[Tagging] Waterway river vs stream
Christoph Hormann
chris_hormann at gmx.de
Sat Oct 19 16:03:25 UTC 2013
I think the whole issue should be split into two separate questions: The
verifiability of the rule and the rule itself.
As far as verifiability is concerned - it seems the question how far an
able person can jump is not an issue here. As i said before i would
interpret the rule from a practical standpoint, i.e. tag as stream if i
generally would assume crossing this waterway with dry feet would be
considered feasible on a hike by most people without disabilities. Of
course there will be borderline cases but there always are, even if a
quantative rule exists.
The question of changing width of a waterway can also be answered from a
practical perspective - it is sufficient for the waterway to have
occasional points where it can be crossed to qualify.
This interpretation of course also means that the tagging of a waterway
does not only depend on the properties of the waterway itself - a 1
meter wide 'stream' running in a steep walled gorge 10 meter wide on
top cannot practically be jumped across.
Which leads me to the rule itself which - as noted previously - does not
make much sense as a mandatory top level distinction for waterways.
But it has been around for a long time and a lot of data has been
tagged based on it. This in my opinion means changing the meaning of
the existing river/stream distinction - even if there was a practically
verifiable alternative rule - would serve no purpose except devaluing
existing data as well as newly entered information. The only sensible
way to change things would be to move the distinction into a secondary
tag (something like crossable=* for example, that would also allow
tagging the possibility to wade through) and to re-tag all waterways
with a uniform primary tag (natural=waterway would be an obvious choice
although it could be useful to make the distinction natural/artificial
waterway indeed mandatory).
Greetings,
--
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/
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