[Tagging] is the wiki descriptive or prescriptive?

[Christoph Hormann]

On Tuesday 16 November 2021, joost schouppe wrote:
> [...]
>
> I have the feeling that what I describe above is close to a consensus
> opinion of what the wiki is for. I was a little surprised that we
> don't seem to document anywhere how exactly we use the wiki. That
> must be confusing for both data users and wiki contributors. But
> maybe I missed something obvious (that happens).

This is the old dilemma of the wiki as a place for documenting tagging - 
which i consider kind of a case of the tragedy of the commons.

The way you formulate your question: "Is the wiki descriptive or 
prescriptive?" is already part of the problem.  My answer to that 
question would be:  The wiki is neither because there is no consensus 
on what it *should* be.  And since there are people editing the wiki 
with the aim to document how tags are de facto used as well as those 
who edit the wiki with the aim to influence mappers and data users in 
how they use and interpret tags this will continue to be the case.  As 
long as the wiki has a substantial influence on mappers or data users 
there will be an incentive to try influencing the tagging documentation 
on the wiki in certain directions even if there was a codified rule 
that declares that the wiki must be purely descriptive.

As a result of this most meaningful information on the actual use of 
tags in OSM is in the minds of people knowledgeable in the respective 
fields of tagging as well as in the personal writings (on blogs, 
diaries, issue trackers etc.) of those.  Most of these people would be 
interested in sharing this knowledge on a place like the wiki - but who 
rarely do so because as is they know it will get modified there by 
other (potentially equally knowledgeable) people with the aim to nudge 
the readers into a certain direction.

Like tragedy of the commons problems in general this is hard to solve 
and the global nature of OSM makes this particularly tricky.  At the 
same time a unified and truely descriptive documentation of tagging in 
OSM and a sustainable process to maintain it and keep it up-to-date 
would be of extremely high value for the community.

-- 
Christoph Hormann
https://www.imagico.de/