[Tagging] is the wiki descriptive or prescriptive?

[Minh Nguyen]

Vào lúc 08:49 2021-11-17, Christoph Hormann đã viết:
> A fairly manifest idea would be to properly separate the two uses of the
> wiki to avoid both goals competing within the same body of text.

Separating the wiki's contents by their aim is a great idea. Mappers 
need more "feature pages" like [1][2][3] that give a broader view of how 
to map something from start to finish, named after a real-world concept 
rather than a particular tag that the mapper has to identify as the 
primary feature tag beforehand.

We more often have debates over how to name a tag than over what 
something is in the first place. There hasn't been a debate about the 
essence of a junkyard/scrapyard, yet it doesn't help a disinterested 
mapper that there are three separate primary pages about tagging them 
that are difficult to consolidate as long as each tag is in use. 
[4][5][6] Placing a tag name front and center raising the stakes for 
anyone who does want to nudge tag usage in a certain direction.

A feature page can potentially relegate some of these debates to side 
notes. Key and value description pages can be refocused on the nuts and 
bolts of tagging, including getting the naming just right, for the 
benefit of a more technical audience.

> But you need to keep in mind that this would not fully solve the problems
> because for people with a certain conviction on how things should be
> tagged there is always an incentive to selectively present the de facto
> use of the tag in a way that supports how things should be.  A way to
> mitigate that and to create more credibility for tagging documentation
> could be to move away from the relatively anonymous presentation of
> content on the wiki more towards a collection of clearly attributed
> statements and analysis on tagging.  This way readers could weigh what
> they read in the tagging documentation with the credibility and merit
> of those who have written it.  I do not know how practically feasible
> that is though.

As Mateusz points out, there's already a mechanism to support a claim by 
citing some analysis off-wiki that can be attributed to an individual if 
necessary. But attributing individuals -- even noted experts in the 
OSMian English dialect -- can only go so far in terms of providing 
clarity. Even a self-described craft mapper may not want to deliberate 
over _every_ tag they use, every time they use it. Focusing on the 
merits avoids misunderstandings that arise when there's even a 
perception that a debate is being personalized. [7]

[1] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Addresses
[2] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Frontage_road
[3] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Simple_3D_Buildings
[4] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:industrial%3Dauto_wrecker
[5] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:industrial%3Dscrap_yard
[6] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:shop%3Djunk_yard
[7] https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tag:service%3Ddriveway2

-- 
minh at nguyen.cincinnati.oh.us