@SomeoneElse it’s interesting that you’ve brought up this particular case. Note that I never proposed to adopt any of Wikipedia’s policies, that is: definition of good and bad content (and therefore good and bad edits). I’m talking about a project structure that ensures that content in the project complies with policies defined for that project, whatever they are.

This is the case where Wikipedia adhered to its principles and I can explain why. The thing is, Wikipedia never describe an actual object from reality, it describes an image of that object in the “information space”. If there’s a house with black walls, but all of books, news articles, magazines etc say that it has white walls – then the Wikipedia article about this house will mention white walls. Even though some of WP editors had seen black with their own eyes. This may be disappointing, but that’s the way it functions at the moment. The thing is, study of real objects is a “search for truth”, that is what scientists do. WP editors are not scientists, they never do research, only combine existing pieces of information. [OFFTOPIC: now if you happen to hit this issue somewhere, what you need to do is to publish your results (observation of a black wall) somewhere outside of WP. It will affect the “information space” and therefore is supposed affect WP too, with help of editors].

Now the OSM is the opposite on that matter. Every editor IS a cartographer (an that is science), he HAS TO do research on the ground, he cannot take information for other sources besides a handful of exceptions. This is absolutely fabulous and I certainly don not suggest to change it. All I’m saying is Wikipedia is very good at sticking to it’s principles, whether they’re good or bad. This is something worth looking at.

@BushmanK Yep, it’s all about the ultimate goal.

It’s not that anarchy in the community project is bad, no. It’s kind of cool I guess, it’s very interesting to see how it functions. The problem is, at some point people have to chose what’s more important: a cool project or the best map.

@SomeoneElse As a Wikipedia editor I eat salt with a shovel and very well understand what you’re talking about.

The thing is, large community projects [that I know of] always end up developing a complex system of commitees, workgroups, guidelines, 3-5 levels of authorities etc. Now if we consider that inevitable for OSM (which is probably not true, I don’t know) then it’s very reasonable to take Wikipedia’s experience into account. While it has many issues, it’s definitely not the worst one. At least because of all general-purpuse *pedias it’s the only one afloat for so many years.

It always suprised me, how far OSM is lagging behind Wikipedia on this matter, given the similarities of these projects: an open and equal community working to build the best database of ***.

Wikipedia’s approach to “not an anarchy” can be summarized as follows:

• The goal of the project is to write the best encyclopedia. Every action should be judged from this viewpoint

• File pillars are fundamental principles that are assumed to guide the communinity to whatever “the best encyclopedia” means

• Policies are developed and vote-approved by the community. The only purpose of a policy is to define what actions are useful in the context of five pillars and what are destructive

• Elected Administrators can block actions that violate existing policies. They do not invent or approve new policies.

• Elected Arbitration Committee judges whether actions of Administrators or Users fall withing policies in questionable cases. It does not invent or approve new policies.

In general this structure follow the “trias politica” principle: direct vote across the community serves as legislature, administrators represent the executive power and AC is a judiciary power. As you might expect, this brings tons of new problems, still it’s a step into the right direction.

On the other hand, OSM now somewhat resembles the Russian segment of Wikipedia e.g 10 or 12 years ago. It takes a very big community and a long time for this approach to start working. In fact, many regional segments of WP still have only a partial implementation and it’s fine.

Vitalts, military здесь ни при чем. Весь Железногорск - и есть ЗАТО, через него проходит маршрут, начинаясь и заканчиваясь за пределами закрытой зоны. То, что вы, глядя на карту, не поняли что с ним не так, по сути и является иллюстрацией проблемы. Я это не к тому, что надо по этому поводу удалять дороги, просто разберитесь с сутью вопроса.

d1g, добрый день!

Поясните пожалуйста вашу позицию: вы знаете местность или вы рисовальщик по Bing?

Спасибо.