[Osmf-talk] Tagging standards

[Andy Robinson]

Tagging standards has been a periodically debated point ever since I wrote the very first Map Features wiki page in 2006. At the time I came up with the first set of tags I looked long and hard at GML and a few other fledgling xml standards and ideas but it has always been my strong and unchanging belief that one of OSM’s benefits is that we have a totally open tagging schema.

 

So why did I create Map Features in the first place? Simply because I needed to start somewhere with my own mapping and having a set of ideas, rather than a standard, seemed the way to go. So I took my initial inspiration from the map key of an old Ordnance Survey map and off we all went mapping.

 

A traffic_signal is the same as a traffic_light and stop_light and perhaps even a semaphore or traffic_control and probably many other names besides. The clever thing about the human brain of course is that we can generally make an educated guess that these all mean the same thing or we can look it up if we aren’t sure. It makes life easy and most importantly quick for getting data into a wiki type map such as OSM is.

 

So I’m not in favour of tagging standards, its one of the reasons I have never “voted” for a tag name. Any name in my view is valid as long as its in plain language such that anyone looking at the key value pair has a reasonable chance of understanding it, whether they be looking for a suitable tag or manually interpreting an object in the database. Computer algorithms and AI can be programmed or taught to achieve the same result.

 

Of course the project has come along way since 2005 and there are many consumers of the data that would like an easy life and have all OSM data in an easily readable format. Nothing wrong with that and I’m sure there are many services out there that take the OSM data and filter and manipulate it to output something more “standardised”.

 

So I guess I’m saying what’s wrong with the status quo. Mappers can map and consumers can consume. Both parties have to do some legwork, quite literally in some cases, but is that really an issue that needs to constrain us all by adhering to some form of standard?

 

Cheers

Andy

 

 

 

From: john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> 
Sent: 17 October 2022 03:33
To: OSMF Talk <osmf-talk at openstreetmap.org>
Subject: [Osmf-talk] Tagging standards

 

I strongly suspect assets are tagged differently depending when they were mapped and even who mapped them. 

 

Many years ago locally one mapper prefered to use traffic_lights rather than traffic_signals on the grounds that he mapped them and to him they were traffic lights. 

 

Whilst we try to defer to local mappers as we mature and software tries to make sense of our tags is it time to formalise at least some tagging standards?

 

This would enable software to be used and interpret the map in different parts of the world in the same way.

 

Even if we could say to end users something like traffic_signals is our "Standard" way to tag I think this would be an improvement or have I missed something and there are standards but the world ignores them.

 

Thoughts please

 

Thanks John

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