Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[Russ Nelson]

Tobias Knerr writes:
 > Frederik Ramm:
 > > (5) Never ever invent a tag that you don't have a concrete use for.
 > 
 > "Never plan ahead, always wait until there are thousands of existing
 > tags that make creating a better solution harder"?

I believe this to be a misconception.  If there are five tags, all of
which have the same semantics, what harm is caused?  Perhaps there are
five ways to label this meaning.  For ease of editing, people should
use the tag they remember.

In time, people will discover that the semantics are identical
(probably users of the map data), and will edit the wiki documentation
for each tag, pointing to the other tags.  They'll tell $STEVEC and
he'll check to see if one use is dominating (e.g. yes), and if so, ask
that people not use the uncommon tags (e.g. true and 0).

 > Of course, I simply invented something to express this,

And did you document it in the wiki?  If not, then how is anybody else
to discern your meaning?  By reverse-engineering the tags into your
meaning?  But they weren't at your traffic island and don't know
exactly what you're trying to model.  Chances are good that they'll
think of something else whose attributes match your tags.  So they'll
be modelling one thing and you'll be modelling something else using
the same tags.

-- 
--my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
Crynwr supports open source software
521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241
Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog   

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[malenki]

Russ Nelson wrote:

>5) If you disagree with the definition of the key or value, then
>create a new key or value with a different name, use it in your
>editing, document it in the wiki, AND (this is important) put a link
>to it in the definition that you disagree with.

Tonight I was pointed to
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Tag:highway%3Dpath
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/DE:Germany_roads_tagging#kombinierte_Rad-.2FFu.C3.9Fwege
(sorry it's german, but don't have an other example atm.
Seems $somebody has said at the wiki that mapping cycleways with
highway=path and foot=designated bicycle=yes 
is a good idea, because highway=footway and highway=cycleway won't work
that for since they are used for "other things" a lot.
Awful!

So now one (I guess its me) has to put things back to the tags which
should be used the things for they were invented and not for the things
users use them as "works for me".

So far this quick shot.

Regards
malenki


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[edodd]

> Lester Caine wrote:
>> We still have not come to any consensus on the general points of mapping
>> and who is in charge so a dictate from above TELLING us to move to a new
>> list seems somewhat out of place?
>>
> I guess it's a matter of perception.
> You see a dictate from above TELLING you to do something.
> I see a fellow osm'er trying to help the community that has been a wee
> bit fraught of late.
>


It actually is another facet of the problem of *governance*.
I haven't checked whether the same people who want to make alterations to
the talk list are the same set / an intersecting set / not the same set as
those who advocate totally freeform tagging. Checking that won't change -
the basic problem is governance.

I'm sure that in three months a lot of tagging discussions will have
migrated from this list to the newer list.

If we then make a governance list, there will be nothing left for this
list to talk about at all




___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[Rob]

Lester Caine wrote:
> We still have not come to any consensus on the general points of mapping 
> and who is in charge so a dictate from above TELLING us to move to a new 
> list seems somewhat out of place?
>   
I guess it's a matter of perception.
You see a dictate from above TELLING you to do something.
I see a fellow osm'er trying to help the community that has been a wee 
bit fraught of late.

It seems like normal mailing list etiquette to me. If one area or 
sub-topic, albeit a very important one, is dominating the list and is 
prone long drawn out discussions then it seems sensible to move it to 
its own list so those who want to take part can and those who don't want 
to don't get mailbox-ache.

It seems to work reasonably well for the legal mailing list, why not 
tagging?

rcr




___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[Apollinaris Schoell]

On 8 Oct 2009, at 22:45 , Russ Nelson wrote:

> I considered doing so, but this issue is larger than tagging.  Do you
> have anything to contribute other than stop energy to my suggestion?
>

you want to move a bit away from the anarchy but don't agree this  
discussion should be in the list where it belongs?
how do you expect anything will change?

for the topic itself there isn't much to add. It is well written and  
for my impression a majority of mappers is doing exactly this already  
for a long time.
The documentation part could need a rework. So if you have energy left  
put all this on the wiki into the best practices pages, crosslink  
wherever it makes sense ...
discussing on talk is useless as the last months have shown. many  
complaints about the current status but no action. Only once for the  
highway thread someone stood up, changed the wiki and got it voted.
Sure voting isn't a good solution but it's the best we have for new  
tags. old tags speak for themselves in tagwatch.
Having good docu in the wiki helps everyone and beginners will always  
start from there.


