=blue means there is no mountain, then damnit, we should do it that way. +2 :-) Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 01/10/09 04:26, John Smith wrote: I still like Shaun's idea of a committee We really, really need a committee to decide what values we are going to standardize for binary true and false? If that's true, we are doomed. How on earth are we going to make any difficult decisions stick? Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 01/10/09 10:40, Frederik Ramm wrote: If we have open issues in the community that we cannot find a good solution to, then the reason for this is not that we simply lack a good Führer who tells us what is right and what is wrong; Frederik, I may be entering dangerous waters here, but I'm wondering if this comment of yours reveals quite a lot. You need to distinguish between good leadership and bad leadership. Good leadership sometimes tells people to do things they don't agree with. Calling all such leadership Nazi is not productive. I'm now wondering whether it's a coincidence that you work for yourself rather than for someone else :-) Good leadership is not the same as makes decisions Frederik agrees with. Good leadership is not the same as only making decisions which are easy because everyone agrees. Good leadership is leadership which furthers the mission of the organization. If Steve said that green and blue were the correct database values for true and false, then I'd write five lines of translation code for JOSM which meant it showed up in the JOSM UI as true and false, and then I would be very thankful that the decision had been made and all the automated scripts I'd written to use OSM data didn't have to check for 21 different values of false any more. And I'd accept his decision on the basis that any decision, in this case, is better than no decision, and that I trust him to have good reasons for making it the way he did. Having said that, I am also pretty sure he wouldn't say that. it is because these issues are difficult and the community is perhaps divided about it. We do not need anybody to make a decision in these cases; that doesn't help at all. No, it's precisely what we need. things simpler. It seems that you would prefer a wrong decision over no decision at all - but why do we need decisions at all? If there are issues where the community cannot make up their mind, can you not just live with that and arrange your technology in a way to deal with that? Because that way lies misery and code complexity. More examples from the Mozilla project: if one vocal group want something one way, and another vocal group want something the other way in Firefox, the _worst_ thing you can do is make it a preference so that both sides can have what they want. That just makes everyone's life more difficult, because there are now two code paths to test and maintain. Multiply this up by a number of decisions and you get complexity explosion. If I were considering using OSM data in my business, I would consider it laughable that after 5 years there had not yet been a decision on what value or small set of values I needed to look for on boolean attributes to see whether they were true or false. Laughable. Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 02/10/09 10:10, Andy Allan wrote: The alternative to forcing arbitrary rules of consistency on our volunteers is to acknowledge that OSM is in fact inconsistently tagged, and chill out about the whole thing. Different people can then experiment with different approaches to produce consistent datasets tailored to their own needs. They don't need to be proprietary - in fact, given the number of people around here talking about it I'd have hoped someone would have stepped up and produced a tailored dataset by now. There's a giant assumption behind this, and that is that the information necessary to produce a tailored and consistent dataset has been preserved. Say there was an Andy Allan scheme of tagging which rated highways from 1 (biggest) to 10 (smallest). There's also a Gervase Markham scheme of tagging which rates them from 1 (smallest) to 10 (biggest). How does one produce a consistent data set out of that, without knowing the preferences of every OSM member as to whether they use Andy Allan tagging or Gervase Markham tagging? This example is obviously extreme to make the point, which is this: unless there is agreement on what the values mean for particular keys, information is lost which cannot be retrieved. If one person's highway=tertiary is another person's highway=unclassified, then what do you do? Gerv ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Gervase Markham schrieb: On 01/10/09 04:26, John Smith wrote: I still like Shaun's idea of a committee We really, really need a committee to decide what values we are going to standardize for binary true and false? If that's true, we are doomed. How on earth are we going to make any difficult decisions stick? I guess you were absent from the list, the wiki and the OSM data for at least a year or so ... ;-) The funny thing is, most of the decisions are actually not difficult. But, as we have no decision making process, we are doomed to make the decisions again and again and again - unfortunately each time probably with a different result. Regards, ULFL ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
