The claim that not all of the information is collected in the same place rings false to me. The Wiki, as noted, is rich in information. If you want concise, the http://switch2osm.org is an awesome resource.
Great article. I used Osmosis to create a cross-street calculator and was very happy with it. Unfortunately, since then I've had to work with MySQL, and Osmosis doesn't seem to have an update to date schema file for it, so I've been left out in the cold.
