[Tagging] Rules (was: Feature proposal - Approved - deprecate embassy=embassy)

[Andy Townsend]

On 03/02/2022 14:15, s8evq wrote:
>
> These old-timers fail to see that a big group of contributors come to OSM with good intentions, and make it a better project, with better, cleaner data structure. They fail to even consider the thoughts and ideas of this large group. I have the feeling these old-timers don't even think it's anywhere remotely possible that these new contributors might possibly have a point.

I'm sorry, but if you're talking about me that's simply untrue - just 
take a second to read almost anything I've written in or about OSM over 
the years (diary, DWG, switch2osm, etc.).  I suspect that at least half 
of what I write with a DWG hat on is essentially "actually, the other 
person might possibly have a point"; literally everything I deal with 
there involves considering all points of view.

No-one (not even Simon) has questioned the good intentions of the 
contributors here and your "These old-timers fail to see..." above 
suggests my "PS" last time was prescient.

> I'm sorry, but that's not a valid argument. There might have been other factors that caused OSM to be more successful than other projects, "despite" the hand-off approach. You just can't make that assertion so easily.
That's ignoring the fact I gave a couple of examples in other domains 
too.  You're welcome to suggest counter-arguments of projects with a 
large volunteer base that have significantly changed how they work, and 
thrived.  The nearest that I can think of is Apple's iOS development 
ecosystem changes*, but few contributors there are in any sense 
"volunteers".

More generally, trying to look forward instead of back, how would you 
suggest that the tag change process is managed?  To take a general 
example not related to "diplomatic" tagging: the way that OSM handles 
forestry and woodland is a bit of a mess - how would you propose to fix 
that problem, not just at the OSM wiki level, but beyond?:

  * how possible tags are presented to users in editors?
  * how to explain to mappers who may not always use editor presets that
    the new tags are a good idea?
  * how to manage existing OSM data, especially OSM data that might not
    cleanly fit new tagging criteria?
  * how to explain to data consumers what has changed, and how - and how
    to help them make the changes that they need to to their code?

It's not impossible to do the above when necessary - ways tagged as 
"highway=ford" are probably the canonical example, but there are others.

Best Regards,

Andy

* such as e.g. 
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/xamarin/uiwebview-deprecation-xamarin-forms/

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