> Apollinaris Schoell writes:
>> can you move this thread to the new list where it belongs?
>
> -- 
> --my blog is athttp://blog.russnelson.com
> Crynwr supports open source software
> 521 Pleasant Valley Rd. | +1 315-323-1241
> Potsdam, NY 13676-3213  | Sheepdog
>
> ___
> talk mailing list
> talk@openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[David Earl]

On 09/10/2009 15:45, Tobias Knerr wrote:
>> We already have too many computer people who get carried away by thought 
>> experiements ("yes but if the spot where the road and railway intersect 
>> also happens to be a station and have a traffic light and a river 
>> flowing underneath, what are you going to do THEN").
> 
> Maybe we should use common sense to distinguish between plausible
> possibilities and irrelevant hypothetical constructs?

Don't lawyers say "hard cases make bad law"?


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[Tobias Knerr]

Frederik Ramm:
> (5) Never ever invent a tag that you don't have a concrete use for.

"Never plan ahead, always wait until there are thousands of existing
tags that make creating a better solution harder"?

Recently, I encountered a crossing where there were both traffic lights
and an island for pedestrians. This could easily be expressed if whoever
invented the tag had done some thought experiment along the lines of
"but if there is a crossing that has BOTH traffic lights AND islands?
Seems like I shouldn't put these into the same tag!"

Of course, I simply invented something to express this, but it means
that there are two ways of expressing "there's a pedestrian island at
this crossing" - while not much of a problem, that certainly isn't
"nice" from a modelling point of view.

> We already have too many computer people who get carried away by thought 
> experiements ("yes but if the spot where the road and railway intersect 
> also happens to be a station and have a traffic light and a river 
> flowing underneath, what are you going to do THEN").

Maybe we should use common sense to distinguish between plausible
possibilities and irrelevant hypothetical constructs?

Tobias Knerr

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] STRATO sponsors three servers for use by OSM

[Richard Weait]

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 6:46 AM, Frederik Ramm  wrote:
> Hi,
>
>    the Berlin-based hosting provider STRATO AG is sponsoring three
> servers for use by the OSM community.

Wonderful news!  Congratulations to both FOSSGIS e.V. and STRATO.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Peter Childs wrote:
>> We already have too many computer people who get carried away by thought
>> experiements ("yes but if the spot where the road and railway intersect
>> also happens to be a station and have a traffic light and a river
>> flowing underneath, what are you going to do THEN").
> 
> Welcome to the real world where that actually happens.

[x] send OSM id

Bye
Frederik

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[Peter Childs]

2009/10/9 Frederik Ramm :
> Hi,
>
> Matt Amos wrote:
>>> 1) Just map.
>>> 2) Use existing keys if you can.
>>> 3) Use existing tags if you can.
>>> 4) If you used a tag that isn't in the wiki, document your use of the
>>> tag, so that other people won't use your tag to mean something else.
>>
>> this is awesome advice.
>
> If there's one thing I could add, even though it is kind of implied by
> the above:
>
> (5) Never ever invent a tag that you don't have a concrete use for.
>
> We already have too many computer people who get carried away by thought
> experiements ("yes but if the spot where the road and railway intersect
> also happens to be a station and have a traffic light and a river
> flowing underneath, what are you going to do THEN").
>

Welcome to the real world where that actually happens.

(Or something very close)

Peter

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Matt Amos wrote:
>> 1) Just map.
>> 2) Use existing keys if you can.
>> 3) Use existing tags if you can.
>> 4) If you used a tag that isn't in the wiki, document your use of the
>> tag, so that other people won't use your tag to mean something else.
> 
> this is awesome advice. 

If there's one thing I could add, even though it is kind of implied by 
the above:

(5) Never ever invent a tag that you don't have a concrete use for.

We already have too many computer people who get carried away by thought 
experiements ("yes but if the spot where the road and railway intersect 
also happens to be a station and have a traffic light and a river 
flowing underneath, what are you going to do THEN").

Bye
Frederik

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

[OSM-talk] Connected Polygons and Lines

[Peter Mooney]

Hi All,

Wasn't sure which list to post this message to - please redirect me if
necessary.

My research group is looking to use OSM data to test out some algorithms we
are working on for (1) map generalisation and (2) more general shape
generalisation.

We need to extract all polygons, lines, and points in a bounding rectangle.
Of particular interest are the "connections" between the features - rivers
flowing into lakes, picnic area or car parks with forest parks, lake within
a forest, etc

I have written some PHP (both accessing the OSM in PostGIS and OSM XML)
which pulls out all the polygons in a bounding rectangle. The PHP is a
rather messy collection of XML parsing and the like.  It works but is rather
cumbersome.

Is there a tool to do this or a more established approach?

