[Osmf-talk] Tagging standards

[steveaOSM]

In Budapest cukrászdák (roughly “confectioneries,” but only roughly), I have eaten such delectable “pastries” (and that word is only close, a word that would convey “baked good, made with love, light as a cloud…” cannot be found in English for such Hungarian delectables).  If you ever get the chance to try Dobos torte, Rákóczi túrós, or so many others, oh, my, please do!

If grin were to be “shoe-horned” (forced inappropriately or uncomfortably) into selecting shop=confectionery, I would quite understand the ensuing disappointment.  As it appears that Jaak (and indeed, all of OSM with its “choose English as your key:value tagging pairs for EVERYTHING") insists this be true, what choice does grin have?

This (a British English tagging heritage) is but one of the realities that OSM forces upon us, and we live with it.  I’m not going to throw tomatoes at Allan, Frederik, or even Steve (Coast) for this, as it is a solution that has become a “had to be made” (at some point) decision early in our project.

Whether café is “as in Britain” or “the Italian kind (because the node is in Italy)" clearly remains a sore spot, as we do lose great cultural diversity in our tagging as we flatten semantics to fit into one particular dialect of one particular natural language.  (Or, perhaps better stated, all others who don’t know British English words and concepts must learn about them to the extent their tagging desires overlap with them, even as these are perfectly described in another local language — with perfect precision).  We do “work on” improving this with both discussion and actual tagging development of a deeper richness of tagging (in talk-pages, in our wiki, amongst ourselves…) but this does remain a persistent problem in OSM.  (Look at how recent discussion of “fountain” exploded into a thousand pieces).

Two things remain true in OSM:  we’ve “standardized” on British English (in tags, especially keys), and we only rather slowly and hesitatingly explicitly state (as full-throatedly well-formed and widely-agreed-upon) something that resemble what we might call “Tier 1” tags.  I even hesitate to type THAT as I’m not sure what Tier 1 means.  We have our Map Features (wiki), I suppose that’s a good start, as we say these are "the most commonly used tags, which act as informal standards.”

There ARE “cans of worms” here:  part of this are topics that some people have never seen discussed before, part of this is that we’ve never stopped talking about many of these things.  If I can say one thing here (again), it’s that we’ll always be talking about these things (for both newbies and old hands, alike), so, “get used to it,” as I honestly do think that such dialog is (must be) an integral part of OSM’s culture.  When we understand these unique combinations of both “culturally-shackled linguistic limitations" and yet also “blank canvas possibilities,” we can find solutions amongst ourselves.  But our community will frequently be talking about this, that’s just the way it is.

> On Oct 21, 2022, at 6:42 AM, Jaak Laineste <jaak at nutiteq.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> For example there is no key for Hungarian cukrászda, which is not confetery, but the key used for such objects. Shall I create a new key? Maybe I should.
>> 
>> Does café mean something which works like a café (in England?) or something which is CALLED a café locally?
> 
> Maybe you should semantically, but pragmatically you need to think of all the data “renderers” also, these would never get cukrászda and whatever it is called in the 1000+ other known written languages of the world. Find nearest English term with the most logical icon on your favorite map.
> 
> Jaak