On 2020-05-12 12:34, Jean-Marc Liotier wrote:
> On 5/12/20 11:42 AM, Richard Fairhurst wrote:
>
>> I love the fact that we are now 50 messages into discussing, for the second
>> time, a change that would be made ostensibly for the benefit of data
>> consumers, and yet no one has asked any actual data consumers.
>
> Yes. Users are the ultimate measure of quality, yet they are most often
> absent from our discussions. Our history explains why: in the beginning, we
> had a blank map, which we set upon filling with whatever we could, to get the
> stone soup started. There were no consumers at all - so naturally our
> universe was supply-side entirely: the availability of data inspired usage,
> which came second. Nowadays, Openstreetmap is used - let's take advantage of
> that to improve ! Looking at the world and thinking about how we should model
> it should be done with an understanding of how users want it. This is
> difficult when we have few users around and very little feedback from
> downstream. So, if one has opportunities to bring that to our knowledge,
> please do: it is valuable information to the Openstreetmap project,
> information without which we cannot allocate our efforts optimally.
+1000
If I had a «currency unit» for every time "ease of mapping" has trumped
"quality and usability of data" I would be pretty rich now. We have
always shied away from anything that would define data quality, as such
discussions inevitably involve the definition of "good" and "bad", and
"right" and "wrong". These discussions get killed stone dead as soon as
someone says "we can't change the data", "it would be too difficult for
mappers to understand", "applications expect the old way" etc.
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