[Tagging] why do we discourage leisure=skatepark/skate_park?

[Paul Allen]

On Thu, Aug 30, 2018 at 7:50 PM, Martin Koppenhoefer <dieterdreist at gmail.com
> wrote:

> Once again I stumbled across a warning which discourages these
> leisure=skate_park and skatepark on the sport skateboard page because of
> low usage, but with the only alternative “pitch”. If you can speak about
> pitches in this context, I would expect a skatepark to often consist of
> more than one “pitch”.
>

I'd expect a pitch to be flat.  I'd expect a skateboard park to not be
flat.  Cricket might turn into an interesting sport if
played on a skateboard "pitch" but I doubt it will ever happen (cricket's
function is an excuse for people drowse in the
sunlight).

My preference is for skatepark without the underscore, seems most used
> although currently not in osm ;-) (look at tag history to see automatic
> changes resetting it, numbers are very low, certainly discouraging the tag
> doesn’t help)
>

It was probably done that way for consistency.  Which is usually a good
thing.  OTOH, a foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds, according to Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Deprecating tags because of low usage tags isn't necessarily sensible.  It
discourages ever using a new tag (which,
at its inception, will have low usage).  It means that uncommon items,
which occur in only a handful of locations
in the world, would be discouraged.  It leads to the conclusion that after
we've eliminated the least-used tags there
will be a new set of least-used tags which we should therefore eliminate,
until there are no tags left.  In short, it's bollocks.

There may well be valid, sensible reasons for deprecating
leisure=skate_park, (or any other tag) but low usage is not,
in my opinion, one of them.

-- 
Paul
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