[Tagging] waterway=wadi problem

[Tod Fitch]

On Jan 17, 2015, at 1:41 PM, Steve Doerr wrote:

> On 17/01/2015 21:27, Warin wrote:
> 
>> Note 'fall' = northern American english, 'autum' for english english ? 
> 
> No, it's 'autumn' in British English.
>> 
>> Comments: An intermittent=winter may not flow every winter .. but it is 'expected' to flow in winter. This year the 'Todd River' flowed in central Australia, usually there is no folw, might flow evrey 5? years. As such it is 'ephemeral'.
> 
> 'Ephemeral' doesn't mean 'very rare'. It means 'lasting a very short time', theoretically just one day.
> 

"Lasting a very short time" properly describes the water flow in washes in southern Arizona and southern California.

While "fall" is more commonly used in my part of the U.S., "autumn" (not "autum") is not unheard of and well understood too.

On Jan 17, 2015, at 1:27 PM, Warin wrote:

> On 18/01/2015 7:47 AM, tagging-request at openstreetmap.org wrote:
>> Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 12:14:53 -0800
>> From: Tod Fitch 
>> <tod at fitchdesign.com>
>> 
>> 
>> The more I think about this issue the more I am coming to the feeling that waterway=wadi ought to be deprecated and we should come up with a way of further defining "intermittent" to distinguish between seasonal and ephemeral flow patterns. Based on other responses on this thread maybe:
>> 
>> waterway=*
>> intermittent=yes/no (default assumption of "no")
>> intermittent:frequency=winter/spring/summer/fall/seasonal/ephemeral/unknown (default assumption of "unknown")
>> 
>> Tod
>> 
> 
> Less work if intermittent is simply used without the frequency extension .. thus:
> intermittent=yes/no/winter/spring/summer/autum/seasonal/ephemeral (default assumption of "no") 
> 
> Note 'fall' = northern American english, 'autum' for english english ? 
> 
> Comments: An intermittent=winter may not flow every winter .. but it is 'expected' to flow in winter. This year the 'Todd River' flowed in central Australia, usually there is no folw, might flow evrey 5? years. As such it is 'ephemeral'. As it is called a 'River' by the locals and on maps and by the government so it is tagged in OSM. I looked at wadi ... but it does not match my understanding nor local use. 
> 

Putting everything as values on the intermittent tag would be fine with me, I was only reacting to:

> Mateusz Konieczny matkoniecz at gmail.com 
> Sat Jan 17 13:28:00 UTC 2015
> 
> Please, no "intermittent=ephemeral". Key intermittent was defined to have
> only a single valid value,
> turning it into free-form tag is a bad idea.
> 
> Maybe intermittent=yes, intermittent:type=ephemeral?
> 

Cheers,
Tod