Talk:Wiki/team

Coordination

Please monitor this pages to get notified about internal things.

• Here talking about team internal things?
• On talk:wiki and a dedicated forum for external requests?
• Cleanup Requests and their discussion on WikiProject Cleanup of course

Please make sure the people find you by joining our category and clean up you user page. Please enable personal wiki mail to keep the level down.

Whos in?

!i!

Its me !i! in RL called Matthias. I worked on Map Icons, List of OSM based Services, Software, Develop and some more a lot. I try to update pages and merging outdated ones to bring them a new life --!i! 09:15, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Skippern

I'll join this wikiteam. I am one of the main contributor in translating to Brazilian Portuguese (Pt-br namespace). Mainly work on translating tags. Brazilian Portuguese is not my main language, but since I live in Brazil, and hope for the Brazilian comunity to grow, I feel it is better with a page with bad grammar than no page at all. Tag documentation in Brazilian Portuguese is important for reqruiting more Brazilian users to OSM, as English skills usually are very limited. --Skippern 22:31, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

ZMWandelaar

I'm in to. My passion besides wive kids and family and a lot more, is to bring structure into systems that's messed up in time. I work(ed) on WikiProject Nederland Wandelroutes and NL:Kaarteigenschappen. Special interest is Tag optimalisation within Wiki and OSM.
--ZMWandelaar 06:41, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

AndiPersti

I'll join too. I'm still rather new to all the Wiki stuff but I'm motivated to learn more about it and will try to do my best :-). I started with translating some pages to german and realised some inconsistencies. So I found out about the Wikiteam and will try to improve the Wiki. -- AndiPersti 17:25, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Next steps

What is your wish for next actions?

Suggestion: Lets introduce "GAT"

I'm happy to get into this team. Working only a short period, but already very intensively, on OSM, I discovered Wiki to be a very helpfull part of the OSM project. In my oppinion Wiki is the connecting channel between us, our data, mapping efforts and our primairy users, all those partners who're making awesome products around OSM data. The first step in understanding our data (our tags) is studying Wiki. But..... the first current problem is discovered. At this moment there is no ultimate starting point to study all our tags. No proper documentation, unfindable descriptions, at the end the leak of clearity will harm the quality and usability of our data. Therefore here I will launch "GAT". GAT is the abbriviation of "General Accepted Tags". Tag who are invented by the community, tags that have their own page with a clear description. GAT's have no synonyms. When we are able to define our GAT's, put them in a Category Index page, we have conquered the first and main problem in our internal communication about Mapping and Tagging. Please let me read you reactions on my suggestion.
--ZMWandelaar 15:52, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I guess you imagine something that this guy does? Blue Ribbon features I like the idea but unfortunately are there strong opinions caused by the conflicts about the appropiate proposed feature process. I tried to get in touch with people but this simply doesnt work [1],[2]. So I say marking good ones is better than branding/banning bad ones on the wiki (as I tried with Template:No proposal. Jochen is working on embedding Taginfo into the key template so we get stats of the actual tag and the users had another indicator of well-knowness --!i! 16:14, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

The Blue Ribbon idea is a little on the road of what I suggest. Beware there is one allergic element in what we want (clean wiki) and that is (dis)allow tags. Words like good/bad, must/must not is non of my proposal. We have to avoid discussions like within the Proposal Process. It cost to much energie to approve unanimously.
My proposal is about certifying non synonymic, documented tags. This is a much more objective way of selection. What's good or bad can't be defined in a global project. The only discussion there will be, is: Discribes this "Tag-Page the object you ment by this tag? Why didn't you use a allready exsisting tag with a simulair meaning? Is there a difference?
I hope this will clearify more my GAT Suggestion.
--ZMWandelaar 13:44, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Sry actually I don't see that much differences to Blue Ribbon. Can you give us an example, please? I agree the good/bad thing is a bad idea. So you wan't to point out similar tagging methods? --!i! 15:19, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

One reason that tag documentation is a hard problem, is that there's a significant proportion of the OpenStreetMap community who don't participate in editing the wiki. Certainly many people don't have the wiki editing energy to participate in intensive voting/discussion on constant tag changes. We're not talking about lesser-contributing people. Among the non-wiki-editors are many respected members of the mapping and developer community. And in fact among the non-wiki-editors, there's a rather unhealthy "us and them" attitude prevailing. This makes the whole situation rather difficult and any discussion about wiki proposal processes needs to be carried out with this in mind.

Now User:Nickvet419 knows all of this. I know he does, because I've seen him battling, and persuading, and documenting to try and make the wiki tag proposal processes work for several years now. That's why I have some faith that Blue Ribbon features idea, which he's put forward, will be at least vaguely sensible. I'm not sure yet, but I think it could be a good thing.

Meanwhile you're suggesting "GAT", which sounds like a very similar idea. Maybe you have some good ideas on synonyms, but the fact that you are putting this forward as something "the wiki team" should work on, ...to me that demonstrates a lack of understanding. I know that tag documentation is a big area of mess which needs sorting out on the wiki, but if you try and steam in there with a self-appointed "wiki team", this will epitomise the worse kind of wiki-fiddling which non-wiki-editors despise. I fear you may be setting yourself up to be shot down in flames, and the "wiki team" will be reviled and ridiculed.

My suggestion for things the wiki team should work on? I don't know. Maybe we don't need a wiki team. But I'd suggest don't try to solve tagging debates/process in the name of the "wiki team"

-- Harry Wood 00:34, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Harry, yes thats exactly my fear combined with the current "us and them". Yes we need a improvement on the voting process but no it's not on us to decide so (just my opinion). I think we should working on showing the people that we can clean up the wiki and I would say then they are willing to listen to us if we initiate a discussion on improving the proposal process, but together with the community and with the prominet people of OSM. But hey thats just my oppinion based on my experiences --!i! 08:47, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Asspecially for Harry Wood ..... Start all over again.
!i! started recruting enthusiastic wiki editors trying to coordinate support help for new Wiki-editors and cleanup activities on Wiki. Several members allready tried to structure Wiki, and aspecially the Tagging-list. IMHO all attemps doing this by judging tags in terms of good and bad will fail in flames. My suggestion "GAT" is based on documentation of existng tags without argueing.
Lets give an example: User:Lubeck used a tag ambulance=yes. This tag is not documented on Wiki. Nevertheless in combination with barrier=bollard and motorcar=no, it is very obvious what he means. Going into the logic of current tags, this object should have an access tag as documented emergency=yes. One mail to Lubeck, I think, will clearify if this is what he ment. Every reasonable user will come to a compromise with you. Discussions in public will ends in endless discusions and annoing voting processes.
The Key:emergency is a typical GAT and should be identified as such and documented properly. To avoid other users inventing (!!??) Tag:ambulance again, The wiki team creates a redirect-page to Key:emergency.
After some time there will be a indentifiable part of Wiki that will have, by no force, a preferable state over not proper documented tags. I hope this part of my idea is clear now.
And the difference between my suggetion and the former initiatives?
Harry allready mentioned it: "Now User:Nickvet419 knows all of this. I know he does, because I've seen him battling, and persuading, and documenting to try and make the wiki tag proposal processes work for several years now."
I told earlier: "We have to avoid (public) discussions like within the Proposal Process. It cost too much energie to approve unanimously.".
Shortly: Do not fight the fighters, do not be rules among rulers, respect members who descided to use their energy only on mapping. Ask them personaly what they mean by there efforts. Reflect this on Wiki. We will write this down because we like to document things. Let's do that and try to go the way of: Looking what's in Wiki and OSM, Put it in a proper structure and correct failures. IMHO the first two staps are our main job. And after doing this perfectly, the community itselves will do the third.
--ZMWandelaar 09:44, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks to your explanation now I understand your idea. I like it. But you should talk to Nick and try to merge both ideas. But nevertheless I think we shouldn't try to revolutionize anything at the map features sector at the moment, because the air is poisoned. I realy would like and admire your energy but this would be a to big step for this new founded team. We have a lot's of other grounds where we can score and help people. And after that we might have a better position to show the people that our ideas might be useful to clean up the proposal process, too :) --!i! 12:26, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

ZMWandelaar, to be more fair to you, a lot of this "GAT" idea sounds sensible. You're talking about a scheme which avoids disputes (or side-steps them) and hopefully makes positive improvements to the tag documentation. I guess my point is... why are you putting forward this idea here? Maybe you should just move the top of this discussion over to somewhere like Talk:Proposed features -- Harry Wood 18:24, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Poooh dear collegues, A moment I thought we we didn't align here. Wrong impression. I'm glad. Your reactions did me good and asks for a little introduction about me. Friends and family say that I'm a pitbull of the good breed. A fighter when I'm convinced about an opportunity.
I think it's good that one of you introduce me into the 'poison'. Not here on the web, but maybe somebody will tell me on MSN about the past. I think we do not have to work on the Map Feature Page while starting to execute GAT.
I hope you like to work with a non-fighting Pitbull. ;-)
--ZMWandelaar 21:54, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I do want to react again on this thread. In the first place, I think the harvest idea is pretty usefull together with GAT. Secondly I think several initiatives should be started in order to have a great (re)start on this project. A) Develope a smart tools to combine
1) Meta Data Harvesting,
2) Keeping track on progression and
3) Index bad Documented Tags.
A1: Solution is maybe a smart (part of a) template that can be picked up by some harvester. Hopefully a existing one. The layout should be reviewed very carefully. Major changes on that level will ask for a great effort in later state.
A2: Solution is maybe enforcing WikiLabel Template:WellDocumented. IMHO Existing WikiLabels are a bit sensible. We have to try to use positive language. ("This Page is cleaned up" suggest bad ducumentation in the past. Publishers can react like: O don't you like my work???. "WellDocumented" tells only that it is currently OK not referring to any state in the past) (Sorry my English is not so good I hope this explanation will do.)
A3: Solution is maybe enforcing WikiLabel Template:NotWellDocumentedAnymore. This Label should indicate that the information was indicated not complete anymore by changes on OSM.
PS: New WikiLabels has the advantage to start on clean Indexes. Working with old WikiLabels brings a lot of load from the past. we can use the old for the first scan but later on we can try to fase them out. (At least for the Tag part of Wiki.)
--ZMWandelaar 09:07, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Adherence to the rules

Wether or not a tag have been through the various forms of approval (wiki proposal, mailing list discussion, popular usage), the most important is that the documentation of those tags, including discussions, disagreements, etc, adhere to an agreed code of conduct. If we cannot agree on a way of behaviour/norm of documentation, we might end up with edit wars, which is something we absolutely not are interested in. Another discussion is how to decide tags to be added to or removed from Map features. --Skippern 01:09, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Harvesting meta data

I'm mainly interested in a subset of the wiki: the pages providing information about tags (pages describing keys and key/value pairs). I call this data meta-data, "meta" because is information about tags in the OSM database (which is the actual data). Meta-data is both interesting for human mappers and for all kind of applications which process OSM data. My main interest is to maintain meta-data on the wiki in a way, that it can be made available for applications too, not only for humans. We should be able to harvest meta-data from the wiki. Several harvester already exist, Jochen Topfs harvester for his taginfo application being the most recent one. I still feel, that Semantic MediaWiki could help to harvest meta-data, see this proposal, but even if traditional, script-based harvesters are used, I would like to work on closing the feedback loop. When we harvest meta-data from the wiki, we find out about issues like bad usage of templates, missing data (i.e. a missing short description for a tag) or inconsistent data. I'd like to use this information to improve the wiki and to raise the overall quality of the meta-data maintained on the wiki. Gubaer 13:42, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes this is true. But I wan't to point out that working on the map features is a critical political/religous dangerous area that we should keep till we have any other results ;-) But yes making the tag pages more like a standard would help people to fullfill all informations e.g. redirect to discussions on mailinglists/forums,... Actually we are working on expanding the Template:Software2 for other Software genres like renders and so on. So harvesting in another way :) --!i! 14:09, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree, there is a wealth of information in the wiki thats difficult to use in an automated fashion. I have already written several scripts to get data out, the most important one beeing the import for Taginfo. This is harder than it should be. Maybe we can create a repository of scripts that do the hard part of parsing the pages, dealing with incomplete and mis-formatted wiki pages and then put the information in some easier to use format, such as XML or JSON. Other people can then use these formats to easily create reports, maps, whatever. --Joto 15:28, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

I noticed that you today published the first QA reports based on harvested meta-data. This is an important first step towards closing the feedback loop. Gubaer 18:44, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Checking Catagory Pages

Wandering through Wiki I realize more than ever the use of Catagory Pages. Defining our work area we can start like this. Listen to this experience:
I started on

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Tags Category:Tags]. 

I found

[http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Category:Nl:Tags Nl:Tags]. 

And through that I found

[[NL:Tag:landuse=industrial]].

Look at next code: (How do you call this Meta thing?, I changed/add some characters to make the readable):

{{ValueDescription
|key=landuse
|value=industrial
|image=Image:Landuse-industrial.png
|description=Industriegebied ((http://www.omegawiki.org/DefinedMeaning:forest_(1533) other languages)). See also .{.{Tag|natural|wood.}.}.
|onNode=yes
|onWay=no
|onArea=yes
|combination=* .{.{Tag|name||*}.}. *.{.{Tag|ref|*}.}.
|lang=nl
}}.

--> Description wrong: Directly corrected.
--> Page content not optimal. Should be marked as "Ready for upgrade to current OSM use".

Further I Wikied on dutch words and found out that there are a lot of Dutch pages not containing the "ValueDescription" and therefor not present on "Category:Nl:Tags". Could this value be a good start in inventorizing pages and make the first enhancements? --ZMWandelaar 07:34, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi ZMWandelaar, this is called a template. It's some kind of intelligent mask that can change/embedd content to the target pages. Here it adds the green box containing infos of a key value. This allows us to change the represantation at one single page and all others get changed, too.

Yes I agree, this would be a good way to fitting stuff together. This Template is important e.g. [Tagwatch]] uses it to check against wiki documentation. Later we can use it to generate lists of all tags (and may be their translations).

But this is not only for tag related stuff. Checking pages in a category or adding them to a category helps us to index our giant document catalogue in general :) --!i! 08:30, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

IMO when finding tag pages that don't use the {{KeyDescription}} or the {{ValueDescription}} templates, these should be added, even if we do not have the information to complete it. In such cases also add one of {{Tag stub}} or {{Key stub}} --Skippern 08:45, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes in a second step we should think about extending the template to add thinks like: alternative tagging keys, backlink to proposal, feature discussions,... and so on. But therefore we need first all key, values tagged properly with the old one ;) --!i! 09:59, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Structuring Categories

Allthough not being an expert on all the possibilities of Templates, I understand the concept and being able to work with them more and more.

While scanning the Categories It's good to see how we want to see these Indexes.

