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

[Dave F]

In the UK, even though 'riverbank' was the majority case, water=river 
was in the ascendance.

While I was amending river/canal entities which duplicated both tagging 
schemes & other errors I amended all riverbanks to water=river.

It fits in with all the other natural=water entities
It allows canals/streams etc to be accurately tagged with 
water=canal/stream.

All major renderers render both schemes so there no no loss of imagery.

PS I consider IRC a poor discussion forum. It excludes global discussion 
& there's no record of what's been discussed.

DaveF

On 10/02/2021 12:53, 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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