On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 3:07 PM, Michal Migurski <[email protected]> wrote: > > It'd be interesting if the limit was in some way discoverable. I understand > that it's not a game, but it would be immensely helpful if the back-off > message was advisory rather than punitive. I can imagine this being expressed > as HTTP headers that let you know how long to wait until your next request, > or how close a client is to being blocked. I can adapt to whatever the > current limitations are, but only if they're communicated in a > machine-parseable way.
The risk with setting quantified guidelines is that somebody will interpret that limit as either a promise of performance or a maximum acceptable use of resources. Then a few hundred more iWhatever applications will make the same "reasonable" demands on OSM resources and be upset that we're hurting their business model when we move the guidelines down, or cut them off without notice. OSM must support mappers first. And mappers love to see their edits appear on tiles. Therefore we must provide tiles to mappers. Any application or use that interferes with resources for mappers must be routed around. Yes, providing tiles for the curious newcomer, casual user, and busy entrepreneur is useful promotion of OSM. But it can not be at the expense of mappers. Blocks, to date, have only been applied to users who lie vastly outside of the average user. The very smallest fraction of one percent of all users, consuming an enormous relative percentage of the resources. This is not to say that the api / tile limits can't be discoverable. Just that any fixed guidelines for non-editor use will hurt OSM long-term. _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
