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<p>Hi all,</p>
<p>one of the things that bothers me most of all in OSM is tagging inconsistency, especially because we are talking about a database. This thread shows a fundamental flaw in our processes:</p>
<p>We have a relatively tedious proposal and voting process and after finishing it turns out that the result...</p>
<p>1. is ignored by those who don't like it</p>
<p>2. is not implemented (as mentioned: it is a preset in JOSM)</p>
<p>3. is unknown (I include myself; I wasn't aware that riverbank had been downvoted in 2011 and have happily used riverbank, even "corrected" water areas)</p>
<p>I strongly believe that the correct way, once the voting has finalized a standard process should be implemented:</p>
<p>1. Data consumers/tools need to be informed about the change</p>
<p>2. In case a mass edit is considered possible this should be performed with due notification to data consumers/tools</p>
<p>3. Mass edit should then be performed</p>
<p>If the voting process is considered problematic then we need to adapt, change and improve it but ignoring it only leads to further fragmentation and ultimately anarchy.</p>
<p>We really should make sure mass edits can be performed securely. I often see debates that include the argument "yeah, this new tagging might be better but it is a hell of a problem changing all the existing data". This implies that we are NOT improving the data model and it will get worse and worse over time. OSM will eventually become a huge transatlantic oil tanker incapable to change direction. This will be particularly problematic when we REALLY have a new and much better tagging scheme but are not capable of deploying it.</p>
<p>Getting back to the concrete case here: I liked the wording "riverbank" better because it was more concise, but this is just wording, so I will use water=river as area from now on. For the same reason mass edit should not be an issue I imagine but I don't have the background knowledge to be sure.</p>
<p>Cheers,</p>
<p>Marcos Martinez</p>
<p>Am 10.02.2021 15:43, schrieb Tomas Straupis:</p>
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<div class="pre" style="margin: 0; padding: 0; font-family: monospace">2021-02-10, tr, 16:28 Marc_marc rašė:
<blockquote type="cite" style="padding: 0 0.4em; border-left: #1010ff 2px solid; margin: 0">this has already been voted (84% in favour) in 2011 [1]<br /> the problem is therefore not the idea but the interminable transition<br /> period and the inevitable "not of the same opinion as the result of the<br /> vote)</blockquote>
<br /> The "voting" in wiki is totally non representative therefore it<br /> means absolutely nothing (or as we can see are damaging).<br /> Especially when we take into account that these proposals there<br /> created by people with 0 experience in fields that matter.<br /> <br /> It is very sad and disturbing to see that OpenStreetMap fails to<br /> implement at least one of the safeguards against incompetent and<br /> destructive actions:<br /> a) require at least minimal experience<br /> b) provide hard limits on when some tagging can be changed or not<br /> <br /> This leads to a classic situation of *** with a grenade decimating<br /> perfectly working parts of the system and there is no way to prevent<br /> that.<br /> Like "deprecate 100000's of usages of landuse=reservoir, deprecate<br /> 100000's of usage of waterway=riverbank, deprecate 100000's of usages<br /> of landuse=forest", what is next? highway=*?</div>
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