2009/10/2 Gervase Markham gerv-gm...@gerv.net: If I were considering using OSM data in my business, I would consider it laughable that after 5 years there had not yet been a decision on what value or small set of values I needed to look for on boolean attributes to see whether they were true or false. Laughable. If it is so bad why is there a complete refusal to actually do anything other than write emails to the list? Just start making the decisions and build the thing on top of OSM. It wouldn't even be that difficult to start off. Just take planet.osm and strip unapproved tags and build up from there. Who knows, you might even be able to get an account on the dev server to do it on. If it is a genuine improvement for people using the data it should not be that hard to get people involved and using it. It's obvious now that this isn't going to just appear within OSM one day. It will have to be built up along side at least until it is shown to be an improvement. That's if it even needs to be part of OSM at all. If mapnic can run off the planet and diffs why couldn't this? -- DavidD ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Gerv, Gervase Markham wrote: I may be entering dangerous waters here, but I'm wondering if this comment of yours reveals quite a lot. Before I discuss the contents of your message, a quick word about style: It may be your way to try and understand a conversation by looking not at what has been said, but at who said it and what that might reveal about their personal situation, upbringing, education, employment or other circumstances. I'm used to this from previous discussions in which you participiated, but I still don't find it (morally or intellectually) acceptable to talk about what you think a posting reveals about its author. This is off-topic and useless at best, insulting at worst, and reflects poorly on your intellectual ability to engage in factual discourse. You need to distinguish between good leadership and bad leadership. Good leadership sometimes tells people to do things they don't agree with. Because the leader is the intellectual visionary and the sheep cannot be expected to have the information or the intellectual capacity to understand. Yes, that is true with many religious, political, or business leaders of past and present. More examples from the Mozilla project Frankly, I think it may be a mistake to try an apply experience from the Mozilla project to OSM. I think there are vast differences between our projects on various levels, and it would be wrong to say well they're both large projects to do with computers so they must be somehow the same. I agree that if you write a piece of software, it makes sense to make UI decisions and give your software a certain character instead of trying to be all kinds to all people. If I were with the Firefox development team, I'd also tend to say: Ok, let's do it *this* way and if people don't like it, let them choose another browser. rather than make Firefox into some kind of browser development environment. I just don't think this is a lesson that can be transferred to OSM in a meaningful way. If I were considering using OSM data in my business, I would consider it laughable that after 5 years there had not yet been a decision on what value or small set of values I needed to look for on boolean attributes to see whether they were true or false. Laughable. On the face of it, this true/false thing is really not a big deal and we would be truly stupid to waste so much time discussing it. Even the hardcore freeform tagging people, among whom I count myself, would not suffer if, for some reason, there was only true/false to choose from for boolean values. What we're seeing here is a discussion about a *principle*. We're not discussing about the individual question of whether boolean values should be restrained to two values. Behind the scenes linger the much lager questions of: * who has the power to decide which values are allowed for a certain tag? who would decree that oneway is boolean? * how is that codified in our software? * how is that codified in our social structures (votes, elections, who is allowed how many votes, who decides who has how many votes and how does the appeal process work)? * what happens if someone thinks they need an exemption from the rule? * what is the balance of power between mapper and user interests in OSM? * ... I continue to think that calling for a strong leader to make a decision is seeking the easy way out (just as easy a way out as the oh well let's just add a user preference way out in application design). I think that this often amounts to a kind of unreflected it has always been this way in the world so it will be the same with OSM attitude. I think it is a big challenge to try and remain the open project we are and all these we just need someone to make a decision so we can move on issues are temptations allowing us to take a wrong turn. There may really be a few cases where we just need to make a decision and move on but I think that every single one of them has to be very carefully worked out and debated, rather than summarily deferred to a strong leader who has the ultimate say. We have, time and time again, debated tagging rules. Some people, including you, tirelessly (well, more or less) campaigned for stricter rules, with a tight voting system and all. Others, including me, were of the laissez-faire disposition. I think that if some people devised a set of tagging rules or recommendations and laid it out in a structured way, including rules on how to create, discuss, amend the definitions, there would really be demand for that inside OSM. Many people would use that set of recommendations and participate in its development. If desired, those adhering to that set of recommendations could put something on their OSM user page saying this user adheres to the tagging committee rules. Bots could be put up that take anything edited by these people and fix it if it doesn't match the rules they say they follow. These rules could of