Suggestion:
1) "Category: Tag": Contains links to all "Category: <Language>:Tag" Indexes. Additional all pages with general non-language dependant information about tags and Tagging.
2) "Category: <Language>:Tag": Contains links to all translated Tag pages. Additional all pages with general language dependant information about tags and Tagging. Page is linked to "Category: Tag".
3) "Tag:<language>:<tagname>: This page describes a tag. Page is linked to "Category: <Language>:Tag". Link by

Example: {{Category:Nl:Tags}}

--ZMWandelaar 12:34, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Personaly I'm not that interested in rearranging the categories structure. You might have a look at here Wiki_guidelines#Categories, Wiki organisation or write there down your descissions? --!i! 13:51, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Forum / Mailinglist

Gents,
For a better communicaties I like to use at least a Forum. Can somebody arrange that somewhere?
--ZMWandelaar 13:34, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I asked for one, currently unanswerd by the admins,...will ask again --!i! 13:47, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Still waiting for the mailingList. Admins back from holyday?--ZMWandelaar 09:20, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Sry missed to ring the bell again. Now a second try: User talk:Lambertus#Forum_for_Wikiteam --!i! 10:15, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

For me neither mailinglist nor forum is any good, as I am travelling a lot, and often work from locations with a limited internet access. My mailing lists correspondence is separated from my personal e-mail resulting in that it can be days and weeks between each time I check up on mailing lists (often also days between each time I check personal mail), and I am not able to follow much up on forums neither.--Skippern 19:10, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Tadaaaaa there it is: http://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewforum.php?id=52 I'm still not sure how to split up the our communication --!i! 16:58, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

New page related to maintenance tasks

I've created Wiki maintenance tasks to complement this page. Please take a look and see whether you find this to be potentially useful (once suitably expanded). One aim of this page could be the identification of tasks which could be semi-automated in the future (far future). --Ceyockey 15:42, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Not sure if this is necessary but I will monitor it :) --!i! 19:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no reason to keep it if it is not needed. Maybe there are simply no worthwhile maintenance tasks to be monitored. --Ceyockey 23:09, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Maintainance Task list is a great idea.--ZMWandelaar 09:19, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Well yes but I thought for this reason we have the list on WikiProject Cleanup? I just keeped in mind, that we should be aware that we don't open to much single lists :) --!i! 10:22, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject Cleanup and Wiki/team have two different tasks IMO, your suggested page is more to do with Cleanup/maintenance, while we should focus more on general information availability, and such. Of course our job should comply with wiki standard in order not to create work for Cleanup team. --Skippern 18:55, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I like it. I've been meaning to create a list like this for a while. There's quite a few "wiki-wide cleanup tasks" which are very different from the "specific page cleanup tasks" which we already list. It's useful list them because some are very easy tasks for people to get involved in, and also they can be done in parallel by several different people, so good activities for a Wiki Cleanup Drive event. Some of them are pretty mindless "maintenance" tasks. Others might require more intelligence e.g. A content building clean-up task across all the important tag pages: "Set up 'Similar tags' section with information on how to distinguish which tag to use". -- Harry Wood 14:09, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I added a few ideas on there. There's a few other special pages which obviously hint at big clean-up tasks across the wiki. Often they require a bit of judgement though. I think the best tasks to list out will be ones where there's something which doesn't require much judgment or ability to write in english. I noticed a few things in the tag documentation which people could do without really having to think about it much! -- Harry Wood 02:48, 2 April 2012 (BST)

Messy custom signatures

I don't mean to be a negative all the time but... every time you sign your name you're injecting 105 characters into the wiki-text?:

[[User:!i!|!i!]] [[Image:Wikipedia-16px.png|This user is member of the wiki team of OSM|link=wiki/team]].

Is it just me, or is that a yucky mess? Hugely and unnecessarily confusing things. Think of the wiki-newbies! These custom signatures (which I know are quite popular among wikipedians) are a bit daft in my opinion.

-- Harry Wood 14:21, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Come on Harry, this is my only joy while cleaning up the wiki. Tuning my signature ;) I hope this will make it easier to newbies to get in contact with the wikiteam --!i! 11:02, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah no I don't think it does make it easier for anyone. -- Harry Wood 02:43, 2 April 2012 (BST)