On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 4:43 PM, elvin ibbotson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > From: Sebastian Spaeth <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: 30 May 2008 14:16:59 BDT > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] National borders in the British Islands > > elvin ibbotson wrote: > > As I understand it the numbers are not the problem, it > arises from people not knowing which is the right number to use (eg. > England/Scotland border admin_level 2 or 4?). This is why I think > numbers are useful in the data but users should not have to know what > numbers to use. Rather they should be presented with choices using words > they understand which then put the right numbers in the database. > > The problem is not at all about whether you let user choose a number or > from a list of wordings. The issue at hand here is whether Wales country > border is of the same type as Austria's is. > > It's true this was the original issue, and (as I have already said) I would > rank the Welsh and Scottish borders at the same level as US states, but my > contributions have been about the way the admin_level is presented to the > user. > > This is what wars are fought over and you cannot solve the issue by > either numbers or by having people select from a list "municipal" or > "country" border. > > Yes, I'm sure they would rather pick from such a menu. Mapping to the > relevant boundary and admin_level tags should be trivial as the wiki > page manages it. I'm sure implementations are welcome. > > The issue is not at all whether there's a nice drop down list or not. > People work already using descriptions on the wiki. > > I for one do not want to have to be flicking backwards and forwards between > wiki pages looking up the correct tagging convention when I am trying to > edit the map. I much prefer simply choosing from the options Potlatch or > JOSM present to me. Unfortunately, all to often, you need to consult the > wiki and I believe this is likely to put a lot of new users off. I was told > only a very small proportion of people who register as users are actually > active in building the map. This could be one of the reasons why. The > key=value tag approach is great for extending OSM into specialist fields or > adding metadata but the core properties have to be standardised. That is why > we have the guides on the wiki and arguments over the uses of these tags. I > just think there could be improvements to the way the core tags are handled > in the database and editor software, is all :-)
The only part of this where you are causing controversy is where you talk about the database. The idea of editors providing better tagging support is a good one that would be welcomed by many people, and a fairly standardised core tag set is generally what we currently have (if a bit crap in places, and not necessarily well supported by the editors atm). As for the mappers to users ratio, well, historically it's running at about 1 in 10. That's based on the rolling month edit stats that the server produces every day... there are probably more semi-active mappers who aren't contributing every month. I don't think that's actually too bad considering. It would be interesting to see why the other 9/10 people haven't continued, but we'd probably have to spam them with a survey to find out. I'd wouldn't be surprised if the learning curve was a big factor. Dave _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