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 9:08 AM, Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org wrote: I really do encourage you and all those calling for leadership to get together, form your own advisory board or tagging committee or whatever, create the structures you think are required, and then offer them for voluntary use by the community. +1. Get on with it. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Jukka Rahkonen writes: You seem to believe that SteveC would make such a decision that makes you happy. How about if he says that if you want people to continue working with OSM in creative, productive, or unexpected ways then true/false, yes/no, and 0/1 issue must be tolerated. That's okay, too. What I want, what I REALLY want, is for SteveC to be able to exercise leadership without being told that he's evil for doing so. There's a set of people who feel that mappers shouldn't be given guidance, because if they accidentally don't follow it, they'll feel bad and might stop mapping. But there's also a set of mappers who are editing because they want to create the best map possible. We change true and 1 to yes when we edit something. And we want to know what is the proper way to mark a road as having no name. Going to the wiki and finding nine different schemes (none of which are supported by the Noname renderer) is not helpful. I'm 100% in favor of freedom. I'm 100% in favor of free-form tagging. But I'm also 100% in favor of guidance from experienced editors. Oh, to hell with it. I'll just mark the damned road noname=yes, and if you find a road with no name and YOU mark it noname=yes, then good for you. And if not, then I don't have to cooperate with you either. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 03/10/2009, at 7:02 AM, Gervase Markham wrote: More examples from the Mozilla project: if one vocal group want something one way, and another vocal group want something the other way in Firefox, the _worst_ thing you can do is make it a preference so that both sides can have what they want. That just makes everyone's life more difficult, because there are now two code paths to test and maintain. Multiply this up by a number of decisions and you get complexity explosion. That mostly works because you're talking about code, not paragraphs of description of what a tag means. If they're knowledgeable enough to figure it out, two people reading a chunk of code should come up the same idea of what it does, which doesn't happen with tag descriptions. If a tagging overlord who happens to be English writes a description of a tag, I can pretty much guarantee that some native English speakers from another country (e.g. Australia or the US) will read it a different way, or people who have English as a second language will rad it a different way. If we wanted to go the tagging-committee route, I think that voting people on to it is the wrong things to do. Geographical and cultural diversity is much more important than how many votes you get, otherwise you'll end up with a group that doesn't include large potions of the world. If I were considering using OSM data in my business, I would consider it laughable that after 5 years there had not yet been a decision on what value or small set of values I needed to look for on boolean attributes to see whether they were true or false. Laughable. As people pointed out the true/yes/1 things isn't really what we're arguing about, it's the principle of how we decide things. What does forest mean, or residential, in a global sense that can be explained to everyone? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Frederik said All this is possible *within* the existing OSM framework and without any strong leader telling us where to go. I really do encourage you and all those calling for leadership to get together, form your own advisory board or tagging committee or whatever, create the structures you think are required, and then offer them for voluntary use by the community. This is likely to result in several insular communities. In particular I am considering that au mappers would write a tight set of guidelines for mapping and, as an example, we wouldn't have to worry about residential vs unclassified in rural areas for any other country - we would define our own strategy and stick to it. If Au does that, and the Argentinians make their own set of preferences, and other groups do the same, we will have a project with multiple forks. I don't really want to split the project, but if it becomes the only way to peace it will happen by itself. Liz ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Gervase Markham writes: Good leadership is not the same as makes decisions Frederik agrees with. Good leadership is not the same as only making decisions which are easy because everyone agrees. Good leadership is leadership which furthers the mission of the organization. +1 -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Russ Nelson wrote: Dave F. writes: This is just wrong. If SteveC says that mountain=green means that first there is a mountain, and that mountain=blue means there is no mountain, then damnit, we should do it that way. Sheesh, has Donovan lost all his currency? Oh my Lord, you've completely missed the point. Errr, no, I agree with you. Just a Yes or No - Did you receive my personal email? Dave F. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On Sat, Oct 3, 2009 at 10:57 AM, ed...@billiau.net wrote: Frederik said All this is possible *within* the existing OSM framework and without any strong leader telling us where to go. I really do encourage you and all those calling for leadership to get together, form your own advisory board or tagging committee or whatever, create the structures you think are required, and then offer them for voluntary use by the community. This is likely to result in several insular communities. In particular I am considering that au mappers would write a tight set of guidelines for mapping and, as an example, we wouldn't have to worry about residential vs unclassified in rural areas for any other country - we would define our own strategy and stick to it. If Au does that, and the Argentinians make their own set of preferences, and other groups do the same, we will have a project with multiple forks. I don't really want to split the project, but if it becomes the only way to peace it will happen by itself. I think we are quite capable of (voluntarily) collaboration across country borders without needing an authority figure to enforce it. Frederik's point is valid - if you want a tagging committee/working group/whatever, start one. If you want an international tagging committee, start one. If it's better than the current arrangement, mappers will flock to it. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Liz, ed...