[Tagging] Thoughts on how to replace or modify an exist/established tag (Was: Feature Proposal - RFC - sluice_gate)

[John Smith]

On 6 January 2011 14:07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> My guess is that this mailing list and talk@ reach a pretty small proportion
> of users. Simply announcing "we're changing the tag! please tag differently
> from now on!" is not remotely sufficient.

As I stated I was spit balling and this thread is to try and come up
with something defined that would even remotely facilitate a tag
change :)

Also, while talk and tag are only a small number of contributors, they
are the ones that would care most about such changes.

> Similarly, doing a mass tag update which is going to break many existing
> renderers and editors is simply not acceptable. Particularly when some of

Well I didn't stipulate time frame between wiki changes and have no
idea how much notice would be reasonable, would a month, 3 months, 6
months.... ?

> Putting in place a serious process for tag migration will be difficult. I

IMHO the current system of not being able to make alterations is worst.

> suggest that a first step will be definition of an actual schema, with
> version number. For example, define an actual list of several hundred tags,
> with semantics, that correspond to "OSM core 1.0". Then, we could have votes
> on changes to the schema, with advance notice given: "On November 1, 2011,
> the main database will be updated to OSM core 1.1. Please have your editor
> and renderer patches ready for this date."

I don't agree with this, if you must use versioning just base it on
the date rather than arbitrary numbering.

> Not easy, and I don't think the OSM community is at that level of process
> maturity yet.

Unless we take steps to become more mature things will never change, I
see this thread as a good start, where it will end up is another
matter entirely.