[Tagging] Basic philosophy of OSM tagging

[Warin]

On 14/01/2015 11:00 PM, tagging-request at openstreetmap.org wrote:
> Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 07:59:49 +0100
> From: Frederik Ramm<frederik at remote.org>
> To:tagging at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [Tagging] Basic philosophy of OSM tagging
> Message-ID:<54B613E5.8020003 at remote.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
>
> Hi,
>
> On 01/14/2015 01:28 AM, Warin wrote:
>> >What is the basic philosophy of OSM tagging at the top level?
> There is no basic philosophy at the top level from which everything else
> can be derived. It's like evolution - some things are a bit strange but
> you can often understand them by looking at how they came to be.
>
> There is a tendency however to tag for
>
>> >What things are? eg highways
> simply because something can always have side effects that are not
> related to the primary purpose, or the primary purpose is not
> immediately obvious.
>
> For example, a motorway is not only a transport feature, it is also an
> insurmountable barrier for pedestrians or cyclists.
>
> Tagging is very often based on what you see, not what you know. If you
> see a body of water (and you might be doing that from aerial imagery,
> sitting 1000s of miles away), you tag it as a body of water even if you
> don't know whether this is an artificial reservoir that supplies
> drinking water or a crater lake or anything else. Tagging
>
>> >What things are used for? eg amenity
> might require more knowledge than the mapper has, especially in the case
> of mapping from aerial imagery.
>
> Bye
> Frederik

I like this. I'm not after changing what has happened in the past but 
adopting an approach that will help future new tags. It may also 
influence future 'tiding' efforts, like those for power infrastructure? 
Don't know but I'd like some guidance as to the suggestion by some on 
the tap tag that it should be somewhere else ..where? And what are the 
'rules'?
 From my 'diary' entry .. amenity and man_made are not liked ... and I 
can see the thinking from your post Frederik. Thanks. I'll put a bit of 
it up on my Diary .. might get more comments. The rest of you can think 
about it .. I know it is an essential question with a basic answer that 
will help guide in the future.

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