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

Martin Machyna machyna at gmail.com
Wed Feb 17 01:21:11 UTC 2021


1) I guess it is ok to add it to the water=* page in a separate section 
mentioning that water=stream was not a part of the original proposal.

2) I would say this could be fixed when the tag on the object will be 
updated to water=*. Either changing it to those values that exist like 
water=canal or by inventing new subtag like water=streampond. But I am 
no expert in those features.

3) Hmm, I am no limnologist but that sounds to me like a definition of a 
wetland. I personally would tag it as wetland with whatever the river 
name is. But if you insist that a river must be drawn across them then 
I'd say the validator change is more straightforward and I think it 
could be possible to do a custom hack that would allow you to use it as 
your tool. I assume you are talking about JOSM, there might be people 
skilled in Java that would know more about this. Another solution that 
comes to my mind is to invent a new wetland tag that would be specific 
for cases that you are describing, but not with immediate support from 
editors and renderers.

4) You have some creative workarounds :) I just chose to ignore those 
warnings if I see they don't make sense. Natural=water is described as 
areas-only in wiki and that makes sense, if you are using it on linear 
features then that is not the intended use. So natural=water+water=drain 
is to outline the area covered by drain and waterway=drain is to create 
flow connectivity to other flowing water. But I guess no one anticipated 
that drains can have no flowing water and no connection to other 
waterway features. The solutions that come to my mind: a) as you sad 
have noexit=yes tag also for waterways, b) update JOSM validator so it 
would account for cases when drain is stand alone, c) create new 
waterway tag such as waterway=evaporation_drain that would not have the 
validation check for connectivity.



