On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Richard Fairhurst <rich...@systemed.net> wrote: > Frederik Ramm wrote: >> Really? Are there people who say "I'd rather not map because there is >> no consensus on the roads tagging"? Are those people the 20,000 >> missing mappers in the US? > > I don't think it's all 20,000, no. :) But it's certainly significant and it > is - correction, it _should_ be - one of the easiest things to fix. Three > reasons:
> a) The map really, obviously looks wrong and inconsistent. It's one of the > first things people notice (e.g. Justin O'Beirne on the late lamented > 41latitude blog). Contributing to a sloppy map ostensibly produced by a > bunch of blithering incompetents is not an appealing prospect. Of course I > know and you know that OSMers aren't blithering incompetents and are in fact > lovely, but you've got to get past the first impression. I'm not saying it's the best possible solution, but that could also be addressed by US-specific geography that takes the inconsistencies into account. There seem to be many cases in which there is just not a national standard, such as the ref tag for state routes. I don't see how it would make sense to impose a standard where there isn't any. Inconsistency may just be part of reality here - excuse my limited understanding of the issues at hand though. > b) Barrier to entry. If you have to read up on 92364 contradictory policies > about how roads should be tagged, or if you just can't figure it out, you're > not going to proceed with it. I realise I'm preaching to the wrong guy here > as you actually _like_ unnecessary barriers to entry but maybe the rest of > the list will hear me out. ;) As a newcomer you would probably find http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_Road_Classification which is not all that ambiguous but quite possibly an oversimplification. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/United_States_roads_tagging on the other hand -- how do these two pages relate to each other? -- is quite confusing and seems to need a lot of clean-up. The US Chapter could play a role here I believe, but a facilitating one rather than an imposing one. Maybe invite an outside specialist to come up with a proposal? > c) Even if you do come along and try your hardest to tag it right... then > chances are that some muppet with a bot or a XAPI fetish is going to do an > uninformed bulk change of your work in a week's time. That is _really_ > disheartening. When that happens -- I don't know if it already has here in the US? -- the situation has already gotten out of hand and there probably needs to be a cool down period with measures like temporary stricter bot detection for the US part of the database. I don't even know if that's possible, but it's a situation we need to consider, apparently. I wonder what possible temporary measures could be for such a cool down period -- technical and non-technical. What if anything can we learn from Wikipedia? Martijn > -- > View this message in context: > http://gis.638310.n2.nabble.com/What-does-the-community-want-from-a-US-local-chapter-tp6847994p6849164.html > Sent from the USA mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us > -- martijn van exel geospatial omnivore 1109 1st ave #2 salt lake city, ut 84103 801-550-5815 http://oegeo.wordpress.com _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
