[OSM-talk-be] Format of is_in tags in Belgium

[Tim Francois]

List,

Long story short: I've noticed that there are many, many is_in tags in
Belgium which do not conform to the generally accepted OSM standard. (Note
that I'm not debating here whether an is_in tag should or should not be used
within OSM - I'm just interested in the is_in tags which are already there
in the data).

There are three main things which I've noticed, and I refer you to
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:is_in for the currently 'accepted'
standard.

   1. Entities should be separated by semi-colons ";". There are many, many
   is_in tags with entities separated by commas ",". I'm not sure if this is
   something to do with automatic imports...
   2. It is recommended that entities be written in ascending order of size.
   For example, the is_in tag for Ieper would be something along these lines:
   Ieper;West-Vlaanderen;Vlaanderen;Belgium;Europe. (Different [local] language
   versions of these names are perfectly acceptable. For example:
   Ieper;West-Flanders;West-Vlaanderen;Flanders;Vlaanderen;Belgium;Belgie;Belgique;Europe).
   3. The is_in:country tag should have the name of the country, in English,
   in full. No abbreviations. I saw (and corrected) one example where the
   is_in:country tag had a value of "BE". "BE" should go in the
   is_in:country_code tag.

If have seen examples of the above 'problems' in both the flanders region
and the walloon region, which is why I send this to the main mailing list -
I thought at first that it might just be one person doing this in a local
area, but it seems the practice is widespread. I'm not suggesting go all out
and hunt them down: just, if you come across an is_in tag, check to see if
it is up to standard!

Cheers
Tim
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