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

[Martin Machyna]

I agree with Marcos' observations and it also leaves me disillusioned 
when I see someone not respecting the outcome of the vote. I've seen 
even arguments that the vote doesn't count because it took place long 
time ago or under different criteria than today.

We certainly need to fix this and it makes sense that once the approval 
is made, all editor presets and wiki would comply and after some 
predefined period data would be mass edited to the new tagging standard. 
I also don't see a valid reason why mass edits are discouraged. It 
causes less damage to perhaps make a few mistakes in the conversion 
process than having 100,000 objects tagged one way and another 100,000 
the other way.

As for the keeping OSM community and consumers informed we could do 
better. I started by making this wiki page 
(https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Changelog)  where I tried to 
summarize what has changed in January. I think it would be good if the 
maintainers of the proposal could add their summary there once the 
approval is reached. And I could imagine this would be then announced on 
twitter and OSM weekly at the end of every month.

Best,

Martin

> mail at marcos-martinez.net mail at marcos-martinez.net
>
> Hi all,
>
> one of the things that bothers me most of all in OSM is tagging
> inconsistency, especially because we are talking about a database. This
> thread shows a fundamental flaw in our processes:
>
> We have a relatively tedious proposal and voting process and after
> finishing it turns out that the result...
>
> 1. is ignored by those who don't like it
>
> 2. is not implemented (as mentioned: it is a preset in JOSM)
>
> 3. is unknown (I include myself; I wasn't aware that riverbank had been
> downvoted in 2011 and have happily used riverbank, even "corrected"
> water areas)
>
> I strongly believe that the correct way, once the voting has finalized a
> standard process should be implemented:
>
> 1. Data consumers/tools need to be informed about the change
>
> 2. In case a mass edit is considered possible this should be performed
> with due notification to data consumers/tools
>
> 3. Mass edit should then be performed
>
> If the voting process is considered problematic then we need to adapt,
> change and improve it but ignoring it only leads to further
> fragmentation and ultimately anarchy.
>
> We really should make sure mass edits can be performed securely. I often
> see debates that include the argument "yeah, this new tagging might be
> better but it is a hell of a problem changing all the existing data".
> This implies that we are NOT improving the data model and it will get
> worse and worse over time. OSM will eventually become a huge
> transatlantic oil  tanker incapable to change direction. This will be
> particularly problematic when we REALLY have a new and much better
> tagging scheme but are not capable of deploying it.
>
> Getting back to the concrete case here: I liked the wording "riverbank"
> better because it was more concise, but this is just wording, so I will
> use water=river as area from now on. For the same reason mass edit
> should not be an issue I imagine but I don't have the background
> knowledge to be sure.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Marcos Martinez
>
> Am 10.02.2021 15:43, schrieb Tomas Straupis:
>
> > 2021-02-10, tr, 16:28 Marc_marc rašė:
> >
> >> this has already been voted (84% in favour) in 2011 [1]
> >> the problem is therefore not the idea but the interminable transition
> >> period and the inevitable "not of the same opinion as the result of the
> >> vote)
> >
> > The "voting" in wiki is totally non representative therefore it
> > means absolutely nothing (or as we can see are damaging).
> > Especially when we take into account that these proposals there
> > created by people with 0 experience in fields that matter.
> >
> > It is very sad and disturbing to see that OpenStreetMap fails to
> > implement at least one of the safeguards against incompetent and
> > destructive actions:
> > a) require at least minimal experience
> > b) provide hard limits on when some tagging can be changed or not
> >
> > This leads to a classic situation of *** with a grenade decimating
> > perfectly working parts of the system and there is no way to prevent
> > that.
> > Like "deprecate 100000's of usages of landuse=reservoir, deprecate
> > 100000's of usage of waterway=riverbank, deprecate 100000's of usages
> > of landuse=forest", what is next? highway=*?
>