[Tagging] type=* tags on trees

[Volker Schmidt]

I spotchecked changesets by NonnEmiliaService (I suppose that this is an
account NonnEmilia used for imports).
I looks he imported thousands of trees with type=boad_leaved (subsequently
corrected by another user).
So this seems not to be regarding the present discussion.

On Thu, 19 Aug 2021 at 23:51, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 8/18/21 20:36, Casper Kersten wrote:
> > I discovered that there are over 36,000 trees tagged with type=*
>
> ...
>
> > I propose to retag many of the type=* tags on trees to other common
> > tagging schemes
>
> Any such analysis should not simply look at what currently is in OSM and
> modify it; doing this thoroughly requires looking at the history in
> order to answer questions like:
>
> * how did these type tags get into OSM?
> * are there perhaps people who will continue to add these tags even if
> we superficially "fix" things?
> * are there processes or programs or instructions somewhere that lead
> people to add these?
> * have there been other cleanup efforts?
>
> A look at *current* data does not answer these questions sufficiently as
> later edits by other people might have distorted the picture.
>
> A cursory glance at the history tells me that a total of 585.000 trees
> with a type=* tag have been added to OSM over its lifetime; if you say
> that only 36.000 of them remain seems to indicate that some amount of
> cleaning has already been going on. This should be investigated more
> closely.
>
> The very first occurrence of a type=* tag on a tree was
> https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/16949837 in 2008; a comment in the
> current version of that object points to a previous mechanical edit by a
> German user and a discussion here
> https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=613129 - that (German)
> discussion also contains the sentence "others have tried this already
> and their edits were reverted on formal grounds" - something I have no
> recollection of but I assume traces of this will be in the data.
>
> It appears the these are the top 20 users who have added trees with a
> type=* tag:
>
> scubbx_ogdvienna_trees: 122201
> NonnEmiliaService: 87700
> Manel Clos: 78735
> Badarau Andrei: 32332
> geodz: 17366
> Der Troisdorfer: 7576
> miha12: 6729
> elmarburke: 6546
> Elwood: 5562
> nickrosencrans: 4708
> whb: 4383
> michalgt86: 4310
> S-Man42: 3996
> Val: 3775
> Ross Aldrich: 3730
> black_bike: 3715
> KartoGrapHiti: 3688
> RatZillaS: 3285
> Marcel Herault: 3283
> biker at gf: 2867
>
> It appears that these are the top 20 changesets responsible for adding
> trees with a type=* tag:
>
> c5007703: 78726
> c14113662: 49704
> c14112119: 49387
> c14115324: 23110
> c14801900: 19999
> c14801328: 19996
> c14802114: 19995
> c14801687: 19942
> c41296950: 8243
> c20636106: 6546
> c19945683: 4659
> c41264076: 4317
> c14801233: 3884
> c14800963: 3884
> c14337471: 2827
> c6841834: 2748
> c41153982: 1878
> c10008409: 1724
> c41546930: 1494
> c8851144: 1399
>
> Most of these are likely imports; it would probably make sense to make
> contact with the importers to make sure they don't run some sort of
> automatic update that might re-introduce type tags, and/or if their
> scripts are somewhere public they should be encouraged to fix them.
>
> All this is a lot more work than simply running Overpass and JOSM and
> replacing a few tags, but in my opinion, without proper analysis of the
> root of the problem, it's just cosmetics of little value.
>
> Bye
> Frederik
>
> --
> Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"
>
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