[Tagging] Waterway direction

[SomeoneElse]

  On 01/09/2010 21:42, Anthony wrote:
> (While looking at this I also noticed we have barrier=ditch and
> waterway=ditch.  That also sucks, unless there's some distinction
> between the two.

Presumably that's different wiki editors arriving at the same feature 
from different angles?  I'd say there were exactly the same thing.  
Where I grew up "ditch" was the generic word for a semi-natural or 
artificial waterway much smaller than a river, often used as a field 
boundary.  Named ditches there are often called "Xxx Dike" (same root 
word as "ditch" I suspect)

> Which is
> http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/File:IMG_6784.JPG supposed to be?)
>
>

Personally I'd map it as either waterway=stream or waterway=drain, 
depending on how far it is along the line between natural feature that's 
been widened or culverted at one end (stream) or entirely artifical 
feature dug to drain line (drain).  I wouldn't use barrier=ditch because 
(at least as of last year) hardly anyone else does - 
http://osmdoc.com/en/tag/barrier/ditch .