[Tagging] Aeroway=Aerodrome Modifier Tags?

[Steve Bennett]

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 6:47 AM, Zeke Farwell <ezekielf at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> You may or may not know that currently in OSM there is only one [rendered]
> tag to describe the many different types of places where planes can take off
> and land (aeroway=aerodrome).  I'm trying to figure out how we can tag tiny
> airstrips and gigantic international airports differently so that renders
> can decide to show important aerodromes at high zoom levels and tiny,
> unimportant ones only at low zoom levels.
> Here are some tag ideas I'm toying with.  These would all be modifiers for
> aeroway=aerodrome:
> aerodrome=airport    (large aerodrome. many buildings.  commercial flights.
>  international flights)
> aerodrome=airfield    (smaller aerodrome.  few buildings)
> aerodrome=airstrip    (tiny aerodrome.  basically just a runway, often just
> a grass one)

IMHO, if the only distinction between them is
size/importance/hierarchy, then it just creates pain and confusion to
create all these extra words, particularly for non-english speakers.
Why not:

aeroway=aerodrome
importance=1
importance=2
etc.

Make 5 intercontinental airports and 1 tiny amateur airfields. This
also avoids the problem when Podunck Airfield is actually an
international airport (yet "aerodrome=airfield" seems more intuitive),
and removes a whole bunch of subjective issues to do with the
connotations of each name.

Steve