[Tagging] Deprecate water=pond?

stevea steveaOSM at softworkers.com
Thu Nov 12 01:44:02 UTC 2020


If we're going to do "this:"
> So perhaps we could create a new tag water=natural_pond for small, natural or semi-natural lakes which are currently tagged as water=pond, and water=artificial_pond or water=man_made_pond for the majority of water=pond features which are clearly not natural, such as ponds in gardens.

it seems we should ponder (sorry, couldn't resist) the myriad possibilities for ponds both artificial AND natural and make a formal proposal that "covers all cases," at least as best we can in a formal proposal.  This would clarify (sorry, couldn't resist) what they're all "used for," as in settling in the case of a wastewater treatment plant, decorative as in somebody's backyard garden, natural, as in "shallow, nature-created, not-deep-enough to be called lake..." and so on.  Don't forget to consider (and document) potential overlap with things like leisure=swimming_pool and possibly others.

We might get a good start on doing this in a talk page, but I think it would greatly benefit from the thought that goes into a formal proposal:  worldwide consideration of the semantic space being described, rather clear syntax and namespaces described, how to decide one from the other, linguistic differences (as Joseph mentioned there can be a flattening in particular languages that might deserve extra clarity), how to migrate from existing tagging to the proposed tagging, and all the rest that formal proposals treat (what wiki need to update, et cetera).

I admire Joseph's "tossing here" what he wrote, as it gets things started, but I believe the subject is much richer than this.

It would also focus efforts by those who care and in as much detail and in one place as such a specific topic deserves.  While I don't write this to discourage posts to this list (I don't, as this list is a valuable place to discuss), I have also noticed a trend towards formal proposals.  "Ponds" seems like an excellent candidate for one.

SteveA


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