Shaun McDonald schrieb: > In my opinion the voting process is broken, as it can potentially vote > in proposals that will break backwards compatibility and require > extensively more complex processing of the data. Take for example: > http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Proposed_features/Status
Yes, proposals can break backwards compatiblity. I do not believe this is a bad thing at all – if a new concept is better than an old one, then maintaining b.c. is the last thing I want, especially in a project with as random and insufficient “standards” as ours. That is not to say that b.c. isn't desirable, but it should by no means be required for new ideas. Moreover, the possibility to break b.c. is not limited to proposals – the competing concepts of “just add it to the wiki” and “just use it” can break b.c. as well, if not easier. I readily admit that voting has its flaws. Looking at the quoted proposal, you'll find that two of those who voted against it (Nibblenibble and Basemonkey) have only a single contribution in the wiki – the vote –[1], have created their accounts the same day they voted[2] and have cast their votes within 30 minutes from each other. Also, at the time of this writing, no OSM accounts exist whose names correspond to these wiki accounts. The two still might be legit voters (and when in doubt, it's probably fair to assume they are), but it's impossible to tell. But even this doesn't mean that voting is useless. The RFC+voting serves as a way to initiate discussion, collect ideas and encourage sufficient documentation. We are not talking about legally binding decisions here, it's just a tool for these purposes. And if someone has better tools to offer, I will prefer these, of course. It's just that this hasn't happened yet. Tordanik [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Special:Contributions/Nibblenibble http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Special:Contributions/Basemonkey [2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php?title=Special:Log&user=Nibblenibble http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php?title=Special:Log&user=Nibblenibble _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
