[Tagging] Removal of "amenity" from OSM tagging

[Daniel Koć]

W dniu 15.05.2015 13:02, pmailkeey . napisał(a):
> My concern is that OSM is/should be open to all. For it to succeed at
> that, it needs to be easily understood by all - but even I would

+1 - I couldn't agree more!

10+ years of just adding more types of objects makes a lot of unneeded 
cruft, because we try to fit everything in the initial scheme of things 
(which is too narrow and rigid now). If it's just adding more details, 
we succeeded (in general), but when the problem is finding the right 
categorization, we tend to fail.

And note, that it's hard for us, advanced mappers! But I guess this 
project has a long tail - that means advanced users are just a tiny 
(even if important) part of community. So most of the work is done by 
casual mappers. They have iD as a tool and that's great, but if 
something is more complicated than just adding very typical objects, 
they probably got lost with Wiki subtleties, overlapping definitions and 
language/cultural differences.

We need as low common denominators as possible to be useful for those 
casual users. Otherwise we will loose the opportunities (available data 
not entered, users distracted) or we will gain random errors (data 
entered anyway just to fit in our scheme or - even worse - for 
rendering).

It is never "too late" to change the project until the last user is gone 
or the project have stalled (it's quite the reverse in OSM today =} ). 
It can be hard, but for me general tagging schemes cleaning/simplifying 
has great advantages for casual (easy tagging the ground truth) and 
advanced users as well (lightweight, more flexible categories, tag 
schemes become manageable again, Wiki is not overloaded with 
inconclusive voting cases, because the rules are more flexible and 
clear).

> struggle to define 'amenity' - it's not a familiar word to most people
> and it's a problem osm-wide with nomenclature like 'node' for point
> and 'way' for line - which I have 98% doubts about it even being
> correct.

Speaking of language/cultural differences: even I don't know how to tag 
"higher schools" in Poland - as universities or colleges maybe - because 
"further/continuing education" idea is simply not used here, but we have 
no common "university, college etc" tag.

> My conclusion is that landuse = area and area = landuse. Area is
> simpler to understand - I can "Draw an area" - if such a category is
> really necessary - after all, the fact an area is drawn confirms it's
> an area without the need to tag it as such (landuse/area).

Landuse is probably always the area (we just may not know the borders 
and make it a node for a closer examination later), but not all areas 
are landuse. =} It can be landcover as well - you don't know what's the 
use, but you can see what is on the ground (for example grass in the 
park: you know what is the use of park, but grass here has no clear 
meaning). Also some people argue that landuse=water makes no sense and I 
think they are right. =}

I think "area" tag is the most useful and generic term for all these 
objects and should be used this way. The practical implementation is not 
set in stone, it can be for example:

1. area=landuse+landuse=park
2. area:landuse=park
3. area=water+water=pond
4. area=pond
5. pond=yes

I strongly prefer shorter ones, with no encapsulated categories (since 
we may want to change it later if needed - see the categories on 
Wikipedia), but anything is better than current state of confusion.

-- 
"The train is always on time / The trick is to be ready to put your bags 
down" [A. Cohen]