[Tagging] Evaporation ponds vs Salt ponds

[Brian M. Sperlongano]

I have suspended voting on the evaporation pond proposal[1] after one
day, due to the issue raised regarding the use of the nascent "berm"
tag versus the more established "embankment" and "dyke" tags, and the
objection raised against proceeding with a mid-vote edit.  This
proposal has now been updated with that change, as well as a small
tweak to the language associated with hazard tagging.

In addition to these minor tweaks, there was an extended debate on the
talk page with regard to the treatment of salt evaporation ponds
(currently tagged landuse=salt_pond) as it relates to this proposal.

When I developed this proposal, I specifically carved out an exception
for salt evaporation (i.e. exclude them from basin=evaporation), as
there is already the existing tag landuse=salt_pond for these, which
is well-supported by renderers.  I felt that even though salt ponds
could certainly be tagged as an evaporation basins (basin=evaporation
+ resource=salt), the community would oppose the creation of a
duplicate tagging scheme, particularly when landuse=salt_pond is in
active use (11,000 tags) and was unanimously approved in a 2009
proposal[2].

Some participants on the proposal talk page felt that evaporation pond
tagging should not prohibit the use of resource=salt, in order to
allow for the possibility of a future transition away from
landuse=salt_pond.

I do not have a strong opinion either way, but I would like to pose
this question to the community, as to whether this proposal should
explicitly discourage tagging salt ponds with evaporation basin
tagging (as it is currently written), or leave this question open.


[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Evaporation_basin
[2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Proposed_features/Salt_Pond