[Tagging] tagging single trees

NopMap ekkehart at gmx.de
Mon Sep 6 08:41:08 BST 2010



To describe the problem more fully:

The definition of natural=tree in the Wiki is "lone or significant tree".
This corresponds to the way trees are handled in topographic maps. If it is
a landmark or of some significance, it is noted in the map. All other trees
are collected as wooded area.

The definition has been unchanged since 2006. The tag has been used 372,969
times (tagstat). Only recently, people have started adding every single tree
along a road, in a park or even every single tree in a forest. All examples
I know are from urban areas. There has been an additional tag added to the
wiki "denotation" to further describe the specific (un)importance of the
tree.

Usually, trees are not rendered or not rendered prominently. I develop a
hiking map in which landmark trees are rendered more prominently with a
small tree icon. From my experience, outside of cities there are many
landmark trees that have been mapped according to the present definition and
that are very useful for orientation. Where people have tagged the urban
trees properly with the additional tag "denotation=urban", they can just be
filtered away.

Therefore it would be helpful to use the denotation tag more widely for
non-significant trees. It is fairly simple to mass select all tree nodes in
a city park and add the proper tag.

But it would be destructive to change the base meaning of a tag that has
been unchanged for 4 years and used 372,969 times. It would mean a loss of
information for all real landmark trees which are properly tagged according
to the current definition. Basically invalidating 4 years worth of good
mapping.

In short: There already is a compatible extendsion of the tagging, we just
need to use it. We do not need an incompatible, destructive change of
meaning.

bye
          Nop

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