[Tagging] Difference between lighthouses and beacons

[Paul Allen]

On Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 12:04 AM, marc marc <marc_marc_irc at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> Le 19. 01. 18 à 23:42, Graeme Fitzpatrick a écrit :
> > 1. A lighthouse is a usually tall building or tower that has a lamp at
> > the top.
>
> has or had
>

Irrespective of technical definitions, I think you'll find that most people
think a lighthouse
has a keeper dwelling within.  Those with slightly more knowledge
understand that many
lighthouses have been automated and no longer have keepers.  I think you'll
find that
most people would think the following things characteristic of a lighthouse:

1) Has a light at the top.  Not necessarily working.  Not necessarily with
any lamp
remaining.  But it has visible glass at the top which is (or was) there for
a light to
shine through.

2) Is large enough that it is capable of allowing at least one person to
reside within
even if nobody lives there now.

3) Is circular (or nearly circular) in plan view.  Other shapes are
possible, but circular is
the one most familiar to them.

That, I think, is pretty much how most people's minds work.  Show them a
photo of
such a structure (with the photo taken in daylight) and they'll identify it
as a
lighthouse.  If you then say it's been automated, they'll still say
lighthouse (for lack
of anything else to call it).  If you tell them it no longer operates
they'll say it WAS
a lighthouse and still identify it as a lighthouse.  If you mark something
on a map as
a lighthouse then that's the type of structure they'll be looking for.
They'll be looking
for that because most of them (at least those in the UK)  will have seen a
seaside
postcard featuring a lighthouse that looks like that.

Can I back that up?  Yep.  I just did a google image search for
lighthouse.  The
results weren't affected by any previous search I've done because it's the
first
time in my life I've used google to search for lighthouse.  Google's image
classifier
is based in large part upon users playing a "game with a purpose" that
presents
them with randomly-chosen images and they describe what's in the image.
Those
results are based on what people think a lighthouse looks like.  You can
see from
the results that most photos were taken in daylight and there's no way of
knowing
if the lighthouse was manned or had a working light.

Having said all that, I'll give my conclusion.  Any tagging that does not
conform
to user expectations will be misapplied by taggers and misread by
end-users, no
matter what the wiki has to say about it. If it looks like a lighthouse
(see google
images) then it's a lighthouse.  Whether it functions as a major light,
minor light,
beacon or doesn't function at all is for other tagging to describe.

 --
Paul
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20180120/bbb8590b/attachment.html>