[Tagging] Wadi vs intermittent stream?

[Hans De Kryger]

Hey Tod,

I've been mapping here in Arizona all over for 2 years. Seeing many dry
streams especially in the rural areas I've been tagging them as
waterway=stream intermittent=yes. I've seen many different sizes of
streams. From the largest dug by major rainfall to the smallest fed by tiny
streams. I use the same tag all around because Arizona's storms feed these
streams only during the rainy season mostly.

Regards,
Hans
In the southwest of the United States there are numerous features locally
called a "wash" which is an intermittent natural drainage channel that only
carries water during and immediately after large rainstorms. The ones I've
looked at in my area of interest are typically tagged waterway=stream,
intermittent=yes.

When looking into how to render them I have become aware of an alternative
tagging of waterway=wadi as mentioned at
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:waterway%3Dwadi

If I am looking at taginfo correctly, intermittent=yes is far more used
that waterway=wadi:

http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/compare/intermittent=yes/waterway=wadi

wadi=yes is only used a handful of times so I will ignore it for now.

It seems to me that using waterway=* and intermittent=yes is more useful as
one can distinguish between minor (waterway=stream) and major
(waterway=river) features. And one can also use intermittent=yes for other
water related items like the local "tanks" which are small reservoirs found
scattered around ranch land which may only hold water for the cattle during
limited seasons of the year.

With at least one renderer that I am looking at, the default database
creation tool supports waterway=wadi but not intermittent=*.

So which is the preferred tagging?

If waterway=wadi then I have some OSM editing to do but at least the
renderer should be easy. If waterway=stream, intermittent=yes then I need
to get some changes done by the project who's rendering database I am using.

Cheers,
Tod
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