> And I think the discussion of committees to decide or better voting is a > hiding to nothing so long as a sizeable proportion of the community > doesn't believe in it, as they'll just carry on doing what they've > always done. They've stopped even contributing to these discussions, > they just get on with it.
Agreed. But we do have the ability to edge people in the right direction. I for instance will happily use the presets in JOSM and Potlatch because I am lazy. However neither really has any convention to go on with many features, and it's the preference of the developers. Same for QA tools such as KeepRight. Having a body of people that openly discuss, and whose decision is acted on by third parties would at least provide accepted standards and some stability to the dataset. This isn't to say anything is set in stone, but provides a clear reference. Those that wish to carry on can, will, and should. There will be many situations that have not yet been thought about and it's better to get those features in, and then worry about tagging. Something others disagree with understandably but most tags are readable by humans if not complete or systematic. (ie amenity=grave_yard, landuse=grave_yard could be understood to be the same, however I can see bicycles etc provide a clear problem). Having a board to vote will at least provide a clear system that people can participate in and get adequate representation. It would be clearly documented so those that wanted a change in presets etc would have to present an application to the board. I certainly do not want the board deciding what the data in the database should look like, but just make it known what is preferred. There will be a counter-culture of those that disagree with the boards decisions, and want to carry on with their methods. However I expect the number of tagging zealots is small compared to the more pragmatic members. I change my tagging methods quite a lot, when I believe a better method has arrived, but I won't necessarily go back and alter my previous work. The crowd-source model allows someone else to change is for me. I can see this idea dying a death, but I'd like to talk about it at say SOTM etc and see what support it gets from there. Ciarán _______________________________________________ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
