[Tagging] Which languages are admissible for name:xx tags?
Christoph Hormann
osm at imagico.de
Wed Mar 25 10:58:43 UTC 2020
On Wednesday 25 March 2020, Frederik Ramm wrote:
>
> In my opinion, a name:xx tag should only be added if you can
> demonstrate that people natively speaking the living language xx are
> actually using this name for this entity.
In terms of our traditional values and principles active use of the name
is not the necessary criterion, it is verifiable local knowledge. Like
with any kind of names practical verification of names would be
possible by inquiring about the name to people locally. This
essentially means the following practical requirements:
* there being a sufficient number of people present locally that
speak/write the language in question. Those don't have to be people
living there, it can also be visitors.
* these people knowing the name in said language - being able to look it
up on some external source does not count, that is wikipedia
verifiability, not OSM verifiability.
* these people largely consistently agreeing on the same name.
Example:
La tour Eiffel:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/5013364
has a verifiable name:de, name:en, name:ru and probably quite a few
other languages as you could go there (normally, not right now of
course) and inquire people there about the name in those languages and
(a) would find people who can tell it from their own knowledge and (b)
these names largely match.
> I think we have a very
> unhealthy inflation of names in OSM that are added by "single-purpose
> mappers" - they come in, stick a name:my-favourite-language tag onto
> everything, and go away again. [...]
I don't think that is the main problem here. There are certainly people
whose main mapping activity is to add name translations from external
data sources but that is not really the issue here as far as i can see.
It seems to me the problem is more that we have meanwhile a significant
fraction of mappers who reject OSMs traditional value of local
verifiability and map according to other principles (in particular the
usefulness principle - that anything that is useful for certain data
users can and should be added to the OSM database). My estimate would
be that this applies to at least about 25-30 percent of the active
mappers - possibly significantly more especially if you include
participants in organized mapping activities.
So the problem we are struggling with here is IMO not specific to name
tagging but more about a fairly fundamental division within the OSM
community about the basic premise of the project.
--
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/
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