Any hints or tips greatly welcomed.

Thanks in advance,

Peter Mooney
Dept of Computer Science , NUI Maynooth, Ireland.
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[Matt Amos]

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 5:06 AM, Russ Nelson  wrote:
> Doctau created the following page, and various other people have
> contributed to it.
>
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/VotingOnTheWikiIsStupid
>
> I don't think voting is stupid, but I do believe that voting is not
> productive.  Here's what I believe we should do instead of voting on
> features:
>
> 1) Just map.
> 2) Use existing keys if you can.
> 3) Use existing tags if you can.
> 4) If you used a tag that isn't in the wiki, document your use of the
> tag, so that other people won't use your tag to mean something else.

this is awesome advice. if i could add to (4) that any new tag ought
to be verifiable (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Verifiability),
as this helps avoid confusion and edit wars in the long-run.

there seem to be several different aspects to tagging that the current
tag voting procedure seems to conflate; use, documentation and map
features. separating these out, i think:

1) tags don't need to be voted on in order to be used. this is just
common sense - there's nothing in the editors to prevent free-form
tagging and i'm sure we don't want to stop people free-form tagging.
that's part of what makes OSM genius and unique.

2) tags shouldn't need to be voted on in order to be documented. i
don't see why we would ever want to prevent anyone documenting
anything. documentation is good, right? especially if it comes with
pictures.

3) the inclusion (or not) of a tag on map features may well be
something that it is worth voting on. it could be done on a purely
mechanical basis by counting the tag usage in the database, but this
is somewhat lacking in reason and flexibility. harry wood suggested
some useful ideas in his SotM talk
http://www.harrywood.co.uk/blog/2009/10/04/community-smoothness/ .
certainly, though, we should assume that not all tags make it onto map
features, not even most of them, but a small set of the most commonly
used / most important (fsvo "important").

> 5) If you disagree with the definition of the key or value, then
> create a new key or value with a different name, use it in your
> editing, document it in the wiki, AND (this is important) put a link
> to it in the definition that you disagree with.

from our useful chat the other day on IRC maybe we can put a set of
guidelines out there to help people resolve these competing tagging
schemes. in general, prefer the tagging scheme which:

1) preserves more information
2) is verifiable, or more easily verifiable
3) has been recommended by respected members of the community

for (3) we're back to harry's talk about how do we, as a community,
recognise those respected members?

> 6) The risk of this system is that people will not find tags that have
> the meaning they're looking for.  They'll then create a new tag which
> has an identical or similar meaning to an existing one.  If you find a
> pair of these tags which have similar meanings, you should edit the
> wiki pages for them, and include pointers to each other.

and possibly a link to tagwatch/osmdoc/tagstat so that people can find
out which is more often used in practice.

> The benefit is that people spend more time mapping and less time
> coordinating with each other on things that don't need to be
> coordinated in advance.

+1.

cheers,

matt

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

[OSM-talk] STRATO sponsors three servers for use by OSM

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

the Berlin-based hosting provider STRATO AG is sponsoring three 
servers for use by the OSM community. The sponsoring deal has been 
signed between German FOSSGIS e.V. and STRATO. In return, STRATO get a 
logo placement on openstreetmap.de.

The three servers (quad-core Opteron machines with 16 GB RAM and 2 TB 
hard disks that cost EUR 200/month each if you order them from STRATO) 
will be used as a tile server, a tools server (production environment 
for interesting services) and a dev server respectively. There is no 
traffic limitation, and STRATO has even offered to tune their network to 
better accomodate us (apparently a tile server under load looks very 
much like a DDOS to unsuspecting monitoring software).

We hope to offer some alternative map styles on the tile server 
(possibly a classic central European "Michelin" style with yellow/orange 
motorways, and also a subdued style that is well suited as a background 
map), but the server could also take some load off tile.osm.org if that 
is desired.

The dev server is open to anyone with an interesting idea as long as 
they don't gobble up all resources.

While we do casually refer to these new servers as the "German" dev 
server and the "German" tile server, they are open to all members of the 
worldwide OSM community.

There's more on the Wiki:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/FOSSGIS/Server

All this is still very much work in progress (the tile server only has a 
few Berlin tiles for testing, styles are not defined yet, database 
replication still needs to be set up and so on).

A big thank you to STRATO for their support. I hope that over the coming 
months, the community is going to make good use of these servers. The 
FOSSGIS/OSM server admin team can be contacted at ad...@openstreetmap.de.

