Maybe also post it on https://www.facebook.com/josmeditor

noexit=* ist in meinen Augen eigentlich hauptsächlich ein QA-Tool Tag. Damit macht man Tools, die nach ways suchen deren Ende nicht verbunden ist, klar, dass der Weg dort wirklich zu ende ist und in keiner Weise mit der Straße 10m weiter verbunden ist.

This is a personal opinion: If you cannot recognise the highway classification then you should default to the lower class.

Or you tag is as unclassified. Oh wait…

highway=unclassified

I think the problem is that many people think this key means “I don’t know what kind of road this is”. Took me a long time to realize it’s not a placeholder. Just a very missleading wording for a tag.

Just wait 5 years until enough people use the new tag and the old one falls of and more people remove it. Aparently that’s how people here want it.

Because of that I have currenly lost my interest in OSM. It’s just too slow and too anoying if you want to change any kind of tagging. Why do we still have amenity=emergency_phone in the database? That’s just bullshit….

I’m not sure what the title has to do with the image. It’s obvious that changing the name on six relations is easier than changing it on 62 nodes.

Except with JOSM it isn’t. If I have to filter an area for 6, 62 or 1000 nodes doesn’t matter. It’s exactly the same amount of clicks. And even with ID I rather check those addr:street tags than finding those 6 relations.

The problem is not that it is duplicated. It’s that something that is supposed to be grouped is not. Someone might now just change one relation and overlook other ones. If I would change addr:street on that scale, I would just filter that area with JOSM and replace all tags in a few seconds. Also my main point is not that addr:street won’t make you overlook anything, but that associatedstreet relations are nowhere near as perfect as people claim they are.

The voting system has been criticised for years. What do we need to do to remove this damaging process?

Spend more time in the Wiki and document stuff. Create pages for values that have been used a couple of times (=> TagInfo): Use the template put up an image and a description. Look for similar tags, create a See also section etc. Also if you find similar or related tags link back from them, too.

That will make it easier for people to find tags that are in use. Help them to compare them to similar tags. Provide them with a place to discuss the differences (talk page). Reduce the risk of missunderstandings by providing a description.

Clear definitions about how our data can be interpreted are in the interest of all. But those definitions should not be approved, they should evolve.

If you look at TagInfo and non-documented values for amenity=, shop=, leisure= etc. you will see that tagging for one kind of POI can evolve in many different directions. One good example is gym/fitness centre, where even today people tag it in more than 5 different ways. As someone said before…

When would ‘you’ make the decision to bring them all together? Years? Decades or centuries?

Some of the tags proposed are simple, useful and should just be used. So no voting is needed, only documentation so other people can choose to use the same tags.

That’s actually what happen most of the time. Someone proposes a good tag, because the RFC process takes to long it falls under the table, but because there is now a proposal and maybe a wiki page this tag definition can be found and used by other mappers.

Mappers are out most precious resource, anything that confuses them is A Bad Thing.

Which bascially means that your idea of tags slowly evolving tags is bad. Because that means for a long time you might have different tags and a mapper might not be sure what to use and that happens far more often without any proposal involved.

Why do we need a status for a key? Why is it necessary to get a glowing-green “Approved” on a wiki page? Why is “Rejected” hellish-red? Those details support the impression, that only good, green, approved tags should be used, that they are official tags. This is not true and we should start with removing the status from the wiki. The usage numbers from taginfo are all we need.

The usage number from TagInfo don’t tell you if there is some general definition behind a tag or if there are similar maybe competing tags. Numbers might not says very much when they are around 50-1000. Most of the time they are only of value when you actually see their numbers compared to similar tags, but how often do people actually put that much effort into the Wiki? Ask yourself: How often have you done that?

Editor Presets

If there is no agreement on a tagging schema then editors can’t provide casual mappers with presets, which probably results in less stuff being put on the map. Especially people using something like WheelMap will not look into the Wiki on their Smartphone.

Translations

Some native English speakers here might not realize that at least in Germany we have a lot of mapper that aren’t that good with English and I have to say even I don’t know all the stops and crafts.

So just waiting for one tag to evolve means much more work for people translating stuff (now you need to translate every wiki page) and less tags being used, because nobody bothered to translate any of the competing tags.

In addition it can cause errors, because of false friend translations, for example fireplace translated as “fire” & “place” would probably be interpreted as an outside place where you can make a fire and not a architectural structure.

Coming to agreements early, documenting it and not waiting years for something to evolve will help to reduce errors here.

My main reason for creating this tool is to find out what items still had to be put on the map.

If your main goal is to encourage mapping it would be great to have some indicators, which show tags that might be missing for a POI. For example I really like http://www.osm24.eu/ because it always encourages me to map opening hours.

And because I’m currently cleaning up the Wiki: Be careful with the presets you use. Sometimes bad tagging can be directly traced back to editors, quality assurance tools etc. Would also be nice if you linked to the Wiki pages on the selector.

We need wiki, not forum.

And how many people use the Wiki? I’m currently creating new tag pages and fixing older ones and not many people are active there.

Looking at the German community it’s pretty obvious to me that the Forum is the place where I get the most interaction. Just discussed contact: where it became really obvious. Still only 1 reply on the tagging list.

There will threads with 300+ pages. Nobody will ever re-read them. You cannot edit every single message at forum. This is usefull to remove outdated info.

You can still have a Wiki to document the actual proposal.

You have to understand that for a lot of people this Internet stuff is not obvious. Formatting in the Wiki is a lot more complicated than in a Forum. Mailinglists are not as easy to understand as a Froum, even when they are Forum style and there is no edit button. Not to mention a lot of people check the Forum daily, any other place you make them look at will be less frequented.

The simple reality is if OpenStreetMap wants to integrate new useres, then mailinglists are not an option. (Unless you do it like the German Pirate Party where those mailinglists are bascially 100% integrated into the Forum)

The tagging mailing list is wonderful. It keeps most of the pointless, circular discussions about tags that no one cares about off the other, more useful lists.

Which nobody else uses either. At least here in Germany it’s 99% Forum.

You can put there link here under profile description that will make it easier to be found: https://www.openstreetmap.org/user/Tomi/account

It bothers me that our so called “open/free” mapping data project is more restrictive than the US government PD data. It feels ridiculous.

Open/free free projects rely on people contrubuting to them, which is one of the main goals of requiring attribution, share-alike etc. The US government does not need that.

The project is basically un-forkable, any copy made is out of date in about 10 seconds. I don’t see how data can be mixed in after the fact without ignoring updates from OSM. If google decided that it was going to run on-going imports of OSM data, the google map maker community would immediately transition over to OSM, and we would get a zillion more eye on the data.

I think you are underestimating how much data is in the database and how much actually changes these days. Looking at Germany I would say that a lot of the important data is already in the database and most of the edits these days are small edits and improvements. Also Map Maker people coming to OSM makes no sense. If they are use MapMaker they probably have already decided that for them there are reasons to contribute there as opposed to OSM. Putting OpenStreetMap data on google would just strengthen those arguments like more people actually using google maps or it having more functions.

Btw. http://www.osm24.eu/ is also a great map if you want to find missing opening hours.

Your note should … be hand made notes by a user, that means not done automatically in any way.

I would actually like to have a tool for that. For example when cleaning up vending machines I had like 200x vending=photos tags and the tag was not defined. I figued out that it would often stand for amenity=photo_booth, but not always. Would have been nice to set a note on every node and ask people to use amenity=photo_booth if that was what it was or maybe find a more descriptive tag if it was something different like a printer. Luckily it was mostly used in Germany and with name, operator and note tags I was often able to figure it out, but it still took me a lot of time and I was only able to fix half of them. Someone who knows the area would have had it a lot easier and could fix more.

There are a lot of other tags where this needs to be done (see my last diary entry) where I alone simply don’t have the time and/or knowledge. It would also solve the issue many have currenly that it may encourage mechanical edits.

Clostest to a non-external hoster is probably the wiki:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Special:Upload

tl;dr - If you map subtle distinctions document them in the Wiki

Thinking about it a bit more I agree, although that’s pretty much how the craft tag on its own has been used.

Many mappers (myself included) have spent a lot of time mapping these things and really do care about these subtle distinctions.

Then why do you not spend 10 min in the Wiki to document this tag and point out when it applies and where it is different? I just found Proposed features/Photo studio, which has a different definition than yours:

shop where you can get photos of yourself or (!!!) hire a photographer.

vs.

This tag does not suggest anybody can walk in off the street and have their photograph taken, while shop=photo_studio implies exactly that.

this almost always means by local mappers.

That’s the whole idea of this just like with other QA tools (JOSM/keepright/Osmose), but is not possible to limit how people use them.

It is very easy to remove worthwhile distinctions between tags without realising you are doing so and that can be demotivating to the people who added them

There is a separate layer for photo studio shops

Again. Document it in the Wiki. Put a link to your website on shop=photo_studio.

Because as many valid tags as there are out there, there are also a lot of tags that were used in the past when there was no defacto Tag, that people came up with, because they didn’t find the right key or where editors used a wrong tag. I my goal is document those valid tags and try to improve others when there is already an establiashed one. Unfortunately I don’t have a crystal ball that tells what a mapper thought at the time.

but shop=pharmacy is so widespread in Germany

I looked a bit closer and it’s mostly the fault of the WheelMap app. I’m discussing a mass edit with the German community as 95% of the tags have both tags - shop&amenity=pharmacy so I don’t see a problem removing the shop tag in those instances.

unfortunately some users are objecting to the clean-up of some tags

I don’t think that’s a objection to the cleanup itself. It’s rather pointing out that a tag could have had different meanings. I had already realized that when putting it there, which is why it said: Also check Similar tags

There you can find craft=phtographer, which at least in my opinion (and also used that way) is:

shop=”photo_studio” - a shop with a studio where people go to have their photographs taken. These shops do not usually sell other products or print photos except those taken in the shop.

https://www.facebook.com/pointeurlaserscom report them