On 14.2.21 8:12 , Bert -Araali- Van Opstal wrote:
>
> 1) Correct, water=stream is used and similar to water=river. I wanted 
> to point out that the wiki needs updating, water=stream is not 
> described in the wiki.
>
> 2) Not exactly wrong tagged, they are correctly tagged, the 
> waterway=river_bank is used also to map wide canals, streams, pools or 
> ponds (streamponds) formed by intermittent rivers etc... but because 
> of the single existing waterway=river_bank, since we didn't have any 
> alternative like waterway=bank in general, or waterway=canal_bank 
> waterway=stream_bank etc... deprecating it to water=river is wrong and 
> change all these areas to rivers.  You will get areas tagged as 
> water=river with a waterway=stream, waterway=canal running through it. 
> That would definitively be unfortunate. You are right in the sense 
> that for these you could easily tag those correct with a corresponding 
> water=stream or water=canal. However that is a huge task, there are 
> thousands of these waterway=river_bank which will have to be reviewed 
> and retagged.
>
> 3) Nope, our wetlands appear as wetlands most of the year since the 
> river running through it spreads over a plain creating a very shallow 
> wetland or even just mudplains and continues to run underground. Many 
> of them however historically carry the name of the river and are 
> considered rivers since a few days, sometimes longer the whole wetland 
> turns into a raging river. We looked at how historically this used to 
> be mapped, the common practice is to map the dominant appearance, so 
> the wetland, with the river running through it (either intermittent / 
> seasonal or not). Same we have (I think mentioned before) large sand 
> plains with the riverbank sometimes very far from the actual common 
> river flow.  Tagging those plains as sand or mudplains with 
> intermittent or seasonal river running through it is fine.  In some 
> cases these rivers remain wide enough for the waterway=riverbank to be 
> used.  That's the riverbank during the dry state or season (seasons 
> vary largely from year to year). Leaving us to map the riverbanks as 
> cliffs or the more suitable but less used natural=earth_bank. As 
> stated this gives no validation warnings, because river_bank is 
> happily to overlap with wetland and mudplains.  Not so the 
> natural=water areas.  I agree this could be easily solved by changing 
> the validation rules or just ignore the warnings, but it's not that 
> simple. We use these warnings to detail large wetlands. We draw areas 
> of wetland with type tagging on large multipolygons or relation 
> boundaries and use these warnings to tag them correctly as inner parts 
> of the multi-polygons or relations. Since this was never an issue with 
> the waterway=river_bank these are not defined as inner parts. Neither 
> do we define residential areas or farmland (most of these wetlands are 
> encroached) since they are not considered as water features. I hope my 
> point gets clearer, a solution would be to change the validation 
> rules, however that would break a powerful tool ans consistency check 
> for correct tagging of wetland at the same time. We can put our heads 
> in the sand and say this is a validation or editor problem, not a 
> tagging problem, but I think, due to it's huge impact, we should 
> consider it here.
>
> 4) Allow me to clarify: you have only 1 way to define a drain (sorry I 
> used ditch it must be drain), on a way with waterway=drain. When the 
> drain has just the function to collect water and let it evaporate or 
> soak into the ground (it drains into the ground so its a drain not a 
> ditch), the node at the end of the way is not connected to any other 
> waterbody or waterway. Same concept appears in irrigation systems.  In 
> JOSM you get a warning that the drain (as it assumes it has to flow 
> into something) is ""Waterway ends without a connection to another 
> waterway or the direction of the waterway is wrong".  Same as we get 
> messages on none connected roads for which explicitly a noexit key is 
> created. So the described proposed way to solve this is to draw a 
> small pool at the end of the ditch or define the end node as a 
> sinkhole (yep, mappers are creative)! If you use natural=water, 
> water=ditch (which is not in the standard JOSM presets) you get a 
> validation warning that the way is not closed. The common validation 
> is that it doesn't take into account that the natural tag can be 
> applied to a linear feature. By the way, the same applies for the 
> other natural water tags.  Now this might be a JOSM and validation 
> issue but to my opinion relates to this issue as our wiki and all the 
> editors refer to ways only for waterways, and natural=water can be 
> used on ways according to the wiki, true, but isn't correctly 
> supported in our editors. The situation gets even worse because 
> waterway=river_bank is sometimes used to map these drains ! So if we 
> now deprecate this waterway=river_bank ditches, they all become rivers 
> ! The best solution would be to create a new tag similar to the noexit 
> tag on highways, f.i. noflow. But again, there are thousands of thiese 
> workarounds implemented.
>
> Greetings, Bert Araali
>
> On 15/02/2021 01:33, Martin Machyna wrote:
>>
>> 1) If I understand that correctly river_bank is used for both rivers 
>> and stream as would be water=river, so I don't see much change. But 
>> is seems that some use water=stream anyways: 
>> https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:water%3Dstream
>>
>> 2) Correct me if I am wrong, but that sounds like those channels and 
>> ponds are wrongly tagged now and replacing river_bank with river 
>> would not change much. Except now we have water=pond and water=canal 
>> to fix it.
>>
>> 3) This seem to me like a simple change in the validator tool would 
