[Tagging] [RFC] Feature Proposal - landcover proposal V2

[Andy Townsend]

 > By the way, I saw some changes leading to x10 contribution rates and 
be criticized as disrupting longstanding practices or established tagging.

An actual example would be really useful here.

 > Establishment nor longstanding practices shouldn't be valid reasons 
on their own to justify decision making about tagging.

Indeed - if a proposal (even a reorganisation of existing usage) allows 
better information to be collected then it makes sense to do it.  The 
"diplomatic" reorganisation was one such (though the implementation was 
botched).  In this case, I'm not convinced that this proposal has any 
benefit.  We have edge cases now; after this proposal we will still have 
a whole bunch of slightly different edge cases.

 > How about considering tagging as an independent valuable thing we 
should take care of as well?

Because it isn't?  It's literally just describing how things are stored 
within OSM.  Anyone coming to OpenStreetMap as a mapper for the first 
time won't see tags at all - their editor will look after that for 
them.  A data consumer will have a simplified view of the world and will 
have to map OSM concepts into the ones that they are interested in.

As a concrete example, here:

https://github.com/SomeoneElseOSM/SomeoneElse-style/blob/master/style.lua#L6003

is where I take a bunch of things from OSM and map them into a concept 
that is displayed on a map ("Variety Stores", shown with a "£" 
symbol**).  A map for a different platform, here:

https://github.com/SomeoneElseOSM/mkgmap_style_ajt/blob/master/transform_03.lua#L1760

has a mapping onto a different category, "General Stores".  This is 
because this map is for Garmin devices which (by default) have a 
hardcoded series of categories that the search menus know about, and 
"Variety Stores" isn't one of them, but "General Stores" is.

Almost no-one in the outside world is going to want to distinguish 
between the actual OSM values here; they're only interested in their own 
real-world concepts.  In many cases this may be much broader-brush, 
perhaps "shops that sell food" vs "shows that primarily sell non-food", 
or even just "shops".

Anyone suggesting widespread changes such as this needs to explain how 
this proposal will help with at least one of the following:

  * Allowing new mappers to contribute to OSM easier than they currently can
  * Allowing some nuance to be captured that can't be captured now
  * Make life easier for data consumers in some way

and the benefit needs to be proportional to the necessary upheaval 
(which in this case would be significant).  Note that "satisfying the 
data normalisation urges of people familiar with working with databases" 
isn't on that list.

Best Regards,

Andy

** apologies to anyone with a pocketful of € instead of £


On 13/02/2023 12:21, François Lacombe wrote:
> Hello
>
> Le ven. 10 févr. 2023 à 19:29, Mateusz Konieczny via Tagging 
> <tagging at openstreetmap.org> a écrit :
>
>     Or to be more specific solved problems, if any, are much smaller
>     than size
>     of change of longstanding tagging practices.
>
>
> To me, it's a return of experience matter and a debate we should 
> provide with facts.
> OSM has been created to question longstanding practices, how the same 
> can be raised to prevent its own evolution nowadays?
>
> Many attempts to change longstanding practices in the past had 
> unleashed contribution and bring more visibility on covered topics.
> I made a presentation at SOTM France last year about what benefits 
> tagging development brings to OSM.
> Studying chronology tabs on taginfo learn us a lot about how the 
> community reacts with such changing, despite changes may be slow or 
> significant.
>
> The methodology and efforts deployed to achieve the rollout of new 
> tagging should be adapted in regard of amounts of features to retag, 
> yes (and we will never be perfect from that perspective).
> By the way, I saw some changes leading to x10 contribution rates and 
> be criticized as disrupting longstanding practices or established tagging.
> Establishment nor longstanding practices shoudn't be valid reasons on 
> their own to justify decision making about tagging.
>
> How about considering tagging as an independent valuable thing we 
> should take care of as well?
>
> Best regards
>
> François
>
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> Tagging mailing list
> Tagging at openstreetmap.org
> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/tagging
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