“You’ve been involved with OpenStreetMap for at least 15 years,” the interviewers begin, marking the start of the session.

I gasp a little. Wow—15 years? Imagine all the… fights and drama?

So I get a little curious and start tracing this person’s digital footprints across the whole OSM universe. See if I can learn a thing or two.

---

“Upgraded road 11390 to secondary to make it stand out from all the other roads.. Because it has bus routes and stands out for transit traffic.”

“This reasoning sounds quite arbitrary to me. Also what degree of transit traffic is necessary so that the road has to ‘stand out’? General convention followed elsewhere outside of cities – and as currently documented – is to use this tag of this type and that tag for that type. The way this road stands out is now inconsistent to how other roads of these types stands out. I think it should be restored.”

“Hmm. That is a fun rule that’s easy to implement and validate. But what are you expecting to achieve with it, other than theoretical correctness – which in cartography is useless, as you might have experienced? I made it secondary, because of its heightened importance to transit traffic. So that routing engines prefer it when routing to there and not fall back on local roads. And even visual inspection would send people on it. So what would be the intention on changing it back?”

“The main benefit of mapping it to certain official classification is that this way we have a clear criteria. This official classification after all also generally indicates which roads are actually more important. If we tied tagging values to official traffic density data then probably it’d be considerably more difficult and likely the result wouldn’t be as intuitive for end users. I find that this way it’s rather difficult to decide on which highway value each road should get.”

The conversation abruptly stopped right there.

Yep. That’s it. The never-ending battle between those who tag based on the “map what’s on the ground” principle and those who want to impose some “official truth.” This conversation is quite painful to read, because I, too, have had several bad experiences with these kinds of topics. Sometimes it even goes as far as reinterpreting tag definitions on the wiki to suit their own preferred interpretations—claiming themselves as the sole authority and harassing anyone who gets in their way.

I still remember when I curiously looked through the block/ban logs of a DWG member, and that one very heated OSM mailing list thread from the past. It turns out the core issue was the same: tagging disputes.

I wonder—what’s the real panacea for this problem?

What keeps someone going, year after year, even for more than 15 years?

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“Hey! The subway system was adjusted according to this document. You are referring to the wiki page written 7 years ago, and it’s not the definitive source for the tagging. With this change, you will definitely break Organic Maps, Maps.Me, and whichever other apps that uses the schema. See the validation page here. So, you can do that, I won’t stop you. But you would make the subway system unusable for people, in favour of some obsolete tagging practices.”

“Thank you for your feedback. I’ll take the time to review and take a broader and deeper look into it. I’ll try to reply again soon.”

Oh, every now and then, something genuinely heartwarming still happens. It’s moments like these that restore my faith in humanity.

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“I’ll answer tomorrow I guess, but for now – imagine somebody not 12 years in OSM, but just learning the ropes, mapping some sidewalks and suddenly getting into this kind of discussion. When I started, a similar encounter led me to stop mapping my neighbourhood and choose a different region for mapping for quite a long time.”

“I don’t really see a way around it. I’d like bicycle routers to work well here. It’s also nice to read on Facebook how someone praises how well Komoot works here. The only way we can really avoid such discussions is by improving tools, documentation, and proposals, which is exhausting in a different way. Cutting corners is not the way.”

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“Change reverted. Please don’t mess with the data if you have no understanding of what you’re doing. Glory to the *** and fk the **!”

“Hey, you. Isn’t it time for you to retire? You’re taking the map too close to the heart, and this incident highlights what you’ve been doing for the past, at least 7 years – driving mappers and newcomers away with your harsh words and rigid mapping practices.”

“Hello. I am sad that you greet guest like this.”

“While I have no information about the local scheme, the question is : why is it so important that the roads are designed as secondary?”

“You guys. Don’t tell people what to do! __ tagging rules regarding roads are here : __ “

“It has been tertiary forever, but you seem to be insisting that this bridge is secondary. Can you explain why? Best regards, __ , on behalf of OSM’s Data Working Group”

“The reason for such classification is in __ because road tagging rules agreed many years ago. This is a well discussed decision on how to map OSM highway classes to __ road classes!”

“Exactly, and anyone using their brain here would say that a bridge on a tertiary road clearly should be tertiary.”

“I do not have any obligation to explain our decision! This was a collective documented decision by ___ mapping community which you are NOT PART OF! You have never been on the spot or in the region. You’ve never been touch with ___ mapping community. __ mapping community has NEVER HAD ANY CONFLICTS ABOUT THIS RULE! It is not up to you to make decisions for local community. It’s a shame that people like you are allowed to do damage in the name of as I can see useless “DWG”. “

“If anyone from the __ community wants to explain the general interpretation here, that would be most welcome. However, with a DWG hat on, sometimes we need to adjudicate between different OSM communities.”

“Well, anybody who has tried mapping in __ knows that the __ mapping community is one person.”

“Hey you! You haven’t been here! You haven’t been in any of our meetings! You haven’t attended any of OSM presentations in ____ conferences or lectures in __ University. You haven’t talked with anybody doing university practice work for OSM! So you have no knowledge and yet try to claim something. I can therefore only advice you to follow your ship. Summing up, there are automated rules which work according to LOCAL decisions! All changes and tagging will abide LOCAL rules! Not anybody from foreign countries! Surfaces are checked locally and verified against open government data.”

This heated conversation checked every item on my personal “bad ending” checklist.

Tagging dispute? Check.

A single person claiming to be the sole benevolent dictator on behalf of the entire community? Check.

Reinterpreting a commonly used tagging scheme based on personal whims—then justifying it with “it’s based on official government data, so you outsiders can’t say anything about it”? Check.

Claiming a parcel of land—or more precisely, a certain geofence at a certain zoom level—as their personal domain, then harassing anyone who edits within it? Check.

And judging by how the conversation unfolded, not even the DWG seems immune to this kind of damage. It’s really painful to witness. And apparently, this particular user is still performing massive automated reverts in their “claimed” region to this day. The “king” still reigns supreme. Scary.

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“Hi, what is the reason for having two separate stop area relations for each line? I look forward to your response, in the absence of which, your changes will be reverted. Thanks.”

“I modified some relations to make subway routes conform to Metro Mapping scheme, which allows them to be used in the maps.me application. You can see the validation here”

“Applications should conform to OSM tagging practices, not the other way around!”

“Well, 170 out of 180 metro systems in the world are tagged like this, so you can say that wiki is a bit out of date. Wiki should describe tagging practices, and not go against them.”

“Sure. If you create a validation system with incorrect assumptions, then the numbers you cite aren’t surprising :)”

“There’s no correct and incorrect in OSM. Only tagging that people and software use or don’t.”

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Alright. That’s more than enough drama to read today—my poor heart needs a break.

But what do I take away from all this?

What are we supposed to do when some powerful, intimidating “local authority” suddenly emerges—digging through our past changesets, challenging everything we thought we understood about the tagging system? When they come screaming that our contributions are unwelcome in the OpenStreetMap project—that we should stop mapping, leave, and never come back? Shouting that our changeset is a nuisance, an act of vandalism. That our absence would be better for the project as a whole.

I don’t know.

Maybe… maybe they’re right.