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Comment by aspirin | Hacker News Reader

Im my opinion the biggest problem is the data model (or lack of). Tags i.e. key-value pairs are used to add properties to geometry. Mappers use different combinations of keys/values to describe the same thing. The post touches on this, but does not offer solutions other than adding "layers".

There should be a strict schema that would be community managed through some process.

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Like what, tag proposals where people vote yay or nay? We have those. As an active mapper, I very rarely find two ways of tagging the same thing, so the process seems to work fine.

And if you do find a situation where there are multiple options, it takes only a quick check on taginfo to find the more commonly used one. If you go with that, it should converge soon.

Currently there is nothing to stop mappers using tags in wrong ways. It should just be flat out impossible. If a field/tag isn't defined in the schema, it could not be used. The range of values should be limited in the same way, too.

How does a schema stop someone from marking a building as a pond?

Ah, I see where you're going with this. It would slow innovation down to a trickle, though. Anyone who wants to do something that's not yet standardized would have to stash their edits somewhere and wait for official approval. And that would likely take weeks or months at best. Currently, the best idea wins automatically because good ideas are used by both mapping applications and mappers.

Maybe something in the middle, like the current wiki system but with an enforcement rule of whatever is on the wiki. Anyone could freely edit it because it's a wiki (adding allowed options, and removing/changing any that have extremely few uses (zero, or perhaps a few which are then removed)), but at least there is a correct spec.

If people really had to adhere to a strict, slow-moving standard with pre-approval, the spec would also become extremely complex and very difficult to implement, because the spec-makers will want to think of every eventuality. See any other large specification ever, like HTML or something. I can't see that ending well. I think a hybrid system might be better than a strict one, given the choice between those two.

I like thinking about it though! Always good to have hear ideas.

Which is great only if you have all the right tags. A grain bin is not a silo - to a farmer this is an important distinction - the rest of the world cannot tell the difference, both are round towers.

A strict schema won't help when people still use it incorrectly.

Improvement over what exists now would require that the schema be applied strictly and that isn't going to happen with a huge crowdsourced project.

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