[Tagging] Draft proposal for historic cemetery

[Paul Allen]

On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 at 18:05, Diego Cruz <ginkarasu at gmail.com> wrote:

The way I see it, this tag is not entirely subjective, but its rules have
> not been yet developed. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that you can
> tag a building with this tag either if it's older than 1850
>

Because "historic" does not mean "old."  You think 1850 is old.  I think
the Stone Age is old.  Somebody else thinks the 1960s are old.  Everything
is old, the problem is how old.  We will never agree on a cut-off date.  But
that's OK, because we have start_date=*.  And when the sole justification
for using historic=* is age, that's when we should be using start_date
instead.

or, in case it is newer than that date, if it has been inhabited by someone
> famous, if it has hosted a major event such as the signature of an
> international treaty or any other similar conditions that can be verified.
>

That is what historic means.  It is noteworthy, important, of general
interest.
Everything happened in the past and is historical.  Not every historical
event was historic.

Monuments and memorials are historic because they commemorate noteworthy
events in the past; even if they were erected yesterday they are still
historic.
Archaeological sites are historic.  Things listed in authoritative heritage
registers are historic.  But all those could have had a different main tag +
historic=yes.  In hindsight, using historic as anything other than a yes/no
attribute was a mistake.

Everything else is subjective.  At best they merit historic=yes, not their
own value of historic.

Having both landuse=cemetery and historic=cemetery is not sensible.
You will end up with people using historic=cemetery on its own,
making it harder to use overpass-turbo to find cemeteries.  Or
they'll dual-tag.  Or they'll use historic for non-historic
cemeteries because they didn't pay attention to what the
editor was offering.

The problem, above all, is that determining an objective use for this tag
> would lead to byzantine discussions such as many that we see around here
> and in the end nothing would be done.
>

I'd say that having a memorial=plaque or a monument pretty much settles
whether something is historic or not.  Plus journals of historical societies
saying that something was historic.  At a stretch, if it appears in a
guidebook
and is mentioned as being historic.

>
> The advantage of having a classification of history objects instead of
> just adding history=yes is that it creates a very valuable database that
> can be easily visualized for anyone with interest on the matter.
>

Overpass turbo: landuse=cemetery and historic=yes.  Works for me.  Apart
from missing the ones where people have decided they want to use
historic=cemetery.  So then I try that, and miss the ones where people
used historic=cemetery without landuse=cemetery.

I don't know why someone would be so invested against something like that.
> Nobody forces you to use tags if you don't see their use or care about the
> matter, but others may find it a perfect tool.
>

The big problem with "any tag you like" compounded by "I'm going to do
it this way even though there's another way of doing it already in
widespread use" is that it increases the entropy of our tagiverse.  Our
tagging space is slowly degenerating from the white noise of entropy.

-- 
Paul
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