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My reading of the situation is that, in general, they want the community to reach consensus on a globally appropriate data model and visual language, ultimately

My reading of the situation is that, in general, they want the community to reach consensus on a globally appropriate data model and visual language, ultimately for the purpose of serving all of humanity, fairly. Given the unique position of influence held by this renderer, ad hoc iteration on it without holistic planning risks inadvertently establishing harmful precedent that might take years to correct, or worse, to notice at all if only underrepresented users are impacted. For the specific case of busways, this holistic planning simply has yet to occur.

matheusmoreira 2y ago
> risks inadvertently establishing harmful precedent What sort of harmful precedents might be established?
- aendruk 2y ago
  Modeling the world in a way that alienates or fails to serve people in specific places or cultures, creating undue technical burden on data consumers, causing pains that discourage mappers from contributing, dividing the already precariously small community, wasting volunteer time on later schema migrations
  - Freak_NL 2y ago
    > causing pains that discourage mappers from contributing Like not rendering (bus dedicated) roads despite them being tagged as (bus dedicated) roads using a tag approved by the community three and a half years ago. The openstreetmap.org website currently shows gaps all over the world wherever bus dedicated roads exist. This certainly discourages for mappers. Compare: Carto (default): https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/52.32853/5.04991&layers=N https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/52.32853/5.04991&layer... Tracestrack Topo: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/52.32853/5.04991&layers=PN https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/52.32853/5.04991&layer...
    - aendruk 2y ago
      Don’t wait for me to do it; you can steelman too: It’s plausible that the consequences of an actively wrong implementation would be more costly than this delay. Instead of just throwing costs at each other, you could acknowledge the other party’s and then argue that yours are greater. (I personally would agree with you about this.)
    - ricardobeat 2y ago
      What are the odds, this random example points to only a couple km away from my home. I had never seen OSM for the area, the detail around Maxis is astounding. And the busway is quite relevant to understand traffic around the area.
      - lukan 2y ago
        "What are the odds, this random example points to only a couple km away from my home." Probably a rhetorical question, but the odds for you individually were probably low, but the odds that the random example (where random here still means close to major cities) was close to some HN reader were probably quite high ..
    - what 2y ago
      I see the same roads in both, one of them has a dashed pattern on top. What is the problem?
      - aendruk 2y ago
        In the first one what you’re seeing is just the absence of grass.
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    As an OSM contributor, the biggest pain for me is working hard to add data to the map only for it to not show up at all or look ugly. Bus routes? I've read the wiki pages in order to map them. I don't even ride the bus, I just wanted to add the data in. Why put in all that effort when the map won't even show it though?
    - habi 2y ago
      > Why put in all that effort when the map won't even show it though? Just select a different layer, the "Transport Map" renders bus routes: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#layers=T https://www.openstreetmap.org/#layers=T
    - ygra 2y ago
      This is a problem with all maps. You cannot show everything, so you reduce it to something you want the map to show. While things like waste baskets, hydrants, dog excrement bag dispensers, etc. Can reasonably show up on deep zoom levels because they're just small icons, I think bus routes can clash with plenty of things that many people would also consider important.
- abdullahkhalids 2y ago
  Remember Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names [1]. The amount of trouble people from across the world have had with tech, because some SWE in Silicon Valley decided that the way their names work is how everyone's names in the world work. [1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
  - matheusmoreira 2y ago
    I'm very aware of those issues. My full name has four words, it does not fit into first/last name fields. I have to deal with that problem constantly. I'm reminded of it every single time I pay for something with a credit card due to their idiotic first/last name fields. Some of them even have length limits. This is a non-issue with Open Street Map. Tags are freeform. You can input literally anything into the database. You can have simple tags or ridiculously detailed and nested schemas, and values can be literally any text. You can and should seek community consensus so that a controlled vocabulary can be created and documented, effectively turning it into an API. It's not actually required though. If you have geospatial information and you add it to the map, the map is made richer and more useful than it was before. The map didn't have that data at all and now it does. Doesn't actually matter if the format hasn't been agreed upon yet, it can always be edited later so that it fits into a more regular format. I did a lot of tagging and schema improvements in my city. Software that consumes the Open Street Map dataset obviously won't render the data it doesn't understand. They should be made to understand more stuff. Software can always be updated to make the most of data. The data has to actually be there to be usable though. The software won't matter at all if the data is missing or if it's garbage.
wkat4242 2y ago
That sounds a bit far-fetched to be honest. Right now by not rendering them you're impacting everyone, not just some underrepresented users :)
loceng 2y ago
Oh boy, global consensus? That's a big ask. Why not allow branches of divergence? You'll maintain a higher and increasing level of free help from a bigger base of contributors that way.
- wcedmisten 2y ago
  There are kind of branches already (other layers have different styles [1]), but this debate is over the default layer style, which appears on first page load of openstreetmap.org [1]: Transport Map Layer https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/42.3594/-71.1051&layers=T https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/42.3594/-71.1051&layer...
- aendruk 2y ago
  > global consensus? No, that’s not what I wrote. It’s local consensus on a system that is fit for global use, which means being cautious about what concepts receive special treatment from the renderer. > not allow branches of divergence I’m not sure where you got this idea. It’s explicitly licensed under CC0 and GitHub shows 800 forks. This freedom to diverge is one of the arguments in support of being conservative about changes to the common default.

