[Tagging] [Talk-GB] Wiki deprecation of an in-use feature

[Bryce Nesbitt]

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 4:42 PM, Warin <61sundowner at gmail.com> wrote:

> Agreed on the 'control'. But the change of the tagging status? Maybe the
> tagging group (here) is a good place to start a discussion on changing  the
> status of a tag? And it needs to be a formal process with voting on the
> wiki? Thus others outside the tagging group can participate? A 'request for
> status change (RFSC)' followed by 'Status Voting' ?


The core problem for this tag: the people using the tag were not involved
in the deprecation.
The wiki pretends to be the voice of consensus, but it's not.
*http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Deprecated_features
<http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Deprecated_features>*

-------
A far better process might be:

*1) Announce an intent to deprecate.*
*2) Issue a notice on changesets involving the old tag (once per mapper ID
to avoid spam).*
*3) Take debate.  Build a retagging plan (as appropriate).*
*4) Take vote, if and only if there is controversy.  Many deprecation
efforts are good proposals and may not need votes.*
*5) Announce the deprecation on a data consumer list.*
*6) Delay for 2-8 weeks.  Execute a retagging.*


Anything short of this leaves out the people who most care about a tag,
and it leaves fragmented tagging which is bad for data consumers and
rendering software.

---
For waterway=water_point, I have an open mechanical edit proposal
(retagging to amenity=water_point in caravan sites).  It's the cleanup that
never happened before, effectively burring dozens of perfectly good places
to get fresh water.
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