[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - (Phone)

[Chris Hill]

I disagree with this idea that we must remove similar tags for the sake 
of it.

Anyone who actually uses OSM data (rather than people who just imagine 
using it) know that there are many steps and choices to make to achieve 
the end result. Often this involves combining data with various tags 
that fit the requirements of the analysis, render, routing or whatever, 
so combining data from similar tags is normal, not hard to do and once 
done is repeatable over and over. It is not awful to have two tags for a 
/similar/ purpose at all.

Removing seemingly similar tags and so homogenising the OSM database is 
a very risky path to take. We risk removing subtlety and obscuring 
mappers' real intent. The world we live in and try to represent with map 
data is a muddled, mixed-up, jumble of human-made stuff that includes 
many contradictions and minutely different things. One great strength of 
OSM tagging is that mappers can find ways to represent this. If we march 
down the homogenisation highway much of that strength will be lost.

I oppose deprecating contact:phone=*

-- 
cheers
Chris Hill (chillly)

On 28/09/2019 09:31, Valor Naram wrote:
> Hey,
>
> now I'm ready to open a new proposal which you can see here
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Phone#Second_proposal_.28pending.29
> I use the old proposal page for that but seperated content into section
> to keep the history intact. The content is based on the discussion at
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2019-September/048339.html
> . It tends to deprecate `contact:phone` in favor of the more used de-
> facto `phone` tag. It's awful that we have two tags for the same
> puropose in our database and that makes it more difficult for
> developers and researchers to work with our data.
>
>