matheusmoreira 2y ago

> risks inadvertently establishing harmful precedent What sort of harmful precedents might be established?

aendruk 2y ago
Modeling the world in a way that alienates or fails to serve people in specific places or cultures, creating undue technical burden on data consumers, causing pains that discourage mappers from contributing, dividing the already precariously small community, wasting volunteer time on later schema migrations
- Freak_NL 2y ago
  > causing pains that discourage mappers from contributing Like not rendering (bus dedicated) roads despite them being tagged as (bus dedicated) roads using a tag approved by the community three and a half years ago. The openstreetmap.org website currently shows gaps all over the world wherever bus dedicated roads exist. This certainly discourages for mappers. Compare: Carto (default): https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/52.32853/5.04991&layers=N https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/52.32853/5.04991&layer... Tracestrack Topo: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/52.32853/5.04991&layers=PN https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/52.32853/5.04991&layer...
  - aendruk 2y ago
    Don’t wait for me to do it; you can steelman too: It’s plausible that the consequences of an actively wrong implementation would be more costly than this delay. Instead of just throwing costs at each other, you could acknowledge the other party’s and then argue that yours are greater. (I personally would agree with you about this.)
  - ricardobeat 2y ago
    What are the odds, this random example points to only a couple km away from my home. I had never seen OSM for the area, the detail around Maxis is astounding. And the busway is quite relevant to understand traffic around the area.
    - lukan 2y ago
      "What are the odds, this random example points to only a couple km away from my home." Probably a rhetorical question, but the odds for you individually were probably low, but the odds that the random example (where random here still means close to major cities) was close to some HN reader were probably quite high ..
  - what 2y ago
    I see the same roads in both, one of them has a dashed pattern on top. What is the problem?
    - aendruk 2y ago
      In the first one what you’re seeing is just the absence of grass.
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  As an OSM contributor, the biggest pain for me is working hard to add data to the map only for it to not show up at all or look ugly. Bus routes? I've read the wiki pages in order to map them. I don't even ride the bus, I just wanted to add the data in. Why put in all that effort when the map won't even show it though?
  - habi 2y ago
    > Why put in all that effort when the map won't even show it though? Just select a different layer, the "Transport Map" renders bus routes: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#layers=T https://www.openstreetmap.org/#layers=T
  - ygra 2y ago
    This is a problem with all maps. You cannot show everything, so you reduce it to something you want the map to show. While things like waste baskets, hydrants, dog excrement bag dispensers, etc. Can reasonably show up on deep zoom levels because they're just small icons, I think bus routes can clash with plenty of things that many people would also consider important.
abdullahkhalids 2y ago
Remember Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names [1]. The amount of trouble people from across the world have had with tech, because some SWE in Silicon Valley decided that the way their names work is how everyone's names in the world work. [1] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-...
- matheusmoreira 2y ago
  I'm very aware of those issues. My full name has four words, it does not fit into first/last name fields. I have to deal with that problem constantly. I'm reminded of it every single time I pay for something with a credit card due to their idiotic first/last name fields. Some of them even have length limits. This is a non-issue with Open Street Map. Tags are freeform. You can input literally anything into the database. You can have simple tags or ridiculously detailed and nested schemas, and values can be literally any text. You can and should seek community consensus so that a controlled vocabulary can be created and documented, effectively turning it into an API. It's not actually required though. If you have geospatial information and you add it to the map, the map is made richer and more useful than it was before. The map didn't have that data at all and now it does. Doesn't actually matter if the format hasn't been agreed upon yet, it can always be edited later so that it fits into a more regular format. I did a lot of tagging and schema improvements in my city. Software that consumes the Open Street Map dataset obviously won't render the data it doesn't understand. They should be made to understand more stuff. Software can always be updated to make the most of data. The data has to actually be there to be usable though. The software won't matter at all if the data is missing or if it's garbage.

wkat4242 2y ago

That sounds a bit far-fetched to be honest. Right now by not rendering them you're impacting everyone, not just some underrepresented users :)

loceng 2y ago

Oh boy, global consensus? That's a big ask. Why not allow branches of divergence? You'll maintain a higher and increasing level of free help from a bigger base of contributors that way.

wcedmisten 2y ago
There are kind of branches already (other layers have different styles [1]), but this debate is over the default layer style, which appears on first page load of openstreetmap.org [1]: Transport Map Layer https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/42.3594/-71.1051&layers=T https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/42.3594/-71.1051&layer...
aendruk 2y ago
> global consensus? No, that’s not what I wrote. It’s local consensus on a system that is fit for global use, which means being cautious about what concepts receive special treatment from the renderer. > not allow branches of divergence I’m not sure where you got this idea. It’s explicitly licensed under CC0 and GitHub shows 800 forks. This freedom to diverge is one of the arguments in support of being conservative about changes to the common default.