[Tagging] service=drive-through or drive_through?

[Jonathan Bennett]

On 29/06/2011 14:19, Mike N wrote:
>
>   I don't see these edits as out of line or unusual.   It's not so 
> different from the dozens of other projects to create more unified 
> tags so that data consumers have a chance of using the right tag.
I suspect the "tags" you're talking about in other projects don't have 
quite the same significance as they do in OSM. Can you give us an 
example of what you mean?

I see bulk-changing one tag to another in this way as being equivalent 
to changing a method name in an open source library without changing its 
functionality, just to make the name nicer. Anyone using that method in 
their code will get a compilation error all of a sudden, but nothing has 
actually improved in the library. You break some people's use of the 
data without having a net benefit.

To put it another way, if the edits could be done using a simple 
algorithm, they haven't added anything to the OSM data itself, since 
that algorithm could be applied as post-processing. It's just 
rearranging deck chairs.