[Tagging] Facts and opinions

Bryan Housel bhousel at gmail.com
Mon Jan 7 15:12:07 UTC 2019


> Just recently the iD Editor maintainer added more multiCombo functions
> (like [3]) and presets key (like "service:vehicle" [4]). Both is OK
> per se, but the latter preset was undocumented on the Wiki, and
> obviously the iD Editor maintainer prefers namespaces over semicolons
> for handling multiple values - and both issues seem to be completely
> undiscussed!


Amazingly you squeezed 4 wrong things into two sentences.  Just to set the record straight:

On my “preference”, both namespaces and semicolons are fine, I don’t have a preference and iD handles both. 

On “both is OK”. the `service:vehicle` issue was because we can’t use the same key `service=*` to contain both things like `tyres` (a few thousands) and `driveway` (a few millions).  Sorry, but the `service=tyres` has to go.  A few thousand uses is not “established tagging practice”.  And I doubt that that usage was ever discussed here or proposed either.  If it was, I missed the proposal where someone said “lets put tyres in a tag already used 3 million times for something else”.  My “no” vote on such a thing would not have mattered anyway.

On “completely undiscussed”, we already discuss tagging extensively in public on the iD GitHub - because this is where issues with bad tags tend to manifest themselves.  The osm-carto project sees their share too.  I believe more people follow the GitHub projects than are subscribed to this tagging mailing list.  I’ve also posted plenty of information on this mailing list but it seems that people don’t read it.  This is at least the third time we’re discussing this exact issue on this mailing list.

And on “the wiki”, I have basically given up on the OSM wiki because it contains so much wrong information and opinion, and I’m tired of having my edits reverted.  I just recently had another issue where we added a traffic signal tag that was already used, and then someone edited the wiki to rant about how iD is wrong and for people to not use the tag.  Where before, I thought the wiki was “not perfect”, now I’m of the opinion that it’s actively harming OpenStreetMap.  I encourage everyone to just disregard everything that’s on the wiki and go by what taginfo says as far as how the tags are used and what the accepted values are.  If something is “not documented on the wiki” that means nothing because the wiki is not documentation.

Anyway hope that clears up some of the confusion. If not - I’m sure we’ll discuss these exact same issue again here in another 9 months anyway.

Thanks, Bryan




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