[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - protection_class=* (Words, not numeric codes)

[Andrew Davidson]

On 7/4/20 5:27 pm, Joseph Eisenberg wrote:
> There is also a third tag: leisure=nature_reserve, which is even more
> common, and traditionally has been used for natural conservation areas
> which are not National Parks or similar.
> 
> Used 110k times:
> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:leisure%3Dnature_reserve

Just over half of those are dual tagged with either 
boundary=national_park or boundary=protected_area

> 
> I don’t expect leisure=nature_reserve or boundary=national_park to
> disappear, but we can add additional tags to clarify the category of
> nature reserve or protected area

OK, I'm obviously not explaining the problem correctly, so I'll try again.

There currently exists the following tags:

boundary=protected_area
protect_class=2

Which is a conservation area with an IUCN management category of II.

The proposal is to replace protect_class=[0-99] with protection_class=* 
and specifies a series of values to replace the numbers used in 
protect_class.

Rather than specifying a value for protection_class that replaces 
protect_class=2, the proposal is to replace it with 
boundary=national_park. boundary=national_park is an *existing* tag that 
is used to tag "a relatively large area of land" that is "set aside for 
human recreation and enjoyment, as well as the protection of the natural 
environment and/or cultural heritage of an area". This is not 
exclusively areas with an IUCN management category of II and, as 
inspection of the current tagging use shows, is not exclusively used for 
areas with an IUCN management category of II.

So the problem is that the proposal is retrospectively redefining 
boundary=national_park to be a conservation area with an IUCN management 
category of II. Which, given the fact that it has already been used over 
13,000 times, is no the wisest thing to do.