[Tagging] Deprecation - waterway=riverbank vs water=river

[manday at openmail.cc]

Hello everyone,
   
  this concerns the usage of `waterway=riverbank` and `natural=water;  
water=river` which are currently considered equivalent and thus  
redundant (taking the wiki and observed usage as reference). I hope  
that we can find a consensus on how to improve this (certanly minor,  
but present) nuisance for the benefit of simplying the canon (both for  
mappers & data users).
   
  Some of us had a short discussion of this matter on IRC, I try to  
incorporate the perspectives that I could make out into the mail.
   
  There appears to be no disagreement that, due to this being  
redundant (opinions to the contrary have been postulated, but I don't  
know of an actual case where they are not redundant), the redundancy  
would optimally be resolved by removing one or the other.
   
  Personally, I am of the opinion that `waterway=riverbank` would be  
the candidate for removal, because it has certain shortcomings which  
`water=river` does not:
   
   1. `waterway=*` is predominantly used to indicate the the location  
and topology of flowing waters, not the extent, but `riverbank` does  
not fit that description
   2. it is, by name a waterWAY, while the extents of a river are an area
   3. it refers to bodies of WATER, whereas a riverbank in the actual  
(geographical) sense is not the river's water area, but includes a  
larger margin
   
  The main point that has been brought up against deprecating  
`riverbank`, so I understood is, is that 
   
   1. People are used to tagging with `riverbank` and habits die hard
   2. There might be objections in particular cases where the tags  
would not be considered equivalent
   3. There might be conflicting tags present, e.g.  
`waterway=riverbank; natural!=water` or `waterway=riverbank;  
water!=river` which would also conflict in automated substitution
   
  I would like to mention that I think that these arguments apply to  
_any_ deprecation and, in the current case, in both directions. They  
are not arguments in favor of deprecating `water=river`, but rather  
arguments against resolving the situation as a whole by deprecating  
either tag.

I have not received any arguments which would actually suggest  
deprecating `water=river` in favor of `waterway=riverbank`. Please  
mention it, if you have any such points!
   
  Whether or not to deprecate either tag, is probably something people  
with more experience in what this means for "collateral damage" have  
to comment on. I don't have this experience, but I would like to say  
that I think, that compared to other deprecation scenarios, this seems  
to be fairly friendly one with little risk of actual problems.
   
  Thanks for your input and hopefully we can improve this, one way or another!
   
  Cedric


-------------------------------------------------
This free account was provided by VFEmail.net - report spam to abuse at vfemail.net
 
ONLY AT VFEmail! - Use our Metadata Mitigator to keep your email out of the NSA's hands!
$24.95 ONETIME Lifetime accounts with Privacy Features!  
15GB disk! No bandwidth quotas!
Commercial and Bulk Mail Options!  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/attachments/20210210/1bec4aff/attachment.htm>