[Tagging] Marking waterway=brook as deprecated and problematic

[Clifford Snow]

I'd like to make the argument that defining streams, whether they are
called rivers, streams, creeks, brooks or any other such term just creates
unnecessary conflicts. For example the wiki definition of stream is
"naturally-forming waterway that is too narrow to be classed as
waterway=river (the commonly accepted rule for OpenStreetMap is that a
stream can be jumped across by an active, able-bodied person)" The mile
which was derived from the Roman mile was the distance of 1,000 steps
without mentioning of able-bodied person. It took centuries before the mile
was defined as it is today. How long do we wait until we define the
distance that an able-bodied person can jump?

Take the Skagit River [1], which flows through my town. Undisputable river.
Yet the headwaters [2] in British Columbia, CA can't even be seen on aerial
imagery. Other than rivers that start out large, like from a large body of
water, likely start out as a stream that even I could just step over. We
could classify the headwaters as a stream but where does it change into a
river? Is it ever a brook?

The solution is to just use natual=stream. If the locals call it a river or
not it's still in OSM. If data exists with flow rate it could be added to
OSM. )I'd make the same argument for lake vs pond. Lets just tag them
natural=water. )

[1] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=16/48.4251/-122.3372
[2] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=19/49.11863/-120.88216

Best,
Clifford

-- 
@osm_washington
www.snowandsnow.us
OpenStreetMap: Maps with a human touch
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20201230/2a8a20fd/attachment.htm>