[Tagging] waterway=wadi problem

[John Willis]

> On Jan 15, 2015, at 2:00 AM, Tod Fitch <tod at fitchdesign.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Jan 14, 2015, at 8:28 AM, Wolfgang Zenker wrote: 
>> In my experience a wadi will go from "completely dried up waterway" or
>> "small stream" to a raging river within a few seconds after some
>> rainfall upstream, and back to its former self within a few hours.
>> Depending on the location, these rainfall events might very well be
>> a few years apart. When I tag an "intermittent stream" I usually
>> have something more benign in mind, like a stream that only exists
>> during the spring snow melt and is dry the rest of the year, but
>> maybe that is only my interpretation of an intermittent stream.
>> 
>> Wolfgang

+1. This is exactly how I see the difference - especially since when there is water, it is usually a dangerous, unexpected thing. 

> Your description of wadi matches many things locally called a "wash" in the U.S. desert southwest. Yet when I suggested that I tag those as wadi I was shot down. 

I added wash as a description to wadi on the osm wiki last year when I was thinking of mapping the San Diego county deserts (as even in Wikipedia it is a round Robbin of links between arroyo and wadi). I'll have to look at the edit history to see if it got pulled off. This was before I understood that adding a description to the wiki was potentially controversial: I thought I was adding something glaringly obvious and helpfully updating the wiki at the same time....

I'm really surprised you were "shot down" from using wadi when it is the most applicable tag for the item, and I'm surprised that there is discussion of axing a well used tag, which defines a known and named geographic feature, for the sake of jamming it under rivers. I always imagine we will be discussion of adding more and more specialized tags, as micro mappers keep labeling smaller an smaller stuff - or. Like the wadi tag - expand our definitions of basic tags to better define what is around us. 

I wonder if the people who shot you down have even ever seen a wash, let alone are familiar with them. 

I know it's a "no true Scotsman" fallacy, but that's what it feels like. 

Javbw