[Tagging] How to overcome lack of consensus

[John Sturdy]

On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 2:56 PM, David Earl <david at frankieandshadow.com> wrote:

> The problem is that it is almost impossible to write, and more importantly,
> keep up-to-date a data consumer (like a specialized map of shops, in the
> examples people have been talking about) in an anarchic free-for-all where
> tags come and go and people invent their own.

I think it could improve things if we could have a file of tag
synonyms, in a machine-readable format, somewhere on the web site, and
provide libraries for parsing and using it, in some widely-used
programming languages.

I suggest dividing such a file into blocks (e.g. blank line separated
stanzas), with each block identifying a context in which it applies
(typically country=....); the first block would apply globally.

__John