>> fix that. But I personally think that those are badly mapped, you 
>> either have a wetland or you have a river, so having that split into 
>> separate polygons is correct.
>>
>> 4) I don't see that deep into the sinkhole issue maybe you can 
>> elaborate or someone else can chime in. I just try naively with an 
>> idea, that to me waterway=ditch has a merit for routing within the 
>> ditch system (if it is a single ditch than not so much). Plus might 
>> be useful when you want to retrieve water elements as line-mesh 
>> rather then polygons. I certainly don't see anything detrimental on 
>> having it there. But you might have more to say to this.
>>
>>
>> On 14.2.21 2:16 , Bert -Araali- Van Opstal wrote:
>>>
>>> I am strong against to deprecate waterway=river_bank in favour of 
>>> natural=water and water=river:
>>>
>>> - there is no (described) water=stream in the wiki. However, 
>>> waterway=river_bank is used often for more detailed mapping of 
>>> streams, so we need (at least described) water = stream;
>>>
>>> - if we deprecate and eventually ditch or replace 
>>> waterway=river_bank we are going to get a lot of eceptions, since 
>>> waterway=river_bank is also used to map wide channels, sometimes 
>>> ponds etc.., actually most of the linear waterway feuatures whenever 
>>> they get wide. Unfortunately historically we had only the vaue 
>>> river_bank instead of "bank" as a more general term.
>>>
>>> - waterway=riverbank is accepted and doesn't give warnings in 
>>> combination with wetland = natural. So many wetlands have rivers 
>>> with defined river_banks and other waterways running through them 
>>> without any issues.  Natural = water is considered as bad mapping 
>>> and creates warnings.  Meaning all wetlands need to be converted to 
>>> multi polygons or relations with natural=water inner parts. A huge task.
>>>
>>> - I would like to see a solution for non-flowing water in ditches. 
>>> Now it says explicitly that it has to be combined with 
>>> waterway=ditch. It creates lots of validation problems, yet many 
>>> ditches have the sole purpose to let the water evaporate or soak 
>>> away. People find creative solutions like adding sinkholes at the 
>>> end of a ditch, bad practice but only available solution at this 
>>> time. So do we change the wiki as acceptable to map ditches as areas 
>>> (in se map their banks) without a waterway=ditch running through them ?
>>>
>>> So I am in favour of deprecating waterway=river_bank in favour of 
>>> natural=water if we find reasonable solutions for the above issues.
>>>
>>> On 14/02/2021 21:41, Martin Machyna wrote:
>>>> 1) merging of the schemes
>>>>
>>>>  argument in favor:
>>>>
>>>> - more simple and unified database
>>>>
>>>> - no need to maintain two schemes
>>>>
>>>> - less confusing to new users
>>>>
>>>> - OSM would look more professional and reliable to current and 
>>>> potential new adopters
>>>>
>>>> - resolved violation of "one feature one tag" rule
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> argument against:
>>>>
>>>> - Lithuanian tool would not work
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 2) which to keep
>>>>
>>>> water=river:
>>>>
>>>> - is approved
>>>>
>>>> - Would unify water=* subtree for water covered areas and 
>>>> waterway=* for river network
>>>>
>>>> - Is currently more popular
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> waterway=riverbank:
>>>>
>>>> - is currently more numerous
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 12.2.21 10:38 , Marc_marc wrote:
>>>>> Le 12.02.21 à 16:18, Martin Machyna a écrit :
>>>>>> I don't see any advantage to keep both other than someone's personal
>>>>>> convenience.
>>>>> I think the debate should be splited in two, especially since at 
>>>>> least
>>>>> one person is playing on both sides to say that at the same time 
>>>>> there
>>>>> is no problem to have a fragmentation since all the tools manage both
>>>>> schemes and at the same time that it is very expensive to 
>>>>> eliminate one
>>>>> of the 2 schemes because some of these own tools only manage one 
>>>>> schéma.
>>>>>
>>>>> Unfortunately, apart from discussion, there is no way to make a 
>>>>> 2-step
>>>>> proposal:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) in favor or against the merging of the 2 schemes into a single one
>>>>>
>>>>> argument in favor: reducing the loss of human time, increasing 
>>>>> coherence
>>>>> and therefore quality
>>>>>
>>>>> argument against:
>>>>> - communication (this is a point that needs to be improved) is 
>>>>> obviously
>>>>> more time-consuming in the short term than the status quo.
>>>>> - tools managing only one of the 2 will see their defect even more
>>>>> visible depending on whether the remaining schema is the supported 
>>>>> one
>>>>> or the other (and in my opinion, it is not a argument against so 
>>>>> much to
>>>>> see the "design errors" rather than "if not too many complaints, do
>>>>> nothing").
>>>>> - the existing old books are frightening to some. (against argument:
>>>>> if you type a tag in any correct editor, it tells you that it is
>>>>> deprecated, so everyone knows how to update easily)
>>>>>
>>>>> argument neither for nor against: it will be necessary to carry out a
>>>>> mass operation so that the gain above can be made, I'm willing to 
>>>>> take
>>>>> care of it.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2) to choose the new scheme on the basis of the 
>>>>> advantages/disadvantages
>>>>> of each of them and no longer on the basis of "should 
>>>>> fragmentation be
>>>>> maintained or not".
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Tagging mailing list
>>>>> Tagging at openstreetmap.org
>>>>> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
>>>>
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