[Tagging] [OSM-talk] OpenStreetMap Carto release v4.25.0

[Christoph Hormann]

On Thursday 06 February 2020, Marc Gemis wrote:
> > And please keep in mind that - as i mentioned - barrier=hedge is
> > not the dominant tag for mapping hedges with polygons in the first
> > place - as i have shown with various links earlier.
>
> I only clicked on a few of your examples and had to figure out which
> areas you meant. But they were outside of urban areas.

Yes, the vast majority of hedges that are currently mapped in OSM with 
polygons are in rural areas.

> As Paul Allen pointed out earlier none of your alternatives (forest,
> scrub) are a good match for those.

If you say so.  That is not a discussion i currently have an opinion on.  
Wooden plants in an urban environment for decorative purpose or as 
barriers for pedestrians come in a wide range of forms, especially if 
you consider different parts of earth in different climate zones.  I 
would not consider existing tags to be wrong for most of them but as 
already said a more specific verifiable characterization would 
certainly not hurt.

> And I want to end with a quote from {1]
>
> "My approach to this matter has been – from the beginning of my
> contributions to OSM-Carto – to regard the role and task of the
> project as mapper support without active steering."
>
> My feeling is that in this case that principle has been broken (I am
> not going to repeat the arguments given here by the others in this
> thread)

Your feeling is wrong, possibly due to you misunderstanding the concept 
of mapper support.  Mapper support does not mean doing what the loudest 
mappers want you to do.  There are tons of nonsensical or 
non-verifiable tags loudly promoted by mappers.  Rendering such in 
OSM-Carto would not be mapper support, it would be sabotage.  Mapper 
support in style design primarily means - as i like to phrase it - 
supporting mappers in consistent use of tags.

The irony here is that - as i mentioned in another mail - OSM-Carto is 
to a significant extent responsible for encouraging mappers to use this 
ambiguous tagging and we now get criticized for trying to fix this 
counterproductive incentive.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/