[Tagging] emergency=lifeguard

Christoph Hormann osm at imagico.de
Tue Jun 19 12:16:22 UTC 2018


Don't want to comment on the subject itself but since you open a lot of 
tagging discussions w.r.t. presets in iD i am wondering if there is a 
documented policy on presets in iD and if not if it might be time to 
think about having one.

The reason i am asking is that by bringing up a tagging issue and at the 
same time directly connecting it to presets in a popular editor you 
have a significant risk of distorting the usual process in which 
tagging rules are established in OSM.  By indicating that a consensus 
in the discussion here will manifest in iD presets independent of other 
factors that might not even have come up in the discussion here but 
which tend to rightfully affect the success of a tagging idea in the 
normal process where mappers over time "vote with their feet" so to 
speak you could end up with a "the tail wagging the dog" situation 
(i.e. the OSM establishment here telling the global mapper community 
top down how to map things).

In OSM-Carto it has been long time practice that rendering decisions 
should support mappers in consistent use of tags but should not attempt 
to actively steer mappers to change mapping habits - even in cases 
where that would be extremely convenient for rendering.  And how to 
ensure that has been a frequent subject and occasionally also a point 
of conflict in style development discussions in the past.

What you sketch in 

https://github.com/osmlab/osm-tagging/issues/1

seems to be quite the opposite of that approach.  Now i know of course 
an editor and its presets is not the same as a map style but still it 
seems important to have some objective goals and criteria for decisions 
regarding presets, especially if you present addition, change or 
removal of presets as pre-planned steps in a process to change tagging.

Please don't interpret this as a critique of your attempts to improve 
tagging in OSM (which are admirable).  My comment is only about 
actively connecting this to editor preset decisions.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/



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