On Mon, Oct 7, 2019 at 3:13 PM Michael Patrick <[email protected]> wrote:
> rarely are doers and users exposed to the full complexity, just the simple > subset of what is needed for a particular use case. I think that's a claim that needs to be demonstrated. Certainly, the complexity of the contact:* schema and the variety of both editors and data consumers has proven to be a barrier to widespread acceptance. > '... many on both sides who insist that their way is the one true way' is > essentially a manifestation of of the 'Blind men and an elephant' ( > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_men_and_an_elephant#The_parable ) > situation. While all the blind men will never agree, if the blind men with > the ear, the trunk, and the tusk ask questions of someone that can see the > whole elephant, they can come up with a functional meaning that covers the at > least the head. There's probably no 'tagging' situation in OSM that wasn't > solved by the resolution of Electronic data interchange (EDI) issues in the > period between 1970 to 1998. Reconciling an EDI standard with a 'folksonomy' rather boggles the mind. It would perhaps have been better had OSM started with more structure than a bucket of 'keyword=value' tags, but it didn't. (Moreover, since the space of feature types being mapped is still expanding, the space of available tags needs to expand with it; a fixed schema isn't quite going to work.) Of course, pursuing tagging uniformity within reason is a worthy goal, and I'm convinced you're on the side of the angels, but it's likely to be a long uphill road to get from where we are to where you want to be. Also, obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/927/ -- 73 de ke9tv/2, Kevin _______________________________________________ Tagging mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