Bye
Frederik


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] RSS Gateway for osm.o mailing list digests

[Ed Avis]

Peteris Krisjanis  gmail.com> writes:

>Is there RSS service which offers posts/diggests from osm.o mailing
>lists (or any mailing list)?

 carries this list and (as well as web and NNTP gateways)
offers an RSS feed, see .

-- 
Ed Avis 


___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] RSS Gateway for osm.o mailing list digests

[Sam Vekemans]

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Feeds#Mailing_Lists

:) Thanks, i just added it to my feedreader eater.   Thats neater.

Cheers,
Sam

Twitter: @Acrosscanada
Blog:  http://Acrosscanadatrails.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sam.vekemans
OpenStreetMap IRC: http://irc.openstreetmap.org
@Acrosscanadatrails


On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 1:05 AM, Peteris Krisjanis  wrote:

> Hi people!
>
> Is there RSS service which offers posts/diggests from osm.o mailing
> lists (or any mailing list)?
>
> I love vibrant discussions in talk and other lists, but sometimes RSS
> feed with digest would help concencrate on reading instead of chasing
> posts and answers to them.
>
> Cheers,
> Peter.
>
> ___
> talk mailing list
> talk@openstreetmap.org
> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
>
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Landuse areas etc. abutting highways

[Dave F.]

MP wrote:
>> In practice, almost all mapping seems to use approach (a) - but would
>> approach (b) be easier for subsequent editing and addition of detail, and
>> rather clearer as it avoids superimposed ways and potential editing errors?
>> 
>
> I think that the correct way is b) - three separate lines. Since if
> the border of the farm also is somehow displayed (for example if it is
> fenced, thus having fenced=yes or barrier=fence tags), in the first
> case (all lines joined to one line) the border would go through center
> of the road, resulting in artifacts like fence in the middle of road.
>
>   
Also, in this example when using a), when you show access points such as 
gates, stiles etc they would indicate that they were blocking the road.
Not good

Cheers
Dave F.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

[OSM-talk] RSS Gateway for osm.o mailing list digests

[Peteris Krisjanis]

Hi people!

Is there RSS service which offers posts/diggests from osm.o mailing
lists (or any mailing list)?

I love vibrant discussions in talk and other lists, but sometimes RSS
feed with digest would help concencrate on reading instead of chasing
posts and answers to them.

Cheers,
Peter.

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

[OSM-talk] New tracks from norc.ro available across Central and Eastern Europe

[Ciprian Talaba]

Hello everybody,

I just want to point out that norc.ro have donated another set of tracks
that cover Austria, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania. They have
been already sorted, tagged and uploaded to OSM so you can use them to
create roads using your preferred editor. If you want to know if norc tracks
are available near you, you should visit www.norc.ro and see if they visited
your area.

Another reminder that we have been given permission to derive data from
their panoramas, so feel free to add street names, POIs, route restrictions
or any other info that you can find.

Enjoy!

Ciprian, OSM Romania

P.S. I am preparing a new set if tracks that will cover Moskow, I will
announce here when that happens.
___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Proposal for a map-bug tracker (Openstreetbugs)

[Tom Hughes]

On 01/12/08 22:42, Christoph Böhme wrote:
> Frederik Ramm  schrieb:
>> Christoph Böhme wrote:
>
>> Before you get all cranked up writing something new, be sure to check
>> out the "notes API" branch in SVN, where something OSB-like has been
>> attempted in rails already. I don't know by whom and what the status
>> is but I'm sure you will find out.
>
> Thanks, I will have a look at it. I did a bit to much mapping at the
> weekend and only managed to install the rails port. However, at the
> moment I am a bit confused anyway and not sure what I am going to
> implement.

Don't look at it too hard - the person that was working on it kind of 
shot off on a tangent from the original idea. It's also pretty old now 
so way out of sync with the main code. I should delete it really.

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu)
http://www.compton.nu/

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk

Re: [OSM-talk] Instead of voting

[Stephen Hope]

2009/10/9 Russ Nelson :
>
> The benefit is that people spend more time mapping and less time
> coordinating with each other on things that don't need to be
> coordinated in advance.

And the disadvantage is that by saving a little time on the lack of
coordinating at the start, we then end up spending a huge amount of
time arguing over whether we should be using yes, true or 1 later  ;)

Seriously, though, you have a point.  Most of the voting is simply a
process, with no real benefit.

However, I have seen proposals which have improved considerably after
a little bit of feedback during the voting process. I think the
discussion can be valuable, even if the voting itself isn't. It's not
required for every new tag value, but I think we need an extra step in
there somewhere that talks about what to do if you want some feedback
on a new idea, or just need help finding the right English word for a
tag value.

Stephen

___
talk mailing list
talk@openstreetmap.org
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk