Martin Koppenhoefer <[email protected]> wrote: > 2012/1/24 Jonathan Bennett <[email protected]>: > > On 24/01/2012 11:22, Martin Koppenhoefer wrote: > >> I wonder if this kind of tagging should be tolerated. In the wiki I > >> found no documentation regarding this tag, and therefore this data > >> seems unusable for most mappers. > > > > Perhaps not, but systematically removing it won't improve anything > > (since most apps will just ignore the tags), and will actually > increase > > the amount of storage needed (since a new version of the objects in > > question will be created). > > > > We have (or at least, should have) a simple principle in OSM: Ignore > > what you don't understand. That applies to mappers and to > applications > > using the data. The alternative is edit wars where one mapper things > a > > particular tag -- that otherwise does them no harm -- is "wrong" and > > starts removing them and their creator puts them back. > > > While I understand the idea behind (deletions also occupy space/need > computing power, at least if performed via the API), I still feel that > we should have a policy to request tags and values to be human > readable. > > How would you improve / modify (say split) an object where you don't > understand part of the tags applied to it? > > Imagine that this tendency grows stronger and a few imports later our > db would have more crypted keys then "readable" ones. If osm is about > open data, it should be really open, not only freely available but > unusable because crypted. Why should we use free and open ressources > to distribute free-but-not-open content? > > cheers, > Martin >
In cases where data is arranged in multiple tables, and the purpose of a particular field is to link two tables together, rather than directly describing an attribute, it is best to use an otherwise-arbitrary numeric value as the link value. That way, updating the descriptive fields doesn't break the link. Also, it is best to have an attribute described in just one of a group of associated records; otherwise, it is easy to get contradictions. -- John F. Eldredge -- [email protected] "Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
