[OSM-newbies] lock_name or lock:name

[Ed Loach]

Mike wrote:

> I tend to use the understroke rather than the colon - i.e.
> lock_name,
> bridge_name etc. but have no idea what is best practice - so I
> second the
> question and would like to see answers ...

"Best" practice is subjective... 

There are a lot of arguments both for and against the use of the
colon, which I think is much favoured by object oriented
programmers. You have an object (say lock, or bridge), and separate
the object from it's properties by a colon (though I'd be tempted to
use a fullstop), to get say bridge:name, bridge:ref, bridge:colour
(though that last one might then suffer from a colour/color debate).
This object based method could be argued to be the best practice.

Then you have established practice which tends to vary depending on
when the tag was first used. bridge_ref and bridge_name for example
I've never seen anyone suggest the use of the : (well, except in my
example above) - perhaps as they've been used so long. For
consistency the arguments are that as we have say bridge_ref and
bridge_name then lock_ref and lock_name are more consistent with
existing tagging, so the best practice.

So if I'm tagging something I haven't tagged before where there is
some lack of clarity of the best choice of tags I try to check which
is most commonly used in Tagwatch
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tagwatch
In the case of locks, checking GB, there are roughly twice as many
lock_name as lock:name, and while there are lock_ref tags lock:ref
doesn't seem to have been used at all. The numbers are fairly low
though.
http://tagwatch.stoecker.eu/Great_britain/En/tags.html

It seems you still get a few people using true when all tags seemed
to standardise on yes/no rather than true/false some time ago.

Ed