[Tagging] Names on relations and not component ways

[Werner Hoch]

Hi ceyockey,

Am Freitag, den 04.01.2013, 08:43 -0500 schrieb dies38061 at mypacks.net:
> I recently created a waterway where I put the name of the waterway 
> on the relation but not on the component ways which are grouped by 
> the relation.  
> This results in the name of the waterway not appearing in the standard 
> Map view. 

AFAIR there's currently no relation type that inherits it's tags to the
member ways, so that the name tags are rendered on the map.

Road routes do not inherit there ref tags to the highways,
associatedStreets do not inherit there street name to the highway
segments. Those relations use duplicate tags, too.

There's only one rarely used concept of tag inheritance:
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relation:multilinestring
that is AFAIR not supported by the renderers.

> I am wondering what current best practice is. 
> Should name be applied to both component ways and relation, 
> or is application of name to relation sufficient.  

For waterways, adding one name to ways and all names to the relation is
at least "useful". Longer waterways (rivers) sometimes do not have the
same name over the complete length, because they flow across different
countries.

e.g. The Danube river:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/89652

> To me, not duplicating data would seem to be the better overall 
> practice, and duplication of name on relation and component ways 
> would seem to be a case of tagging-for-the-renderer.  

IMHO, redundancy is not always a bad thing. Just do not add too much.


> (p.s. the waterway in question => http://www.openstreetmap.org/browse/relation/2676618)

For that short waterway it wouldn't create a waterway relation [1], as
the benefits of the extra relation are low.
* no international names required
* no wikipedia reference
* the waterway has the same name on all segments.
* no gnis reference tag, ...

[1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Relation:waterway

Regards
Werner (werner2101)