@billiau.net wrote: This is likely to result in several insular communities. In particular I am considering that au mappers would write a tight set of guidelines for mapping and, as an example, we wouldn't have to worry about residential vs unclassified in rural areas for any other country - we would define our own strategy and stick to it. In general, I think that this is a good thing. You know best how to deal with roads in .au; you know what *you* need to map to make the data useful for you - and not some tagging committee from England which tries to accommodate Argentinia as well. If I, as a tourist, should visit Australia, would I prefer a map made by a world-wide consortium who tries to streamline every national idiosyncracy into their scheme, or would I prefer a map made by locals? I think that's one of the great strengths of OSM that we have the local knowledge on our side. I have often said, and do so again, that regional diversity is not necessarily a bad thing and certainly not something that needs to be eradicated for the sake of conformism - it can be dealt with on another layer (for example the likeness thing that Steve recently mentioned). If there is a possible problem with my suggestion then that would not regional tagging differences, but various schools of tagging evolving and being used in one and the same area. But I think that would sort itself out come time and anyway, we're not even there yet. If Au does that, and the Argentinians make their own set of preferences, and other groups do the same, we will have a project with multiple forks. No, just regional diversity. I would somewhat expect the Australian tourist, out of respect, to not apply their home tagging rules when they map in Argentinia, but have a look around and do as the locals do. (As most of us, I am sure, already do today!) Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Frederik Ramm wrote: On the face of it, this true/false thing is really not a big deal and we would be truly stupid to waste so much time discussing it. Frederik, why can't you understand? The problem is /not /about the differences between True/False, but the *similarities* between True/Yes/1. It's VERY simple. Dave F. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Roy Wallace writes: I think we are quite capable of (voluntarily) collaboration across country borders without needing an authority figure to enforce it. Good! Collaborate on this and remove 8 of 9 proposals: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Noname I'm not holding my breath. -- --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com Crynwr supports open source software 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241 Potsdam, NY 13676-3213 | Sheepdog ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
On 10/3/09, Russ Nelson nel...@crynwr.com wrote: Jukka Rahkonen writes: You seem to believe that SteveC would make such a decision that makes you happy. How about if he says that if you want people to continue working with OSM in creative, productive, or unexpected ways then true/false, yes/no, and 0/1 issue must be tolerated. That's okay, too. What I want, what I REALLY want, is for SteveC to be able to exercise leadership without being told that he's evil for doing so. i agree - there's nothing constructive about ad-hominem attacks. if steve wants to breed dinosaur-spider-monkeys in the privacy of his own home, that's noone's business but his. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BauW170B.jpg There's a set of people who feel that mappers shouldn't be given guidance, because if they accidentally don't follow it, they'll feel bad and might stop mapping. this is a nonsense straw man. But there's also a [non-disjoint] set of mappers who are editing because they want to create the best map possible. there's also a set of people who feel that mappers are perfectly able to judge for themselves which guidance is worth following and which isn't. this set is a subset of those who want to create the best map possible. We change true and 1 to yes when we edit something. And we want to know what is the proper way to mark a road as having no name. Going to the wiki and finding nine different schemes (none of which are supported by the Noname renderer) is not helpful. are you suggesting that the best way forward is for some authority to decree that there is One True Way of tagging noname roads and forcing all mappers, editors and renderers to support it? it might be helpful if the wiki documented the guidance of experienced mappers, rather than the free-for-all of half-baked ideas that it seems to have become. I'm 100% in favor of freedom. I'm 100% in favor of free-form tagging. But I'm also 100% in favor of guidance from experienced editors. then why suggest placing any one person in an exalted leadership position? guidance from experienced editors - we've got lots of that, and sometimes they disagree. assuming that people can't make judgements of their own about these issues is patronising. Oh, to hell with it. I'll just mark the damned road noname=yes, and if you find a road with no name and YOU mark it noname=yes, then good for you. And if not, then I don't have to cooperate with you either. if mappers tag the way they feel is best and the tool authors (i.e: nonames layer) consume the tags in the way they feel is best then the two will converge, as long as everyone keeps an open mind and refrains from childish antagonism. cheers, matt ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] SteveC should decide
Russ Nelson wrote: There's a set of people who feel that mappers shouldn't be given guidance, because if they accidentally don't follow it, they'll feel bad and might stop mapping. But there's also a set of mappers who are editing because they want to create the best map possible. Russ, whilst I agree with you about guidance, I'm unsure why you feel the three groups of people you describe above are disparate. Surely they are all out to (hopefully) create the best map? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
