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

Martin Machyna machyna at gmail.com
Fri Feb 12 15:00:13 UTC 2021


I don't see how this is a relevant argument for anything. water=river 
can accommodate intermittent or seasonal properties just fine.

This is not a grammar exercise. Tags are just placeholders and not some 
dictionary definitions.



On 11.2.21 5:46 , Warin wrote:
> On 11/2/21 1:40 am, Volker Schmidt wrote:
>> (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
>
>
> There are also intermittent waterways and seasonal waterways.
>
>
>>
>> And for intuitivity, waterway=riverbank to me seems better than 
>> water=river
>
>
> Particularly so when the 'river'/'river bank' only has water about 
> every 5 to 10 years and then only for a very short period of time, say 
> a few days.
>
>>
>> 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.
>
>
> I'll be sticking with waterway=riverbank, thank you.
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 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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