[Tagging] iD presets

[Christoph Hormann]

On Tuesday 19 June 2018, Bryan Housel wrote:
>
> I used to think that splitting off the iD presets into their own
> project was a good idea, but I’ve changed my mind in the past few
> years.  I don’t think the OSM community is particularly good at
> inventing tags, I can’t think of anyone that I would trust to turn
> the presets over to, [...]

That seems to be because you consider control over tagging presets in an 
editor primarily as a vehicle to influence and steer mappers in how 
they tag things.  This is IMO - no matter who has this control - in 
conflict with the fundamental ideas of OSM, that mappers mapping things 
decide on how to tag things, not the developers of tools used for 
mapping.  With that in mind if you think the mappers are 
not "particularly good at inventing tags" is besides the point here but 
none the less the question for me is what you think qualifies you to 
make better decisions about these things?

If i read you correctly you are unwilling to

* establish verifiable principles for decisions about tagging presets in 
iD that limit use of presets to push subjectively preferred tagging 
ideas against existing widely accepted practice.
* modify iD to allow for more diversity in tagging presets used by 
mappers (for example by offering presets available in JOSM as an 
alternative).
* refrain from connecting tagging discussions you start here to iD 
preset decisions - including use of your decision power as leverage in 
discourse, like with

> It’s fine for people to keep tagging these but I probably wouldn't
> add a preset for this in iD.

While i think i kind of understand your motivation here, that you think 
there are quite a few bad choices in tagging and the options for you to 
change that (through discussion here, developing and discussing new 
tags on the wiki and presenting and arguing for their advantages or 
mapping extensively yourself) are not very efficient means to change 
that, you should probably be aware that with this approach you claim 
certain privileges for you in central parts of the community discourse 
and as indicated above it is unclear to me what you think qualifies you 
for having these privileges and why you should not need to - like 
everyone else - rely on hard work and convincing arguments for getting 
the mapper community to adopt certain tagging ideas (and no, with hard 
work i don't mean primarily to engage in endless dysfunctional tagging 
discussions here).

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