[Tagging] webpage=*

Andy Townsend ajt1047 at gmail.com
Thu Mar 18 13:08:04 UTC 2021


On 18/03/2021 12:26, Paul Allen wrote:
> I added a holiday cottage and used webpage=* for the single
> page on a website dealing with many holiday cottages.  A couple
> of hours later I received a changeset comment telling me not to
> use non-standard keys and which changed webpage=* to
> website=*.
>
> I wondered if the person had happened across the newly-added
> holiday cottage by accident or was using some sort of tool to
> catch things like this.

Almost certainly the latter, but I bet if you ask them, they'd tell you 
exactly how they detected it.  That user does reply to changeset 
discussion comments.


> So I didn't respond, merely changed
> it back, noting that I had deliberately chosen that key, please
> don't revert, and "any key you like."  That way I'd know if
> the person was using a tool to catch these things or not.
> Sure enough, that user changed it back to website.
>
> I checked the wiki: nothing for webpage=*.  Which does indeed
> make it non-standard.  But if it showed up in taginfo I could add
> a page with status "in use" or "de facto" (if I can figure out the
> difference between them).  It did show up in taginfo.  1 use
> (probably mine).  But a chronology showing it once had a
> far higher use which ramped up over time and then dropped
> off a cliff.  Then later showed some small usage that then
> dropped off a cliff.  That has zero usage today.  Unless
> somebody knows how to get at the details, as far as
> taginfo is concerned it never existed.

Overpass is a pretty good way of finding "what tags were in use at some 
point in the past".  In this case, https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/159K - 
and you can change the date there to look at different times of course.


>
> Then I checked that user's edit history.  Quite a lot of
> changesets are about "fixing" things.  He or she fixed
> wbsite=* in one edit (for which he or she deserves thanks).
> But he or she also waged war upon webpage.
>
> So a few questions:
>
> 1) Does what this user is doing constitute good practise or not?

In this particular case, that depends on whether the community thinks 
that "webpage" is an exact synonym for "website" or not. This list is 
probably the best place to discuss that.  Language is also going to be a 
factor - in Dutch I'd use "webpagina" for webpage/website in English; in 
German I'd use "Webseite" (actual Dutch or German people please feel 
free to disagree here of course).


> 2) Is there sufficient excuse to document webpage=* as
> "in use" (with suggestion to consider using website=*
> where appropriate) given that it was, prior to war being
> waged upon it, actually in use?

That's a bit of a stretch, to be honest.  According to 
https://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/keys/webpage#chronology , it never got 
above 150 uses worldwide, and that was a "blip" in 2013.  If you try 
different dates in a query such as https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/159L 
you'll see that usage was always very localised - someone would add lots 
of POIs with the tag here, or there.

Best Regards,

Andy





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