2015-05-27 23:13 GMT+02:00 Frederik Ramm <frede...@remote.org>: > The place node for London has 154 name tags as we speak, but there are > several thousand languages in use on the planet, so there's still room > for enhancement. >
wasn't our credo that what the mappers are interested in will be accepted? There may be several thousand languages in the world but it is not a given that all those will end up in the OSM db sooner or later. > > Not only well-known tourist magnets carry foreign names; some dedicated > language mappers have gone over and beyond the call of duty and added, > for example, name:ru tags even to small villages: > > > It is difficult to judge when such foreign names have a right to be > there, and when they're just inventions or name translations or > transliterations. > actually most "real names" are such, name translations or transliterations. To give a famous example that most people will know: The "Colosseo" or "Anfiteatro di Flavio" (someone decided for whatever reason that this was an "old_name" while formerly it was an "alt_name") http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/1834818 is called in English: "Colosseum" and in German "Kolosseum" or alternatively: en: "Flavian Amphitheatre" de: "Flavisches Amphitheater" Those are clearly translations and transliterations (K instead of C) but they are at the same time very established names in these languages. This is equally true for other famous monuments like the "fori imperiali" (de:Kaiserforen), "mercati traiani" (de:Trajansmärkte), "Bocca della Verità" (de: Mund der Wahrheit), "Fontana di Trevi" (de:Trevibrunnen), but there are also exceptions, e.g. the "en:Spanish Steps" / "de:Spanische Treppe" are called "Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti" in the local language (it is located at "piazza di Spagna", that's where the foreign name comes from, while in Italian it is called after to church it leads to). Naturally, OSM has the original name of this world famous monument, but Wikidata hasn't. Wait, it hasn't the original name of this "three-star-tourist-attraction", how's that? Have a look here: http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q848072 the reason is that the Italian wikipedia hasn't got an article about the steps, they are featured in the article about "Piazza di Spagna": http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piazza_di_Spagna If we were to massively use wikidata _instead of duplicating some details from there also in our db_ we would have to improve wikidata as well, and impose our entity structure on them, or it won't work in some cases (and if it doesn't work in some case, it doesn't work at all). Another issue I see with wikidata is that it contains information and details about spatial objects, but it doesn't contain the geometry it refers to. Have a look at the Berlin object: http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q64 This covers both, an administrative entity and a geographic place in one object (no problem here, but can be a problem elsewhere). This object has a property "instance of metropolis" http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q200250 I don't want to discuss whether Berlin is a metropolis or not, what I want to point out is that there seem to be different criteria defined for different languages: English <http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q200250?setlang=en> metropolis very large and significant city or urban area --> generic, has "significance" as absolute criterion, not related to a region or country, no details in which fields significance is required German <http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q200250?setlang=de> Metropole Großstadt, die den politischen, sozialen und wirtschaftlichen Mittelpunkt eines Landes bildet --> has to be the political, social and economic "centre" of a _country_ (relative definition) Italian <http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q200250?setlang=it> metropoli città di grandi dimensioni la cui area metropolitana raggiunge o supera i cinque milioni di abitanti --> big city whose metropolitan area is >= 5 million inhabitants French <http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q200250?setlang=fr> Métropole No description defined The Italian definition speaks about a metropolitan area, but there is no reference (neither in OSM nor in wikidata) about the extension of this area. The same problem is generally there with "population": we cannot see in wikidata to which area the population refers to (and OK, we cannot be 100% sure in OSM that the "population" really refers to the area that is drawn ;-) ). "metropolis" is a subclass of "big city": http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1549591 which defines all cities with more than 100.000 inhabitants as big city (a German definition, which I believe will not hold true for China or other very populated regions). Indeed in OSM we do not have this hard limit (any more): http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:place%3Dcity but rather use the more clever definition: "The largest urban settlement or settlements within the territory." My conclusion: I'd rather prefer to keep names in different languages inside OSM, because it makes it clear to which object they refer, while it is less clear from wikidata. Also because the structure of osm and wikidata is not the same, it will lead to problems (either we'll be/risk making links that are not precisely 1:1 or we'll have to change the structure to meet (either in wikidata or in OSM)). Placenames are geographic information that do belong into OSM IMHO. I agree that tag lists of hundreds of names in different languages aren't very handy to look through, but IMHO we should resolve this in the GUI (display name translations in the editors "closed" so you have to click on an arrow to unfold the list, or sth like this, and/or let the user set a list of languages he want't to see the names in and hide the rest under a single line like "i18n names, 182 tags", etc.) Cheers, Martin
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