[OSM-talk] Edit war on the wiki "map features"

Frederik Ramm wrote:
> Most of all since we're growing exponentially and even if we had 90% of
> mappers agree on something today, in two or three months those 90% would
> perhaps only form 30% of the community...

This is actually an argument _for_ Map_Features and some sort of meritocracy, not against.

In order to know which sort of tagging schemes work well and which don't, the biggest thing you need is experience. If you don't have that, and if you aren't given guidance, you are likely to tag in dumb ways.
And, as we are expanding so fast, the experienced will always be outnumbered by the inexperienced. Which means that, without guidance, most tagging will be not as good as it could be.

Having experienced people in leadership, and actually doing some leading and making decisions, is something that most groups consider an asset, not something to be avoided. I continue to be amazed that OpenStreetMap is so allergic to it - at least in the area of tagging.

No-one is suggesting forbidding people from tagging however they like.
But "you can tag any way you like" is not the same as "all taggingschemes are equally sensible"or "we should make data consumers andrenderers support six different ways of doingeverything if they want torender the whole world".

(Exactly how one would get to the stage of having appropriately-chosen decision-makers is a different question, of course. But route is not the same thing as destination.)

Gervase Markham