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

[Volker Schmidt]

(I suppose you mean by "redundant" that they have the same meaning)

>From the purely practical point of view:
If they have the same meaning and one of them is used twice as much as the
other and, in addition, it needs only one tag and the other one needs two,
I would stick with waterway=riverbank .
BTW waterway=riverbank is still today  JOSM preset
The statement " `waterway=*` is predominantly used to indicate the the
location and topology of flowing waters," is in contradiction with the
actual use and the wiki page
waterway is not only for flowing water, but also for
waterway=dam|weir|lock_gate|dock|boat_yard|water_point|fuel|milestone|sluice_gate

And for intuitivity, waterway=riverbank to me seems better than water=river

If we deprecate one of the two keys, what do we win: additional work for
many mappers, because as soon as we edit data that contains a deprecated
key we get a warning, so many that I simply ignore them regularly..

A different thing would be an automated mass-edit, combined with a massive
information campaign to all mappers, that they have to switch habits for a
frequent tagging situation.







On Wed, 10 Feb 2021 at 13:56, <manday at openmail.cc> wrote:

> 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
>
>
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