[Tagging] better classification systems

[Martin Machyna]

> lakes could be gw01, riverbanks gw03 and we would not need any
> discussions if waterway=riverbank or water=river is better.

You just misunderstood. The discussion is not about wording, but about 
where in the topology tree river-subclass should be. (And removing one 
of the two duplicate subclasses for the same object)

Otherwise I agree that having tags as codes rather than words might be 
better, because they would be anyways hidden behind editor presets for 
typical OSM mapper. On other hand having the vales human readable has 
also its advantage.


On 12.2.21 3:24 , Tomas Straupis wrote:
> 2021-02-12, pn, 09:59 Mateusz Konieczny via Tagging rašė:
>> Can you give a specific example of actually existing system?
>    Professional GIS. I know Lithuanian national base dataset, but it's
> description is in Lithuanian. I think we can find a number of other
> base/reference data open descriptions which are done in English. Maybe
> somebody from USA, UK, Australia, South Africa can chime in?
>
>> I suspect that "plan properly from the beginning" is not sufficient.
>    The key point here is: designed base on requirements. Currently
> there is a lot of pointless "what if" which have no practical use but
> increase discussion length, complexity as well as complexity of the
> final product. Note: main things in cartography have been invented
> long time before OSM. We do not have to be "proud" and reinvent the
> wheel.
>
>> 1. You have codes instead of words for key=values.
>> It seems to fail due to "requires specialized training to use it" part
>> (or description/name would be tightly coupled to codes,
>> that would just add extra step for additional complexity without
>> any benefit)
>    Yes, you need to look up. But for me it is a benefit for a number of
> reasons stated earlier. It is advantage to be forced to look up rather
> than guess. You can guess from one word, but you cannot guess from a
> code ;-)
>
>> 1b. When using codes a user is forced to look up in the dictionary
>> what that code means and that description is no longer restricted in
>> length.
>>
>> Use of tags like
>> man_made=scaled_down_streets_that_may_be_used_for_traffic_safety_education_or_as_a_type_of_a_playground
>> is entirely possible with current OSM tags, just noone likes this idea.
>    My idea (well not mine, GIS idea) is to use code like:
>    class=st07
>    subclass=st07ft02
>    and then you look up what class st07 means, what subclass st07ft02 means etc.
>
>> 1c. This eradicates pointless discussion if A or B is a better word
>> to describe feature class C.
>>
>> And you have the same discussion about code description
>    Description of a class is a large text field. You can fit all opinions in it.
>
>    People have different opinions if forest, wood, woodland, forestry
> is the better thing to describe X, but with codes we could go into
> meta-level, think of requirements and do not think at all about the
> wording.
>
>    lakes could be gw01, riverbanks gw03 and we would not need any
> discussions if waterway=riverbank or water=river is better. Coders
> could go coding, cartographers could go creating maps and there would
> be happiness and sunshine* :-)
>
> * - and beer
>