[Tagging] Rio de la Plata edit war

Colin Smale colin.smale at xs4all.nl
Fri Aug 7 09:36:45 UTC 2020


On 2020-08-07 11:18, Christoph Hormann wrote:

> On Friday 07 August 2020, Colin Smale wrote: 
> 
>> The word "ocean" is already subjective... [...]
> 
> Oh please.  Not again another attempt to deflect into a discussion of 
> language semantics

Completely the other way around. I hope to remove the dependence on
terms subject to interpretation in favour of relatively
non-controversial terms such as "water," "foreshore" and "land." 

> The distinction between a river and the world ocean is real and a 
> fundamental aspect of our scientific understanding of the geography of 
> this planet.

But the big "grey area" where a given point could be considered either
or both (or something else entirely like "estuary", "salt marsh" or
"mangrove") is what we are discussing here. A taxonomy requiring that
each point is in exactly one of {land,river,ocean} is not viable for OSM
because (around the edges) it requires specialist knowledge to
determine, it depends on which "specialist" you take as a reference and
is not verifiable by the average mapper. 

> That digital maps have - based on the precedent set by 
> Google - almost universally ignored this fact does not change it.

You say Google have "ignored" this. What makes you think that we can
find a solution where Google haven't?
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