[Tagging] What's a power=station?

Ben Laenen benlaenen at gmail.com
Tue Jan 19 13:43:52 GMT 2010


Steve Bennett wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 5:51 PM, Ulf Lamping <ulf.lamping at googlemail.com> 
wrote:
> > d) I don't think it's a good idea to change a tag description two years
> > after it was documented, because the wording is "slightly" wrong for
> > some parts of the english speaking world.
> 
> The wording is *completely* wrong for the *entire* english speaking world.
> 
> Definition of power=generator: "power station"
> Definition of power=station: "substation"
> Definition of power=sub_station: "transformer"
> 
> I don't think you can get much wronger than that. And it doesn't
> appear to be a US english vs other english problem. Although "power
> station" (to mean power=generator) is more common outside the US, I
> don't think they use the term there to mean "power=sub_station" (as
> implied). Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

foot=no would also literally mean that people would be allowed if they had no 
feet.

Maybe the English speaking world should start joining the rest of the world 
which have to learn definitions of each tag anyway. So OSM may have awkward 
tags for English speaking persons, but if we really have to try to resolve all 
tags that would look strange in some language (e.g. amenity=cafe is not what 
we call a "café" in Dutch) then the only option would be to use index numbers 
(amenity=135...) (*).

This is really a non-issue. Just learn the definition as it has been written 
on the wiki for years instead of blindly following your definition of a 
certain word, like the rest of the world. Now you're telling that the entire 
world has to learn new definitions because your definition of the word isn't 
the same as the defintion of the tag.

Greetings,
Ben


(*) Oh, right, actually we do use index numbers, except that we use 
power=station instead of power=4569.




More information about the Tagging mailing list