[Tagging] Feature Proposal - RFC - Historic

[Sebastian Martin Dicke]

In Germany I found at least one battlefield from the mid of the last 
century which is tagged as historic=battlefield. Both in English and in 
German the mid of the last century is included in that what is modern. 
In Germany the modern period is often considered as a time span from the 
beginning of the twentieth century either until today or until to a 
subsequent era, which is called postmodern. The question if the modern 
age already ended or not is not important. But if we consider the modern 
age as the century (1900 – 1999) and we would agree not to tag any 
modern battlefield as historic=battlefield, which other tag should we 
use for them?

The definition of the historic=battlefield tag raises an interesting 
question concerning the key discussed in that thread: What means 
historic in the context of OSM? According to the wiki page the tag is 
properly for: „The site of a battle or military skirmish in the past. 
This could be on land or at sea.“ Okay, we could consider battles and 
skirmishes as ended if there is no soldiers or working military robots 
anymore. If they ended they are in the past. That is an easy point, I 
hope. But to be historic means to pertain history as far as I understand 
it and history is, I would define it, and many other would agree I 
assume, not simply everything in the past. History is some kind of 
narration, may created by a community through it tales, may a 
reconstruction (attempt) of forgone events by historians.

Should we define are limit of what should be tagged as historic? Do we 
need a barrier (ten years out of use, for example) or is the key 
properly for everything what is now out of use? If there is an aircraft 
standing on an airstrip which has been decommissioned yesterday (or 
thirty minutes ago), is it considered properly to tag them as 
historic=aircraft?