Hello everyone!
I am Te-ika, I am an editor with the Kaart ground survey team. We recently did a ground survey in Thessaloniki and nearby cities. I have been reading this thread and just wanted to put my two cents in on the matter.
As per the first post about posting in English I will be posting in English. As another disclaimer, in order to better understand the issue at hand, I have translated the comments in this thread to English as I do not have a background in Greek. As a result if there are things that I have misunderstood please explain them to me.
There are three points in support of using the “Οδοσ” prefix about which I would like to open a discussion:
-
Digital Maps are a representation of physical features in the real world.
Street signs are a very important feature in the physical world and it is the easiest standard of mapping to have all editors map to what they see on the ground no more. It creates the simplest solution to the standard of data no matter where you go in the world. The “Οδος” prefix is on most street signs in Greece in several different places. I believe, because it has been deemed important enough to be added to the phyiscal street signs all over the country, it should also be important enough to add to the database of OSM. -
“Οδος” equivalents are used more often in the OSM tagging scheme globally, then they are not used.
In this thread there are several references made to Russia. Russia and now Greece seem to be the exception rather than the rule. In Latin American countries for example you can see the use of “Calle” as the Spanish version of “Οδος” and it is used often and repeatedly even though every road in a certain area has “Calle” in the name. Therefore I believe it important to add the “Οδοσ” prefix in order to stay consistent with the rest of the world and their name tagging scheme. The mission of Openstreetmap is to be the most comprehensive geospatial database on the market. There needs to be consistency in that database. Adding “Οδος” contributes to that consistency. -
An accurate and comprehensive database is more important than what the capabilities of the technologies of the day.
Adding “Οδος” keeps the data simple for the majority of people who will interact with OSM data in Greece. Therefore I submit that we create a database that is accurate regardless of the computing power of the day. We are continually improving our technological capabilities and so should not concern ourselves over the capabilities of the technology of the day. We should however concern ourselves over the accuracy and comprehensiveness of our database.
For these reasons I would submit the “Οδος” and all other prefixes be added to the streets where they are physically seen on street signs around the entire country. While this is a lot of work it is not only the simplest standard for all users to follow, but it also creates a consistent and ground-verified database of roads in Greece.