[Tagging] landcover dune or land form dune

[Paul Allen]

On Mon, 26 Aug 2019 at 14:20, Joseph Eisenberg <joseph.eisenberg at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Yes, I agree that for something like landcover=hedge an even stronger
> warning is needed.
>

Ironically, the stronger warning is necessary not because landcover=hedge
is inherently
bad but because it's not.  Back in the day, when barrier=hedge + area=yes
was
proposed (if it was formally proposed), if somebody had suggested
landcover=hedge
instead it might have been accepted as better.  Who am I kidding?  If both
those
alternatives had been suggested at the same time, we'd probably still be
arguing over
them. :)

If there were a formal proposal to introduce landcover=hedge and deprecate
barrier=hedge + area=yes it might even succeed, although I doubt it.  There
are
problems with landcover=hedge:

1) There is an existing, accepted way of doing the same thing.

2) It doesn't render on standard carto.  Some people don't care about that,
but I find
it a useful way to check if I've made an error of some sort.  After all,
that is the reason
standard carto exists: to check what one has mapped.  Also, for those of us
who see
OSM as more than an intellectual exercise but wish to produce a map that is
useful,
we prefer that large obstacles appear on the map.

3) Editors don't support it.  Of course, that is at the whim of the authors
of those editors
but they probably won't ever support it because there is an existing
alternative.

So it needs a strong warning.  Up front.  Before anybody spends time trying
to figure out
what it does and how to use it before getting to the warning telling them
not to use it.

-- 
Paul
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