[Tagging] How to put a name tag on an area with more than one type?

Anders Torger anders at torger.se
Mon Dec 14 14:49:34 UTC 2020


On 2020-12-14 15:22, Christoph Hormann wrote:
>> Anders Torger <anders at torger.se> hat am 14.12.2020 14:01 geschrieben:
> But i already explained that the fact that in OSM we add name tags to
> parts of roads, waterways, wetlands, forests or woods does not mean
> these are somehow separate from other features with the same name
> tags.  Names of physical geography features in OSM are - as explained
> - local names.  A polygon tagged natural=wood + name=foo means that
> this is an stretch of land covered with trees that locally is referred
> to with the name 'foo'.  If you took a walk on a route that crosses
> such polygon you can correctly say that today's hike took you through
> 'foo'.  However if your walk crossed five natural=wood polygons with
> name=foo you *cannot* say based on this that your walk took you
> through five 'foo' or through five parts of 'foo'.  The splitting of
> the wood into five polygons is part of the data model we use, it does
> not represent any 'five-ness' is the verifiable reality.

Okay, but why does the OSM-Carto renderer, and all other renderers known 
to man(?) make multiple text labels then, when it should be a single 
one? Look at the result, it looks horrible. Do you really think this is 
the way it should be done, also long-term? Also note that the tags do 
differ, otherwise it would be a single multipolygon, it's both 
wetland=bog and wetland=marsh.

Why have I got the recommendation, by no lesser than Frederik Ramm 
(which I afterwards have figured out is a Geofabrik guy so he's probably 
pretty influential), to NOT split forests, "one feature should be one 
polygon":

https://help.openstreetmap.org/questions/77436/is-it-okay-to-split-forest-into-multiple-parts-with-arbitrary-seams

I've got suggestions of 4 - 5 different ways to handle these type of 
situations including drawing a new polygon on top of everything and not 
just care about JOSM warnings or OSM-Carto results. Probably all these 
suggestions coming from OSM contributors much more experienced than I 
am. As a newcomer I don't know who anybody is, what authority each of 
these posts have. So I think I have some right to be confused... and 
indeed I have got suggestion in this list to actually use a relation by 
at least one contributor, I don't remember from who now but I guess I 
can dig it out from the thread somewhere.

>> "Verifiable" is tricky in terms of names of natural features as we all
>> know, as many of those haven't defined borders. [...]
> 
> I think you have a pretty fundamental misunderstanding here.

I don't think so based on verifiability definition on the osm wiki, 
where borders are indeed discussed. But that's an irrelevant meta 
discussion, I'll leave it at that. Fuzzy areas do lack full 
verifiability as you cannot get a clear definition "is this inside or 
outside the area". As Frederik has pointed out in a different post this 
leads to some issues. I hope we can overcome those though.

/Anders



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