[Tagging] Fuzzy areas again: should we have them or not?

[Anders Torger]

I have mapped for a few years but starting out solo without any 
involvement in the community. So I am a newcomer to how the community 
works at large, and the fragmentation of views of how one should map or 
not and the differing ways to map that is already in the database has 
been quite confusing. By now I pretty much understand that the question 
I ask in the thread title cannot be answered. There's a bunch of 
differing opinions on how we should map, and no uniform decision can be 
made so we just map the way we like.

There are both advantages and disadvantages to that approach. If I as a 
mapper is also in control of rendering the end products I want to see, 
like maps, then fine. Sure it's a bit tricky to make a renderer that 
need to adapt to heterogenous tagging methods, but I know I can at least 
get all my own mapping work show up as I like in the end product.

However if I as a mapper only map and want to see my work to be broadly 
available to end users in its full glory it becomes relevant what 
OSM-Carto and other widespread renderers do, it becomes important what 
the database and API designers think is important to support or what can 
(or should) be ignored. Mappers can vote on tags, but for anonymous 
mappers like me without an own rendering pipeline the true power lies in 
those that control the software. OSM-Carto is to quite some extent used 
to guide mappers how they should map. A recent(?) example is that 
landcover pattern is nowadays rendered on top of rivers to encourage 
mappers to draw a river area, which I nowadays do to make it render 
properly.

By not rendering valleys and peninsula and possibly other tags often 
used on "non-verifiable geometry" it's a signal to mappers that those 
are not considered important or desirable. We could say that we 
shouldn't care about what OSM-Carto does, and for advanced users that 
have their own renderers that makes some sense, although it risks 
further increase fragmentation in mapping methods.

But how many of us mappers have our own renderers? A few on this list 
have it of course, but broadly speaking it's probably less than 1% of 
all mappers. And if you don't have your own pipeline or is simply 
interested in the free end products that anyone can access for free all 
over the world, one have to take into account what OSM-Carto does.

Even if the mappers community end up with a consensus to map in one way 
(or at least a consensus that it is an okay alternative), and those in 
charge of OSM-Carto choose not to render it, then it's really not 
working out... because OSM-Carto is the only renderer that can represent 
"the community".

I know many think that we should not care about rendering at all, and 
the way to see our own work is to download it in JOSM and enjoy the 
geodata objects we've made, as OSM is supposed to be a geodatabase, not 
a geoservice provider. I don't think that is how the typical mapper see 
it though.

On 2020-12-24 15:46, Brian M. Sperlongano wrote:

> Right, which is why when a member of the DWG declares that something 
> cannot be done, it is a reasonable ask to say "what is meant by that?"  
> I thank Andy for his clarifying remarks.
> 
> On Thu, Dec 24, 2020 at 9:21 AM Tomas Straupis 
> <tomasstraupis at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>> Has the DWG ever taking swift and immediate action to enforce a 
>>> particular
>>> tagging scheme? <...> but I can't think of an occasion when we've 
>>> enforced
>>> a particular tagging scheme in that way.
>> 
>> On what grounds DWG could take any action?
>> There is no such thing as "the only right" tagging scheme.
>> There is currently no team of experts which could decide which
>> tagging scheme is better in case of a dispute (organising voting of
>> sufficient number of mappers is practically impossible).
>> If a local community decides to use scheme A that is it they use
>> schema A. DWG or anybody else can/should do NOTHING.
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
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> 
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