[Tagging] historic tagging, obelisks

[M∡rtin Koppenhoefer]

2011/2/1 Craig Wallace <craigw84 at fastmail.fm>:
> their primary purpose. That purpose is to provide a place of worship. I
> think a tower can be a monument (and tagged as such), if that is why it was
> built....
> I think both monument and memorial are (usually) for structures in memory of
> something.


think about the Eiffel tower in Paris. It is (IMHO) clearly a
monument, but it was originally built as a temporal structure for the
world fair. I won't be a monument according to the definition given
above.


> Though its true that this is poorly defined, its not always clear whether to
> tag something as a monument or memorial.


+1


>> Maybe it would be better to use them as flags? Describe the features
>> with some tags, and add monument=yes (for monumental stuff) or
>> memorial=yes (for stuff to remind about something). It could also be
>> memorial=first_world_war (or memorial:topic=first_world_war)
>
> I think its best to have one generic tag, for any structure in memory of
> something/someone, eg historic=memorial.
> Then use extra tags to specify what it is in memory of (memorial:topic=),
> plus the physical style (statue, obelisk).


While this sounds reasonable, it would still make mapping hard. E.g.
in Rome there is a lot of obelisks, and they are very easy to identify
;-), but tagging their original purpose or what they should remind of
might be disputed or hard to find out. For the obelisks that didn't
remain at their original site (like most of them) it might also be
confusing, and there might be 2 topics (the original intention and the
one of who moved it). Generally spoken, an obelisk (like a column) can
be read as a "phallus" and has the connotation of power and centre ---
similar to the stake in original cultures. It is used to mark a place
as important (connecting the earth with the sky, nature with the gods,
...). The topic can be expanded to a whole book (books expanding on
the meaning of this do indeed exist).

But I do think that you are right: they will in most cases be
monuments (historic=monument). This would IMHO support the idea to map
them with a tag that is not "historic" itself, i.e. man_made=obelisk
(pro: follows the man_made=tower logics) or building=obelisk (pro: is
already rendered ;-) ). Or use memorial:type=obelisk in conjunction.

> Maybe also a tag for the relative
> importance/significance, eg is it just a village memorial, or is it of
> national importance.


you could use "rank" for this:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/new_place_values#rank_on_other_features

cheers,
Martin